OK, firstly, even though the cost is high, it is generating employment within India, and money is essentially being spent domestically, which makes it 'less bad'.
Regarding benefits, I will provide just one example (there are lots more) from a book called 'Imagining India' that deals with this, among other things : India as of today, is hooked to subsidy based politics. Subsidized fuel, subsidized foodgrain, subsidized everything, and a whole ecosystem of theft and leakage has emerged around the handling of our public funds. Across the leaky subsidy distribution system leakages average 50 per cent or more.
A national ID system would make these porous distribution mechanisms and our dependence on the moral scruples of bureaucrats redundant. The state could instead transfer benefits directly in the form of cash to bank accounts of elegible citizens based on their income returns or assets. Such an approach would not only bring in all citizens within the financial system, but would also give them real financial power. Here's the astounding thing: combining the bulk of our subsidies into a cash entitlement would amount to Rs. 20,000 per family and make them eligible for loans upto Rs. 100,000!
This would redefine our welfare economy as we know it. The gains in efficiency and transparency would be unprecedented.The additional relief would be of no longer having to endure the harassment of officials for bribes, or being denied benefits that are your right. Such a benefit-linked smart card model would also make welfare benefits national, allowing citizens who migrate to the city to continue using certain allowances.
There are other benefits, but you begin to see that India has a different set of requirements and needs from most Western nations.
A UUID would make that so much easier, since EVERTHING is consolidated into a single database
There are lot of misconceptions and misinformation about the UID program, and this is one of them. I agree with you that safeguards cannot be trusted, but at the end of the day, we need to weigh the pros and cons of the issue keeping in mind the conditions and environment in India.
What I've heard from a guy who is associated in some way with this project is that they are not going to have a single database that stores all the information. The idea is to have multiple databases, each having a subset of data. This data partitioning will be done at a record (row) level , so that access to one single database does not provide a hacker with all information about an individual. And of course In addition to this there won't be a single DB with data for all citizens - there will be several different ones.
The biometric information is totally distinct from these databases, and will be placed under athe control of a different Government department from the one that handles the rest of the data. And I believe that even the rest of the data will be split across various Government departments.
And the data in the database itself will most probably be encrypted too. And of course, each of these databases will be massively replicated for fault tolerance and redundancy. And needless to say, none of these machines will be connected to the internet!
And Nandan Nilekani, who heads this project, is a tad more trustworthy than the retards in the Government.
And by the way, you're stretching it a bit too far if you think that you'll be asked for your UID when you withdraw money, watch movies, and so on. Not sure if that was meant to be sarcastic.
Currently you need an identity proof for many things - a phone connection, a new bank account and so on. What makes you think that as of today, you can't be traced based on the documents you submit such as your driving licence, PAN card, etc? Why the hate for just this UID? Next you'll tell me that all kinds of documentation should be abolished!
"The kind of safeguards that allowed lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of fake ration cards? That allow the pilfering of PDS goods (Public Distribution System, to the uninitiated)."
The UID aims to prevent exactly this kind of pilfering and corruption. Why don't you google the aims and purpose of the UID? And oh yeah, your comment on reservations is a two edged thing. Lots of people might say that that kind of affirmative action is a good thing but that's a different discussion altogether.
Yes, of course you're right about that - no IT guy worth his salt will guarantee anything in terms of security. However what I've heard from a guy who is associated in some way with this project is that they are not going to have a single database that stores all the information. The idea is to have multiple databases, each having a subset of data. This data partitioning will be done at a record (row) level , so that access to one single database does not provide a hacker with all information about an individual. And of course In addition to this there won't be a single DB with data for all citizens - there will be several different ones.
The biometric information is totally distinct from these databases, and will be placed under athe control of a different Government department from the one that handles the rest of the data. And I believe that even the rest of the data will be split across various Government departments.
And the data in the database itself will most probably be encrypted too. And of course, each of these databases will be massively replicated for fault tolerance and redundancy. And needless to say, none of these machines will be connected to the internet! This project is being headed by the ex-CEO and founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani - the project is in pretty good hands.
At the end of the day, we need to weigh the pros and cons of the issue keeping in mind the conditions and environment in India. Fear of security breaches cannot be a reason to stop a project like this which has so many benefits. I, for one, welcome this.
Yes, those are very valid questions. What I know about this is through media reports and interviews. I will put together the information from official websites and submit the technical details as a story to slashdot and hopefully it gets published, and under 'technology' instead of 'your rights online'!
