By simplifying address-proof function, Aadhaar seeks to expand access

Aadhaar made news three times last week. Of them, two got noticed but the most consequential one was largely overlooked.

First, on June 1, the United Payments Interface or UPI, the platform on which all digital payments run in the country, reported processing Rs 10 trillion worth of transactions, for May. This is a massive number. In just two months of this financial year, it has almost reached one-fourth of the total transactions of FY22. UPI’s backbone is mostly Aadhaar.

Second, a press release from a regional office of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the company that runs Aadhaar, asking citizens to be wary about sharing their cards with businesses that ask for it.

The first news tells you that for millions of Indians, Aadhaar is their primary identity platform. Any concern about the use of Aadhaar, as the UIDAI notice implied, would unnerve them. It is for this reason the UIDAI promptly withdrew the release.

It is this context that makes the third bit of news about Aadhaar remarkable. In a press release dated June 1, the UIDAI stated that it will offer “Residence-centricity and Ease of Access” to expand Aadhaar usage.

Put simply, it means Aadhaar will now proactively help those without residence proof to get one. This is a big deal since earlier citizens faced the chicken-and-egg dilemma of offering proof of residence to get the Aadhaar digital identity in the first place or even to alter it. This created huge headaches for, say, a migrant worker in Odisha accessing welfare schemes in Kerala, his place of work. The “address proof” problem kept thousands of workers outside the welfare net.  

What’s changed now is that the UIDAI will offer users the option of updating their address. But instead of asking the applicant to furnish proof, the UIDAI will do the residence check by itself (including physically, if necessary). This applies to first-time applicants as well. Workers that lack smartphones now only have to access Aadhaar centres to update their data. Postmen across the country have been offered tablets to enable workers to access the service.

Explaining the rationale for Aadhaar offering this facility, Saurabh Garg, CEO, UIDAI, said, “Aadhaar works as a fundamental identity. So it can tap into various sectors and exploit gaps by using digital identity to reach the last mile of users to achieve universal inclusion, both social and financial”. The plan is part of a bouquet of measures the UIDAI plans to bring in as its second phase.

The details about their current residence data will be uploaded by the Aadhaar user and not the UIDAI. “A valid proof of identity integrated into Aadhaar will go a long way to improve the options for the poorer segments. It gives them a vital document,” said Amarjeet Sinha, former advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office. This facility will solve the kind of problems students accessing services in Delhi government schools face. The state offers school uniforms and book subsidies, but applicants have to prove they have a verified address to draw the benefit — and that proof has to be separate from the Aadhaar card.

The UIDAI has simplified the address proof process because it is, essentially, incidental to the process of verification. Aadhaar offers its identity service, from the database of biometric information it stores, for about 1.33 billion Indians. Whenever any agency, like a bank or the tax office, asks for your Aadhaar number, the database cross checks the number with the identity details of the person. The answer usually travels as an OTP over a mobile. So for this transaction to hold, three pieces of data have to agree. The biometric details of the individual, mobile number and the Aadhaar number.

The UIDAI plays no role in establishing why the number has been asked for, since its database works on what is known as a federated architecture. It is for the user agency to decide if the information on Aadhaar will be relied upon or not. Here, too, according to the Supreme Court order of 2018, only an agency that has the statutory right to ask for the Aadhaar document can demand it, such as the Election Commission of India, which has tweaked the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Similarly, the changes in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act have given the tax department the right to link PAN numbers with Aadhaar, effectively linking the data with bank accounts, too. De-duplication sits as one of the core functions of Aadhaar. While activists point out that Aadhaar leads to beneficiaries getting excluded, the UIDAI points out that the data just identifies those with the numbers.

So even if someone’s Aadhaar is available on the internet, without getting access to that person’s biometrics and the cell number, each is worthless. The UIDAI, for instance, mandates that a cell number linked to an Aadhaar cannot be changed, except at a UIDAI office in the presence of a third party. “It does not mean that frauds in this linkage cannot happen, but if it happens, there is traceability,” said a source with knowledge of the architecture of the system.

Meanwhile, the success of the Aadhaar-linked Covid vaccine project with 1.93 trillion doses administered till June 5, has made the UIDAI confident to consider more ways to expand the role of the identity platform. Besides raising the credibility of Aadhaar, for Garg the second phase would also mean improving the technology stack.

Incidentally the Aadhaar data is stored in a cloud owned only by the government, so the original data is not shared with any third party. It is understood that India has already been receiving queries from countries like the Philippines, Sri Lanka and others to create a similar data base for their nationals. Since the Aadhaar platform is based on an open source, it can be replicated anywhere. India will be naturally keen to see similar experiments succeed in more geographies.