Aadhaar is a ‘leapfrog’ technology, Nilekani tells Australia

India's Aadhaar project to provide unique identification to every citizen is an example of using modern technology to leapfrog hurdles for future development and transforming a country, Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIADA), told an Australian audience.

"The Aadhaar project is one such example of using modern technology to leapfrog," Nilekani told a packed audience while giving a talk titled 'India's transformation: The role of Information Technology' in Melbourne on Tuesday evening.

"Aadhaar project is to solve the problem of people who do not have an acknowledgement of their existence by people and the state or lack of acknowledgement of their identity," he said.

Nilekani, who left IT major Infosys Ltd to join the government as head of the UIDAI, stressed that giving every Indian a unique 12-digit number under the Aadhaar project could change their lives and transform the nation.

Nelikani said that in India, which has the total population of over one billion, only 50 million people had passports, which is a mere five per cent of total population. Around 30 million people paid taxes and over 150 million people had a driver's licence.

"All these traditional IDs are only available to a very narrow segment of India's population," he said, adding that the need to create an ID system which can then provide an access to other host of public services and utilities was imperative in modern times.

"Not having an identity today can be a huge impediment. Government has set up this Aadhaar programme principally for two main reasons. One is to give everybody an ID so that they can participate in so called modern economy and the second is to see that its numerous welfare schemes are being passed on to the genuine beneficiaries."

The project can be used to demonstrate that modern technology can be used for future development and transformation of a country.

With Aadhaar in place, the government could deliver entitlement and subsidies in much more efficient and equitable way, he said.

"Aadhaar", or identification number, is merely a platform that can be utilised for other applications that many people are unable to access without formal identification, he said.

Since the commencement of the project 30 million bank accounts have been opened as a direct benefit of the Aadhaar card, and 10 million transactions have been made using the unique ID number.