This kind of business should have been kept completely hush-hush and shady by this Aiplex company. Going public with this stuff essentially defeats the purpose.
Basically BG is classic "database nation" in the way UK and USA geeks keep scaremongering about. And you know what - my privacy there is infringed LESS than in the UK or USA. Much LESS.
yeah, all this scaremongering is silly. All it needs is proper implementation and security.
Also, it is India we are talking about. Does anyone around here believe that a database of this size written in India will work?
If you take your head outta your ass you'll see that most large databases in the world today, are indeed implemented by Indians. You see larger number of crap Indian techies because there are soooo many Indian techies in total.
Yeah, just because the system could possibly be misused, we just forget about it and forsake all the immense advantages of the system. Instead of focusing on the technology being used, the implementation methodology, how secure the databases are going to be, how access will be limited to the system and how misuse will be tackled, let's just ban this whole system.
MOD parent up. Refreshing to see a sane comment after all the tripe about 'privacy', 'dictatorship', and so much bullshit. The focus needs to be on the technology being used, the implementation methodology, how secure the databases are going to be, how access will be limited to the system.
Instead of presenting technical facts about this massive implementation and presenting it as a technology article, it's been presented as a [smirks and sniggers] 'your rights online' article, with bullshit scaremongering and half baked information about 'caste system' and 'religion'. This is a retarded article.
For one thing, affirmative action. India has a HUGE affirmative action program for the "lower castes". Linking caste to the ID ensures that people cannot fraudlently claim caste benefits.
India (and I suppose all countries in the world, including the US ), have databases where vehicle registration details are stored, so that a vehicle owner can be traced based on his vehicle registrsation number. So, just because the Indian bureaucracy is corrupt, do we do away with vehicle registration numbers?
What exactly is wrong with having a Unique ID number? The main purpose is to streamline things. Instead of having one 'PAN Card', one 'Voter ID Card' and a dozen other cards like we do now, this will substitute all of them. And what's this nonsense about privacy? People should not write articles without first researching the safeguards built into the system, and believe me - there are a LOT of them. Maybe you ought to think a bit harder about the positive implications of this such as crime prevention, speedy resolution of land disputes, etc. etc. etc.
Yeah, but who'll explain this to the persons who actually recruit? Most of the time the recruiters (generally either HR folks or so-called 'job consultants') don't know what they're doing or what they're talking about.
Not sure what constitutes 'heroic hours' according to you, but today, an average IT job, in average conditions (meaning, excluding periods of high pressure like go-live and UAT) demands around 9-10 hours of work daily (including breaks for lunch, coffee, etc. of course), from Mon-Fri. Good to check mail on weekends and see that nothing catastrophic has cropped up.
People who aren't willing to put in even this much time don't deserve a job.
Maybe slashdot ought to start a section on IT jobs, just like yro.slashdot.org, politics.slashdot.org, and so on... a new one called jobs.slashdot.org - and there, people like you can post such queries for the slashdot community to respond to....
A "co-pilot" is extremely essential for 'redundancy'. We need that second guy in the cockpit to take care of eventualities like the pilot sufferring a heart attack or some similar ailment mid-flight...
I've seen that in the giant service houses like Accenture, Infosys, Cognizant and so on, almost every damn programmer dreams of becoming a 'team lead' or 'assistant project manager' as soon as they've put in 4-5 years in the company. This trend has become all-pervasive and people who really love technical stuff and who want to just keep coding are considered losers. Most of these companies just don't offer growth opportunities in a purely technical sense. Even your manager will tell you, "Congratulations, you're being promoted to the position of Team Lead" and henceforth you need to involve yourself in progress reports and 'people management'.
This, IMHO is one of the prime reasons for the lack of management skills in the software industry today.
I'm based in Bangalore, India, and occasionally travel to the US on a business Visa (B1) for initial discussions or during go-live. I'm better than most American programmers I've met, and I know several others in India who are as good as, or better than I am. I'd wager that you're a crappy coder yourself. I'm getting a bit sick of these generalizations and wildly exaggerated claims of Indian incompetence that I keep hearing from American programmers. The experiences that I've had working (and sometimes leading a small team) of American programmers do not bear out the claims of extreme superiority of the American programmer that one sees on slashdot. Generally they're just ok, and quite a few really suck. Some are brilliant. Nothing extraordinary or great about the average American programmer vis-a-vis his Indian/European counterpart.
Seriously, when a terrorist state is next door, and a huge communist dictatorship is next door too, what the fuck d'you expect? That India should just roll over and die? Thank god India managed to develop nukes when it did!
