E-birth certificates likely-courtesy Nilekani

A birth certificate at the click of a mouse? It's quite likely. The health ministry has started brainstorming with Nandan Nilekani - the man tasked with India's unique identification project - to produce e-health cards and birth certificates for newborns.

A birth certificate at the click of a mouse? It's quite likely. The health ministry has started brainstorming with Nandan Nilekani - the man tasked with India's unique identification project - to produce e-health cards and birth certificates for newborns.

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“We were discussing it yesterday (Wednesday) over dinner. I proposed it to him,” Dinesh Trivedi, minister of state for health, said on Thursday while inaugurating the Life Science Conclave in New Delhi.

He said the birth certificate is an important document and it should be available to people anytime, anywhere. “People should be able to go to a cyber cafe and get a printout of their birth certificate,” the minister added.

About the e-health certificate, Trivedi said this document will have the entire history of the newborn - weight, vaccination, any birth problem and other related information - and all these will be available on the net.

“I told Nandan, 'you have to start from somewhere. Why are you not thinking about it?' We are brainstorming it,” the minister told IANS after the inaugural session of the conclave.

Nilekani, a co-founder of software giant Infosys, has joined the central government as chairperson of the Unique Identification Database Authority of India. It is a new agency set up to provide unique identification numbers to all citizens for accessing various government services.