What Next for UID?
Biometric and personal data of 600 million people has been collected. This is UIDAI's claim and could well be true. The Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner has been on a similar exercise of data-collection. Information of how many people's data has been collected is not published.
BJP leaders have publicly stated that they would review the UID Scheme once they take office. Now that they are in the saddle, or hot seat as some would term it, it would be interesting to watch what they would do with the scheme, the two sets of data and all the infrastructure created by not just the two Union Government departments, but all state governments.
It would take a long time for people to realise that databases have severe limitations, their setting up costly and their use restricted to certain fields of application. While they take their time for this realisation to dawn on them, a lot of public money would be spent on this futile exercise and a lot of people's data would have been compromised.
Here is a link that would tell you about what happens when one places implicit faith in databases. This a news item that was published in the 'Daily Mail' of UK on 14 April 2010.
You are invited to view the Power Point Presentation on Data Protection and Government Schemes. Please follow the link to access the PPT. This would give you an idea of what is the task ahead of anyone who wishes to address the issue.
