Too many digital IDs spoil the broth

India's new student ID initiative, APAAR, risks complicating digital IDs instead of simplifying them, raising questions on efficiency and cost.

In what can be described as nothing but absurd, schools have started distributing forms among minor students, egged on by the Ministry of Education. The intent? To create an Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry (APAAR). For those out of the loop, this is a fancy new 12-digit ID, much like Aadhaar, but exclusive to students and is ‘designed’ to track their academic achievements. It includes everything from their marksheets to certificates of all kinds. The intent sounds noble: APAAR will be a one-stop shop for all academic records. This makes it simple for students to switch schools, apply for jobs, or move to new institutions without the usual mountain of paperwork.

Too many digital IDs spoil the broth

There’s only one problem: India already has Aadhaar to establish a person’s identity and Digilocker is linked to it to store such documents. If these perfectly capable tools already exist, why build another one? A core member of the team that worked on Project Aadhaar calls it “ridiculous”.

As these forms are being distributed, it’s time parents of minors begin to ask, why create an entirely new system for students when there is a perfectly good one already in place? What’s the point of introducing yet another system into an India already teeming with Digital IDs? The Ministry of Health has its own Health ID initiative in the works, and the Agriculture Ministry is developing a Farmer ID.

“It’s like a government race to see who can launch the next unique identifier. In an ideal world, one unified ID would simplify things, allowing citizens to move seamlessly between services and ministries. But here we are, creating a jungle of IDs instead, each a different tree in a forest that’s rapidly becoming impenetrable,” a bureaucrat who did not want to be named, said. His point is, if digital IDs were supposed to simplify life, then somewhere along the line, that memo got lost.

That apart, there is the cost of APAAR itself. This initiative falls under the broader Digital India umbrella, and was allocated a hefty ₹14,903 crore for the period 2021-22 to 2025-26. Each new project under this banner, from APAAR to Health ID to Farmer ID, adds to the taxpayer’s burden. APAAR will require new infrastructure, data privacy protocols, and maintenance, not to mention the funds to keep it secure and accessible.

Economically and practically speaking, expanding DigiLocker serves the same function and is far more straightforward. With over 15 crore registered users as of 2024, DigiLocker has already proven itself reliable for storing a wide range of personal documents. Launched in 2015, users trust it to store everything from driver’s licenses to vaccination records. It is inevitable then that the question of setting up APAAR as a separate entity raises its head once again.

If anything, instead of simplifying life for students, APAAR exemplifies the tendency of every ministry to carve out its own digital domain, even when existing tools serve the same purpose. Aadhaar alone covers over 99% of India’s adult population and DigiLocker’s secure storage capabilities is linked to it. The focus now should be on enhancing the numbers of people who use it and make it ubiquitous in the way UPI is.

At its core, the APAAR initiative—and others like it—reflect a well-meaning but ultimately misguided attempt to innovate within the digital ID space. Rather than creating a unified and streamlined experience, these separate IDs are building walls within a system that’s supposed to be open and connected. For a citizenry already navigating a sea of codes, passwords, and identifiers, more digital IDs feel like a solution in search of a problem. The government would do well to focus on making life simpler, not more complicated. After all, nobody’s clamouring for one more 12-digit number to remember.