Not a single Soviet soldier set foot on Indian soil. They never had any say in Indian politics or internal affairs. India was never part of a pact like Warsaw pact. So, allied is too strong a word to use. Anyway, that's just nitpicking. The point here is, your argument was flawed, in that India is 'not democratic' because it allied with the Soviets decades back, and with good reason.
If you cherrypick instances of hate, no country in the world is a liberal democracy, not even the USA. Ground Zero Mosque, Mexicans, Blacks, racism, yada yada yada... you get the point. All countries go through problems in their history - some big, some small. The USA has allied with some terrible dictatorships, and still does (Saudi Arabia, for example). That doesn't mean the US is not 'so democratic'. The USA is indeed democratic, while those dictatorships are totalitarian states! Simple.
Let me ask again - is critical analysis too tough for you? No one's casting Indians as the White Knight there - I never said that. Your point was that India is 'less democratic' because India leaned towards the Soviet Union in the cold war (we weren't allied, we used to lean towards them, to be accurate). Now, that statement of yous is bullshit, unless you have your own way of defining democracy. And if a country A sides with country B's existential foe, then country B will turn to country C for help, if country C happens to be A's existential enemy. That isn't too tough to understand!
Pakistan never posed a threat, coz' India had 10 times more population? Well, what the fuck - it's not about the population, even the USA had around one tenth of India's population at that time. Pakistan and India had a rough parity in the 1950s, and forgive me for this, but only an utter moron will compare USA-Canada and India-Pakistan!
Indians always had the choice to 'not menace the Pakistanis', you say? Who menaced whom? The Pakistanis sent tribesemen, followed by their Army into Indian territory, within one year of their formation, and has sent, and continues to try to send, terrorists to bomb public places and murder civilians, and you say they're the ones being menaced?
If you're pissed off with India and Indians over outsourcing, just say so. You really don't need to be a Pakistani apologist to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, firstly, even though the cost is high, it is generating employment within India, and money is essentially being spent domestically, which makes it 'less bad'.
Regarding benefits, I will provide just one example (there are lots more) from a book called 'Imagining India' that deals with this, among other things : India as of today, is hooked to subsidy based politics. Subsidized fuel, subsidized foodgrain, subsidized everything, and a whole ecosystem of theft and leakage has emerged around the handling of our public funds. Across the leaky subsidy distribution system leakages average 50 per cent or more.
A national ID system would make these porous distribution mechanisms and our dependence on the moral scruples of bureaucrats redundant. The state could instead transfer benefits directly in the form of cash to bank accounts of elegible citizens based on their income returns or assets. Such an approach would not only bring in all citizens within the financial system, but would also give them real financial power. Here's the astounding thing: combining the bulk of our subsidies into a cash entitlement would amount to Rs. 20,000 per family and make them eligible for loans upto Rs. 100,000!
This would redefine our welfare economy as we know it. The gains in efficiency and transparency would be unprecedented.The additional relief would be of no longer having to endure the harassment of officials for bribes, or being denied benefits that are your right. Such a benefit-linked smart card model would also make welfare benefits national, allowing citizens who migrate to the city to continue using certain allowances.
There are other benefits, but you begin to see that India has a different set of requirements and needs from most Western nations.
A UUID would make that so much easier, since EVERTHING is consolidated into a single database
There are lot of misconceptions and misinformation about the UID program, and this is one of them. I agree with you that safeguards cannot be trusted, but at the end of the day, we need to weigh the pros and cons of the issue keeping in mind the conditions and environment in India.
What I've heard from a guy who is associated in some way with this project is that they are not going to have a single database that stores all the information. The idea is to have multiple databases, each having a subset of data. This data partitioning will be done at a record (row) level , so that access to one single database does not provide a hacker with all information about an individual. And of course In addition to this there won't be a single DB with data for all citizens - there will be several different ones.
The biometric information is totally distinct from these databases, and will be placed under athe control of a different Government department from the one that handles the rest of the data. And I believe that even the rest of the data will be split across various Government departments.
And the data in the database itself will most probably be encrypted too. And of course, each of these databases will be massively replicated for fault tolerance and redundancy. And needless to say, none of these machines will be connected to the internet!
And Nandan Nilekani, who heads this project, is a tad more trustworthy than the retards in the Government.
And by the way, you're stretching it a bit too far if you think that you'll be asked for your UID when you withdraw money, watch movies, and so on. Not sure if that was meant to be sarcastic.
