How a Unique 12-Digit Code Can Uproot Corruption in India

By virtue of an executive order, the Central Government of India created the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in February 2009. UIDAI will be headed by a director-general carrying the rank of a cabinet and will be supervised by the Planning Commission. UIDAI was established to implement the Aadhaar scheme. All the residents of India will be issued a 12-digit unique identification number.

UIDAI was tasked to gather multimodal biometrics of residents - photographs, fingerprints and iris scan. The information will be the basis of an ambitious identification database. UIDAI uses a technology that can enroll millions of data every day at 99.99% accuracy. The robust system uses an open and scalable model.

Over the past decades, social welfare was India’s way of fighting poverty. The program has guaranteed jobs for the poor residents of Indian villages at an average daily wage of $60. However, out of the 1.2 billion people in India, only 200 million of them have driver’s license. The rest go about without any valid ID. This situation is the groundwork for the rampant frauds in India. Through the help of Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, a robust, government-backed identification system is being helmed. Its success will be the first of its kind in the world - one that is fully verifiable online. To date, UIDAI has issued more than 450 million ID which can be used at anytime, especially for travel.

Those who have been enrolled in the program had their fingerprints taken and irises scanned, and have been issued their unique 12-digit code - scheme that proved helpful to a country with high illiteracy rate. The code is ready to be connected to a bank account. Their earnings are confirmed through a text message. Their money need not be skimmed or picked up. Instead, the ID user can proceed to an UID-recognized business to have their fingerprints scanned. Through the UID, the users are paid the exact amount that they earned rather than just a fraction of their earnings reaching their wallets.