A government project to give each resident a unique 16-digit identity number on Monday got a new name, Aadhaar (foundation), and logo. Chetan Chauhan reports. Unique ID will bring 60 pc poor into banking system
A government project to give each resident a unique 16-digit identity number on Monday got a new name, Aadhaar (foundation), and logo.
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“UID (unique identification) is confusing. People call it different names; some DUI, some IUD,” said Unique Identification Authority of India chairperson Nandan Nilekani. “Aadhaar would mean foundation to access public services. It is a common word in many languages.”
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Nilekani said Aadhaar will not only give India’s citizens a unique identity but also plug leaks in the public distribution system (PDS), which cost the Centre Rs 72,000 crore a year in food subsidies. “The UID can reform the PDS,” he told HT.
Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia had last week asked the Authority to help revamp the PDS for the proposed food security law, after finding that only 40 per cent of foodgrains under PDS reach intended beneficiaries. “It is early days to say how leakages can be plugged. We are working on it,” he said.
Karnataka — which will be one of the first states to implement Aadhaar — estimates a saving of 45 crore per month by giving PDS beneficiaries a unique number. It plans to make the number mandatory for access to PDS grains, admission in schools or to avail any government service. At the national level, though, seeking such a number will be voluntary.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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