Asia | India’s UID scheme
Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing
|DELHI AND UTTAN GAON |7 min read
FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world's biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on biometric and other data.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Reform by numbers”
From the January 14th 2012 edition
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