It is a manifestation of the Indian summer — the electricity goes out momentarily at the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) head office just before an interview with the director general and mission director, Ram Sewak Sharma.
Despite glitches, mostly more consequential than power outages, Sharma reveals that it has been a busy few months for the UIDAI, after it reached the mandated number of 200 million enrolments by March 2012.
Instead of the perception that the scheme has lost some momentum, according to Sharma, the UIDAI has taken time to learn from the past year of enrolments and applications, while preparing for a massive outreach that will not only see 400 million more Indians becoming part of the Aadhaar programme over the next 18 months, but also a rollout of UID-based payments in 50 districts across the country.
| NEW ROAD MAP Some other features of the refreshed enrolment strategy |
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| * A beneficiary undertakes an UID-enabled payment in Jharkhand's Tarup village in March. |
But the focus of the UIDAI’s recent efforts has been to improve its enrolment mechanism, which has meant a re-examination of both its devices and processes, and it has started at the very heart of this technology-driven exercise — the software, which has been upgraded from version 1.3.4 to version 2.1.
“We have added new features in the software that captures the data. For example, we now have the provision of GPS, which will capture the location from where the data is being captured,” says Sharma. “A lot of these systems and process have been put in place, which ensure better accountability and traceability of the enrolment process, and quality."
There is a mandatory sync cycle, too, which ensures that the information held in a mobile biometric device is synced with the UIDAI’s Central Identities Data Repository every 10 days, Sharma adds, because they found that the average delay in uploading the packet by the enrolment agencies was 40 days.
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“That is huge, and it makes it difficult to get an Aadhaar card in 60 days, especially since it will also take 20 days for the letter to reach the recipient,” he explains, “So now, you (the enrolment agencies) have to sync, have to tell me (UIDAI, how many enrolment have happened) or software will freeze if you don’t upload the (data) packets.”
Yet, there are many among the millions enrolled by the UIDAI who can’t fully utilise Aadhaar, primarily due to mistakes made during enrolment, which is why demographic and procedural errors will now invite penalties up to Rs 500. Moreover, the presence of verifiers, usually serving or retired government employees, will be sought during enrolment to further bolster the process.
The summer has also allowed the UIDAI to fix one of its biggest procedural flaws — the postal delay in the UID numbers reaching the beneficiaries. The agreement between the Authority and India Post to print and post the numbers wasn’t working because the latter just didn’t have enough printing capacity, particularly when Aadhaar enrolments where as much as one million per day. So, India Post was tasked with only dispatching the numbers and instead, three private printers were brought in. Only now is the backlog finally clearing out, senior UIDAI officials attest.
“In some sense, we have had time to refresh our strategy. We have been able to fine-tune our systems, absorb the learning. We have already done 20 crore (200 million, enrolments) and we will do 40 crore as well. In 18 months, we’ll achieve the target. There’s no doubt on that part,” Sharma says.
But Sharma has no illusions about the next 18 months being an easy ride, as the UIDAI slowly shifts its focus from enrolments to actual applications of the platforms, like Public Distribution System (PDS) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) payments.
“Applications are an complicated issue. You have banks as a partner, beneficiaries, the databases, the departments, and you have to re-engineer the application because you have go from a manual or semi-automatic system to a completely electronic payment system. So, that’s a huge paradigm shift and obviously, the success of that will depend on the state government initiatives,” he adds.
The bigger concern, though, across the UIDAI’s brass is that of political resistance to the scheme, as the applications are rolled out across the country, thereby eliminating ghost beneficiaries and subsidy payment leakages. Even an entire summer of planning may not be enough to deal with that.