Am I a virus? asks UID's Nilekani. The answer: Yes, you are

Nandan Nilekani’s honeymoon with neta-babu India is over. India’s Unique ID champion, the man who wants to give every resident of this country his own 12-digit biometric identity, has had a free run so far with the PM giving him a more-or-less free hand to build the unique ID system and related architecture.

Money and resources have not been spared despite the fiscal crunch, with Nilekani, who is Chairman of the Unique ID Authority of India (UIDAI), being given an outlay of Rs 3,023 crore for the biometric capture of 200 million IDs. His mandate has also been broadened to include work on the idea of replacing subsidies with cash transfers, electronic toll collection, and e-governance, among many other things.

But, suddenly, an empire jealous of its power and pelf, is striking bank. The man who had a free run on his ideas is hearing more “maybes”, “buts”, and even straight “noes.”

More from Politics

Is Shashi Tharoor’s breakup with Congress inevitable? ‘Naxalism will end in India by March 2026’: Amit Shah at CRPF Raising Day parade

It’s not just the _jholawalas,_who never warmed up to the idea of unique IDs, who are gunning for him.

[caption id=“attachment_94326” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani. Image courtesy PIB”]  [/caption]

The Finance Ministry, says The Economic Times, has just said no to his demand for a Rs 17,863 crore budget to capture the entire population’s biometric data; the home ministry is unhappy about UIDAI’s way of biometric data collection when its own population register, which carries out the census, could do equally well; the Planning Commission, which is where the UIDAI is located, wants the organisation’s finances and transaction to be monitored; and the labour ministry is wondering how UIDAI has already hit its stride when its mandate has not even been legislated!

The system is balking at Nilekani’s carte blanche and is suspicious of his powers.

That’s probably why Nilekani asks incredulously in a recent interview to The New Yorker: “What am I, a virus?”

The short answer is ‘yes’. Nilekani is the interloper whom the system, dominated by politicians, bureaucrats and an assorted range of activists, is trying to cut down to size.

Preciently, NIlekani’s former mentor and Infosys’ Chairman Emeritus NR Narayana Murthy, talks about the real challenge before Nilekani in The New Yorker article. “Technologically, it is a very simple project. The challenge is in making sure that literally hundreds of thousands of officers fall in line, (and that) they rally to his call and march to his tune.”

Far from marching to his tune, his own former well-wishers are now striking a discordant note.

The Planning Commission under Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who is a close confidante of the PM, is voicing dissent. A recent Planning Commission note to the Finance Ministry says: “The UADAI’s present system represents a major departure from government procedures and removes all inbuilt checks and balances. We need a relook at the UIDAI’s administrative structure.”

Montek is miffed because the UIDAI is an adjunct to the Planning Commission-that’s how Manmohan Singh managed to smuggle Nilekani into the system-but the Commission doesn’t get to see how he gets his money or uses it. It now wants to put a crimp in Nilekani’s finances by planting a “full-time financial advisor” to track sanctions and clearances, says The Economic Times.

Nor is Montek the only one trying to shrink the Nilekani kingdom. Jairam Ramesh’s rural development ministry wants to do its own biometrics for its flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

But the biggest opposition comes from Nilekani’s ideological foes: civil society poverty-mongers and politicians.

Politicians and civil society activists worry that UIDAI will ultimately seek to restrict their role by trying to exclude the non-poor from state subsidies. The political logic which led Sonia Gandhi to over-rule her jholawalas in the National Advisory Council (NAC) and back Nilekani’s project initially was that the UIDAI would give all the poor an identity and enable them to open bank accounts and make development more inclusive.

But Nilekani’s brief is now changing-and more threatening to politicians and their vote-banks. A cash-strapped Finance Ministry-backed by the PM, his Economic Advisory Council chief C Rangarajan, and the Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu-wants to use the unique ID for curtailing benefits to the undeserving.

Among other things, they want to exclude the non-poor from subsidies, weed out phantom beneficiaries, prevent leakages from the public distribution system and replace price subsidies with direct cash transfers to the really needy. This is a politician’s nightmare, and red rag for the jholawalas who have made poverty their core competence.

Jean Dreze, who was on the NAC till recently, believes that cash transfers won’t work and prefers regular food handouts to the poor. That way, “you’re giving people what you know they need.” It is debatable whether people just want subsidised food or greater freedom of choice (which is what they would get if subsidies were to be replaced with cash transfers), but this has not stopped the critics. Usha Ramanathan is another anti-UIDAI activist quoted by The New Yorker as being opposed to all that the unique ID system stands for.

However, Nilekani is a man on a mission, and is willing to fight back. He believes that some of his opponents are technophobes who are uncomfortable with the idea that technology can help solve problems related to poverty. His take on his critics, according to The New Yorker: “They don’t believe that technology can solve problems. They say we’ve been looking at these things for decades and we haven’t solved them, and who are you to tell me you’ll solve them in three years?”

But won’t all the data collected through biometrics and technology be misused to invade privacy? Nilekani retort quoted by the The New Yorker: “One (thing to do) is go back and live in a cave. The other is to say this stuff is useful but we must put in checks and balances.”

Nilekani, who left his job at Infosys two years ago as he wanted to seek challenges outside business, is not going to lie down and play dead while his detractors plot his demise. He is clear that he will either succeed fully or fail in his mission to provide all 1.2 billion Indian residents a unique ID.

In short, all or nothing.

With the system rising in unison to clip his wings, Nilekani may have to live with partial success of his unique ID project. His current budget will allow him to capture 200 million Indians for his biometric database. And since the finance ministry has said nyet to his proposal to hike outlays to Rs 17,863 crore to cover all 1.2 billion Indians, he will have to bide his time.

Narayana Murthy, who spoke to The New Yorker on Nilekani’s strengths (“networking and schmoozing”) and his challenges, has this word of advance consolation for him in case he finds himself between success and failure - between zero and one. “I would not hold him (Nilekani) responsible if this project did not take off, if it did not scale up as well as he wants. Most things in India muddle along.”

Nilekani will have to “schmooze” more with politicians and bureaucrats to achieve something that will amount to more than “muddling” along.