Direct cash transfer facility for UID cardholders: Nilekani

Addressing a gathering here, Nilekani also expressed the need to make the project irreversible by providing "compelling services" to the people.

"This is three years since we launched this project. We have enrolled 270 million people into the system and issued unique numbers to 220 million people. We enrol at the rate of over a million people a day. So lets say we can do Finland in a week and Australia in three weeks," he said.

Replying to a question on the future of the project under a new government after the 2014 general election, Nilekani said, "What is required is to make it irreversible, that is the way to look at this problem."

"In our view, if half a billion people in this country have this identity number and if they are getting a couple of very compelling services through this number then their voices will speak for it," he said.

Nilekani described the UID project as a platform which can be used to provide various benefits to the people.

"The first big application we are doing on this is direct cash transfer. Government spends billions of dollars in giving benefits to people like pensions, scholarships etc. We are building a system along the banking sector to electronically credit money into people's bank account," he said. (More)