The best hope

Prime minister's welcome decision to stick with Aadhaar

There has been much speculation, since the emphatic victory of the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections, on the fate of the previous government's unique identification (UID) programme. Aadhaar, as it is called, was one of the few big ideas of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)'s second stint in power. It was conceptualised as a lightweight way of proving identity. The sole thing it was supposed to do was to build up a biometric register, in such a way that every Aadhaar recipient could demonstrate - through biometrics - a link to a unique identification number. This would have, eventually, made it easier to target government schemes, and even to reduce paperwork on such onerous issues as proving a place of residence. As envisaged, the scheme did indeed look like a silver bullet. It would reduce transaction costs, reduce leakage and mismanagement, reduce paperwork, and reduce corruption. Over 600 million Aadhaar numbers were handed out. But it could have been more. And Aadhaar's integration with various schemes could also have gone further, if not for turf wars at the highest level. The report in this newspaper that Prime Minister Modi may have, at one stroke, ended these turf wars and given Aadhaar a new lease of life, is, thus, very welcome indeed.

It has been reported that Mr Modi has ruled out the merger of the UID programme with the National Population Register (NPR) being set up by the home ministry. This is wise. The two efforts have completely different aims. Aadhaar is meant to be a lightweight form of identification. The NPR aims at being much more: in particular, at being a record of citizenship. It is, in that sense, much more of a traditional "ID card" project; the Aadhaar is more like a plug-in to ease the problem of identification and de-duplication for other government schemes. Unfortunately, under the last government, the home ministry had consistently blocked the growth of Aadhaar, and the prime minister's office was slow in adjudicating between the two schemes. If that has been corrected, it is welcome. Dealing summarily with inter-ministerial wrangling is precisely what India's electorate expected from Mr Modi.

If executed well, Aadhaar is by far the least leaky way to transfer benefits. In the context of the Modi government's first Budget, this decision is doubly welcome, because it will be seen as indicating a focus on improving the targeting of India's subsidy system - which, as a consequence, is also likely to reduce the government's total subsidies burden. This is not to say that work does not remain to be done. The UPA had overcompensated for the delay caused by turf wars by, essentially, trying to rush through the implementation of the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme. This led to problems on the ground, as well as some successful legal challenges, because the groundwork in law had not been set up. The government is, reportedly, aware of these facts. It is to be hoped, therefore, that when Parliament meets, the UID is given firm legal ground - which would render any future challenges in court moot. As Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said in an interview to Business Standard, many BJP-ruled states did very well with transfers. Mr Modi's decision to move forward with Aadhaar and the DBT scheme will hopefully be firmly in that tradition.