Arvind Padmanabhan

India has set the process rolling to create the largest database on this planet, with the promise of a unique biometric card to each of its 1.17 billion citizens in a move intended to improve delivery of governance and enhance the country's homeland security like never before.

The exercise even surpasses the effort to hand over voter identity cards to 714 million eligible electorate in the country and will give the government a common view of all residents and for wherever identity that needs to be proved, experts maintain.

It will also help identify illegal immigrants and give a fillip to national security, apart from sprucing up tax collections and targeting welfare schemes better in areas like education, health and social security, officials said.

The multi-purpose card will have an embedded microchip as suggested by an expert committee with representatives drawn from the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Bharat Electronics and Intelligence Bureau, among others.

"The national population register will be ready by 2011. Multipurpose national identity cards will be issued to all residents in 2011," Home Minister P. Chidambaram said recently.

"The Unique Identity Project seeks to assign a unique identity number to each individual in the country that would remain a permanent identifier - right from birth to death of the individual," said a senior official at the nodal agency, NIC.

"The project will end needless harassment that people face to avail even basic services like passports, telephone connections, driving licences, electoral identity cards and even for opening a bank account," said the official.

"It will also obviate the need for a person to produce multiple documentary proofs of his identity for availing of any of the government or private services like opening of a bank account."

The main function of the project is to:

-Obviate need for multiple documentary proofs

-Help in the easy verification of an individual

-Facilitate easy extension of government, private services

-Help welfare programmes reach intended beneficiaries

-Serve as basis for e-governance services

"This move will bestow the benefits of information technology to the common man and also help establish citizenship, thus enhancing security at various levels," said Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

"This will also bring transparency in different delivery channels and help in mapping diverse requirements of the nation and, in turn, assure better planning and strategisation for the country," he added.

The project was approved in November last year by a high-powered ministerial group headed by then External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee which also called for a Unique Identity Authority of India to oversee its implementation.

Following that, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh named Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys Technologies, one of India's best-known software and information technology companies, the chairman of the authority with a cabinet rank.

"I expect the first set of cards to be issued by one of the partners in 12-18 months," the 54-year-old first-generation entrepreneur said soon after he was named the head of the project.

"I will finalise the blueprint for the project in a month. The Infosys background helps me understand the architecture issues and broadly the kind of collaboration we will require across government agencies to make it work."

The congress party had also promised a unique identity card for every citizen, should the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government be voted back to power, saying citizenship was a right and a matter of pride.

"With the huge information technology expertise available in our country, it is possible to provide every Indian a unique identity card after the publication of the national population register in the year 2011," said its manifesto.

In fact, a pilot project has already been underway in issuing such cards to citizens in selected districts of 12 states and one union territory. Some citizens were also issued these cards in states like Delhi.

The project covered Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tripura, Goa, Delhi and Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Puducherry.

The main feature of the card is a 16-digit unique number with basic details like educational qualifications, place and date of birth, photo and fingerprints. But not all details are visible, as they will be stored in the embedded 16-kb memory chip,

Presently, the various cards issued by the government serve as sub-sets of each other, including like the voted identity card covering 714 million citizens or the permanent account number (PAN) for 300 million income tax payers, including corporate houses.

All these and more can be integrated into the unique multipurpose identity card.

"This can become Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's top achievement in the realm of technology-driven governance as also for homeland security," said Prasanto K. Roy, chief editor of information and communications technology with CyberMedia publishing house.

"If these cards reach even half of India's citizens by 2011, the UPA government will deserve praise. But even if they don't, the first steps are good - it is part of the manifesto of the Congress party."