Dear Mr. Nilekani,
Firstly, let me congratulate you for stepping back from the corporate world and consenting to take upon yourself the onerous task of accounting for every single one of our 1.3 Billion and growing population. As a 'giving back' step to society, it is very commendable and it also helps that you've picked what is definitely an area of expertise to give back in. Hopefully you can bring all of your expertise and know-how gained in the corporate world and see this project to completion successfully.
I remember when the UID project was announced and you were given special cabinet rank to execute it. I remember your interview over phone with Shereen Bahn on CNBC, not one on my regular-channels list admittedly. After that of course the project has been going on, as always happens with projects of this size and magnitude, at its own pace and time. And cost. So why am I suddenly reminded about this now?
The reason is because today, I got Uniquely IDed. A census officer came over to our place today as part of the National 2010 census, and also to collect details for the UID. And the whole experience left me with a lot of headaches about the management of the project, which I'm sure have crossed your mind as well and you are looking to solve. Still, as a concerned citizen, just my two penny worth of thoughts in what will finally give the Social Security number equivalent to all of us in this country.
Firstly, there are three of us living in a shared apartment - an undeniable feature of almost every house in a radius of 5kms from where I live. I'm sure the same is the case with houses in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and every other city in this country. Most of us are temporary residents there with permanent addresses all given differently. In such a situation, is there going to be an effort to cross-reference people scattered over the country to the actual households they belong to? By permanent address or something would be the way to go I'd think?
The second issue is with the language. The officer who came around took down our names in the regional language. I'm sure there is going to be a lot of Lost in Translation occurring when these names are transliterated back into English for the UID. And I don't want any issues when the spelling on my UID does not match the spelling on my passport because someone made a typo at the data entry point.
Also I would apparently receive my UID from the local Corporation, 6 months down the line. What if I'm not in this Corporation 6 months down the line? And have surrendered my local phone number? It is the only means of contact that the Census officer has for all three of us in this house, since he took my name as 'head of the family' - another concept which cannot apply to shared residences like ours. Anyway yes. I'm now tied down to this city's Corporation for the Identity Proof which is supposedly trans-national and should be provided to ALL citizens of this country.
Those are just some of the issues that I, solely from my point of view, thought about. Expanding my line of thought to the logistics and data collection of the exercise throws up a lot more questions. For example, will the Database be able to cross-reference me and my father as belonging to the same family, though our census happened in different cities? How would it do this, considering the permanent address cannot be a unique key on which databases can be related. The census officer mentioned that he'd come around 5 times to a house. Even allowing that all visits are on weekends, that's about 5 visits over a month. It's quite likely that families are out on month-long vacations. Especially in the summer. Do they just get missed then?
I'm sure there are some issues among these which have been dismissed as inevitable. But there are some points where one wonders, can this not be done better. For example, there's already a huge database of unique Identifications in the form of the PAN card, especially among the salaried class. That's about 250 Million people that have been covered already, and there must be a way to sync that up with the census exercise. For the migrant issue, or the language issue, there's only so much care that can be taking I guess. But the point is, the painstaking and accurate part of the work has to come at this first point of data collection. And I somehow feel there should be a better way to structure this to avoid inaccuracies or double counts.
I guess that's why you're heading the project then, and not me. Because given enough manpower, I'm sure any educated Indian can get the rest of the process after the data collection right. It's to figure out how to get that part right, while ensuring it's not a mammoth time and cost exercise, that your experience comes in I guess. Well, I sure hope you can pull it off.
Regards.
I remember when the UID project was announced and you were given special cabinet rank to execute it. I remember your interview over phone with Shereen Bahn on CNBC, not one on my regular-channels list admittedly. After that of course the project has been going on, as always happens with projects of this size and magnitude, at its own pace and time. And cost. So why am I suddenly reminded about this now?
The reason is because today, I got Uniquely IDed. A census officer came over to our place today as part of the National 2010 census, and also to collect details for the UID. And the whole experience left me with a lot of headaches about the management of the project, which I'm sure have crossed your mind as well and you are looking to solve. Still, as a concerned citizen, just my two penny worth of thoughts in what will finally give the Social Security number equivalent to all of us in this country.
Firstly, there are three of us living in a shared apartment - an undeniable feature of almost every house in a radius of 5kms from where I live. I'm sure the same is the case with houses in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and every other city in this country. Most of us are temporary residents there with permanent addresses all given differently. In such a situation, is there going to be an effort to cross-reference people scattered over the country to the actual households they belong to? By permanent address or something would be the way to go I'd think?
