Driving around Bangalore, it's immediately clear that the infrastructure hasn't kept up with the IT boom in this once-sleepy South Indian city. Auto rickshaws, scooters, and motorcycles squeeze into a tight phalanx at each red light and choke the air with exhaust. Construction, such as the concrete supports of the new metro rail line that looms overhead, causes detours everywhere, and in spots the entire road abruptly disintegrates into gravel.
But something miraculous happens as you make your way south, past the outer ring road. A ramp lifts a select few vehicles out of the weaving traffic and onto an elevated tollway, where you suddenly have a bird's-eye view of the urban landscape. This is the road to Electronic City, an oasis of glass and steel high-rises overlooking pristine black asphalt paths that snake through the perfectly manicured lawns of tech companies like Wipro, IBM, and Infosys Technologies.
Since July 2009, Nilekani has been a cabinet minister, leading hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). By the most conservative estimates, at least a third of the country's 1.2 billion citizens live below the poverty line and outside the formal economy. The UIDAI is expected to connect those hundreds of millions of people to government programs, save public money, reduce fraud and corruption, and foster new business opportunities—all by creating an unprecedented biometric system.
UIDAI plans to use fingerprints and iris scans to assign every person in the country a unique 12-digit ID number that can be verified online. It's one of the biggest IT projects in the world.
The primary reason for creating a biometric ID system is to give India's poorest citizens better access to an array of welfare programs. India spends about 2 percent of its gross domestic product on social programs like the Public Distribution System and a rural employment scheme that guarantees 100 days of work. But all such programs suffer from severe "leakage": corrupt officials and middlemen siphon away large portions of the money before it reaches the intended recipients.
One thing the team realized early on is that a single biometric measurement wasn't enough to guarantee uniqueness. Researchers determined that only by using all 10 fingerprints and a scan of both irises could error rates be kept manageable.
Getting an Aadhaar number is not a quick process. One Friday after midnight, dozens of families wait patiently in a municipal building where only half the lights are on and there's always a baby crying. Hiring and training people to work as agents has been one of the project's biggest logistical challenges.
There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you're collecting personal data from more than a billion people. "You can't change your biometrics," points out Sunil Abraham, the executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society, in Bangalore, so if they become compromised, it's a difficult problem to fix.
Ensuring that no person can get two numbers is key to making biometrics a worthwhile investment. In order to issue large numbers of Aadhaar IDs, the data center must conduct massive numbers of person matches, comparing new records against the entire database.
The UIDAI imagines that biometric authentication will eventually be widely used. A person could verify their identity by scanning fingerprints at a connected terminal, enabling access to banking and other services.
Still, setting up a nationwide network of biometric systems has many challenges, including connectivity limitations, data accuracy, and coordination between agencies. The project continues to evolve through iterative improvements and feedback.