Slashdot Mirror
India To Issue Over a Billion Biometric ID Cards
angrytuna writes "The Unique Identification Authority is a new state department in India charged with assigning every living Indian an exclusive number and biometric ID card. The program is designed to alleviate problems with the 20 current types of proof of identity currently available. These problems range from difficulties for the very poor in obtaining state handouts, corruption, illegal immigration, and terrorism issues. Issuing the cards may be difficult, however, as less than 7% of the population is registered for income tax, and voter lists are thought to be inaccurate, partly due to corruption. The government has said the first cards will be issued in 18 months."
They have problems with people trying to get INTO India? I thought everyone wanted to get out!
Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Nepal
Terrorists from Pakistan
Refugees from Sri Lanka (and to a tiny extent, Burma)
You need to get out of your little well once in a while.
Theres only so much you can do for poverty. Programs are already in place for them.
Its no different in the rest of the world. Government makes priorities and budgets. Id hate to see an entire nation held back because there will always be poor people. Cannibalizing the good parts of government to just hand out meals is never a sustainable policy.
That said, there can be social goods from good accounting like this. More people paying taxes, better census, jobs created, better tracking of migrations, identification of criminals, etc etc.
Indians do not stand in queues. They stand in masses and push and shove to get to the front.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Perhaps you are trolling but I will respond nevertheless.
India is an amazing country: full of contradictions, and somehow the wheels still turn just fine.
I have been to banks in India where I had to spend the whole day to encash a cheque; the usual routine was to go to the bank, get in the queue and hand the cheque to the cashier, take a token, go home, have lunch, and come back in time to get the money. I have also been to banks that one would consider pretty efficient with every encashing taking roughly two or three minutes despite it being pretty crowded.
The government is horribly inefficient, but some private companies are as efficient as I have seen here in Germany. The point being that chances are that the companies involved in the outsourcing business are not government-owned.
I have heard people complain about the quality of outsourced jobs - and frankly I have no experience about either side of the story - but that is another story altogether and has nothing to do with the fact that the Indian government can't handle issuing voter-id cards properly.
I am an Indian and what he's saying is true. Its not about being impatient and rude, its about making it or getting left behind. It may sound like a troll, but things actually ARE like that. If you want some thing to be done, there's two ways to do it India:
1. Pay someone (generally a middle-man/agent) and get your work done (be it anything, from getting a new phone connection/water connection/submitting some form for your passport etc).
2. Stand with the crowd, elbowing, pushing and shoving for hours before you're told to come back with more documents.
True story. I've done this everywhere including filling up any University form, to getting my passport, to getting into a train/bus to just plain old admissions into any college/school.
Grandparent is not trolling, but stating an absolute truth.
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.