The second issue is with the language. The officer who came around took down our names in the regional language. I'm sure there is going to be a lot of Lost in Translation occurring when these names are transliterated back into English for the UID. And I don't want any issues when the spelling on my UID does not match the spelling on my passport because someone made a typo at the data entry point.
Also I would apparently receive my UID from the local Corporation, 6 months down the line. What if I'm not in this Corporation 6 months down the line? And have surrendered my local phone number? It is the only means of contact that the Census officer has for all three of us in this house, since he took my name as 'head of the family' - another concept which cannot apply to shared residences like ours. Anyway yes. I'm now tied down to this city's Corporation for the Identity Proof which is supposedly trans-national and should be provided to ALL citizens of this country.
Those are just some of the issues that I, solely from my point of view, thought about. Expanding my line of thought to the logistics and data collection of the exercise throws up a lot more questions. For example, will the Database be able to cross-reference me and my father as belonging to the same family, though our census happened in different cities? How would it do this, considering the permanent address cannot be a unique key on which databases can be related. The census officer mentioned that he'd come around 5 times to a house. Even allowing that all visits are on weekends, that's about 5 visits over a month. It's quite likely that families are out on month-long vacations. Especially in the summer. Do they just get missed then?
I'm sure there are some issues among these which have been dismissed as inevitable. But there are some points where one wonders, can this not be done better. For example, there's already a huge database of unique Identifications in the form of the PAN card, especially among the salaried class. That's about 250 Million people that have been covered already, and there must be a way to sync that up with the census exercise. For the migrant issue, or the language issue, there's only so much care that can be taking I guess. But the point is, the painstaking and accurate part of the work has to come at this first point of data collection. And I somehow feel there should be a better way to structure this to avoid inaccuracies or double counts.
I guess that's why you're heading the project then, and not me. Because given enough manpower, I'm sure any educated Indian can get the rest of the process after the data collection right. It's to figure out how to get that part right, while ensuring it's not a mammoth time and cost exercise, that your experience comes in I guess. Well, I sure hope you can pull it off.
Regards.
8 comments:
To Nilekani "I'm a Naxalite. Come and UID me bitch!"
To you "UID has always been well tried. It is hard enough to implement social security numbers in the US, a lot of Mexican brothers in US soil remain unnumbered.
In India many of our Marwadi brothers have multiple PAN cards to 'facilitate' financial transactions. And sometimes only the head of the family has a card, so it is difficult to ID the rest of his family, which may have grown during the period between registering for the PAN card and now, given the regularity with which a lot of Indians have children."
And if you go to a small hamlet Bihar, no one, not Nilekani, not Ahluwalia, not even Prasad Yadav can ever hope to find you.
Effectively, he'll end up tagging the people who are already accountable and easiest to locate. The folk visible but unseen, as the saying goes, shall remain so.
I thought the UID numbers were to be sent to the recipient's permanent address through post. Infact, the MoU in this regard has finally been signed today.
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61703
Wonder if the census survey personnel got it wrong.
@Shortage: My point exactly. The people remaining visible but unseen and all. Good stuff.
@Neeraj: Oh ok. Thanks for the link :)I was surprised about it being delivered to temporary addresses. Sure recipe for disaster.
i think it is more complex than that..i hope it is more complex...
LOL @ the Naxalite comment.
Not just them and the ones in remote areas – nomads, refugees who trickle in and out through porous borders in pockets, those hankering for liberation from the union, those living in the contested regions and others who do not want to participate in a government initiative, are all likely to be left out of this national(ist) exercise, considering that one of its aims is to “check terrorism”.
Hopefully, the rest of us, who are recognized and acknowledged as indians, can hope to enjoy certain conveniences, and plug a FEW loopholes like duplicate ration cards and so on. and yes, some of the issues mentioned are but inevitable, because while the UID is a centralised concept, the entire PROCESS is sort of decentralised. with local bodies and their personnel taking care of the data collection, which is drudgery, its monitoring from a high level, if possible at all, frustrating at best.
Intentions are honourable - it is a tremendous effort, but…
i sound a little extremist :O
@Baille: I hope so too man. Otherwise you and I could do it ;)
@Priti: At least we're getting the intentions right eh? It's a start...
Hey, what about the NRI's. Arent they citizens of India? The person who for the survey refused enter details of NRI's citing that they should have been staying at the residence for the past 6 months. I spend half the year in India and half abroad. Now I dont even bother with any census. Its all a waste of time. By the time they get it right I'll be long dead and gone....
@sasas,
Another valid point as well. So one more factor to add to the list of variables in this project then. Hope Mr. Nilekani is listening :)
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