Currently you need an identity proof for many things - a phone connection, a new bank account and so on. What makes you think that as of today, you can't be traced based on the documents you submit such as your driving licence, PAN card, etc? Why the hate for just this UID? Next you'll tell me that all kinds of documentation should be abolished!
"The kind of safeguards that allowed lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of fake ration cards? That allow the pilfering of PDS goods (Public Distribution System, to the uninitiated)." The UID aims to prevent exactly this kind of pilfering and corruption. Why don't you google the aims and purpose of the UID? And oh yeah, your comment on reservations is a two edged thing. Lots of people might say that that kind of affirmative action is a good thing but that's a different discussion altogether.
Yes, of course you're right about that - no IT guy worth his salt will guarantee anything in terms of security. However what I've heard from a guy who is associated in some way with this project is that they are not going to have a single database that stores all the information. The idea is to have multiple databases, each having a subset of data. This data partitioning will be done at a record (row) level , so that access to one single database does not provide a hacker with all information about an individual. And of course In addition to this there won't be a single DB with data for all citizens - there will be several different ones.
The biometric information is totally distinct from these databases, and will be placed under athe control of a different Government department from the one that handles the rest of the data. And I believe that even the rest of the data will be split across various Government departments.
And the data in the database itself will most probably be encrypted too. And of course, each of these databases will be massively replicated for fault tolerance and redundancy. And needless to say, none of these machines will be connected to the internet! This project is being headed by the ex-CEO and founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani - the project is in pretty good hands.
At the end of the day, we need to weigh the pros and cons of the issue keeping in mind the conditions and environment in India. Fear of security breaches cannot be a reason to stop a project like this which has so many benefits. I, for one, welcome this.
Yes, those are very valid questions. What I know about this is through media reports and interviews. I will put together the information from official websites and submit the technical details as a story to slashdot and hopefully it gets published, and under 'technology' instead of 'your rights online'!
This kind of business should have been kept completely hush-hush and shady by this Aiplex company. Going public with this stuff essentially defeats the purpose.
Basically BG is classic "database nation" in the way UK and USA geeks keep scaremongering about. And you know what - my privacy there is infringed LESS than in the UK or USA. Much LESS.
yeah, all this scaremongering is silly. All it needs is proper implementation and security.
Also, it is India we are talking about. Does anyone around here believe that a database of this size written in India will work?
If you take your head outta your ass you'll see that most large databases in the world today, are indeed implemented by Indians. You see larger number of crap Indian techies because there are soooo many Indian techies in total.
Yeah, just because the system could possibly be misused, we just forget about it and forsake all the immense advantages of the system. Instead of focusing on the technology being used, the implementation methodology, how secure the databases are going to be, how access will be limited to the system and how misuse will be tackled, let's just ban this whole system.
MOD parent up. Refreshing to see a sane comment after all the tripe about 'privacy', 'dictatorship', and so much bullshit. The focus needs to be on the technology being used, the implementation methodology, how secure the databases are going to be, how access will be limited to the system.
Instead of presenting technical facts about this massive implementation and presenting it as a technology article, it's been presented as a [smirks and sniggers] 'your rights online' article, with bullshit scaremongering and half baked information about 'caste system' and 'religion'. This is a retarded article.
For one thing, affirmative action. India has a HUGE affirmative action program for the "lower castes". Linking caste to the ID ensures that people cannot fraudlently claim caste benefits.
India (and I suppose all countries in the world, including the US ), have databases where vehicle registration details are stored, so that a vehicle owner can be traced based on his vehicle registrsation number. So, just because the Indian bureaucracy is corrupt, do we do away with vehicle registration numbers?
And it's a piece of mischief by the poster to talk about RIM and this UID project in the same breath. Get your act together /.
What exactly is wrong with having a Unique ID number? The main purpose is to streamline things. Instead of having one 'PAN Card', one 'Voter ID Card' and a dozen other cards like we do now, this will substitute all of them. And what's this nonsense about privacy? People should not write articles without first researching the safeguards built into the system, and believe me - there are a LOT of them. Maybe you ought to think a bit harder about the positive implications of this such as crime prevention, speedy resolution of land disputes, etc. etc. etc.
Yeah, but who'll explain this to the persons who actually recruit? Most of the time the recruiters (generally either HR folks or so-called 'job consultants') don't know what they're doing or what they're talking about.
Not sure what constitutes 'heroic hours' according to you, but today, an average IT job, in average conditions (meaning, excluding periods of high pressure like go-live and UAT) demands around 9-10 hours of work daily (including breaks for lunch, coffee, etc. of course), from Mon-Fri. Good to check mail on weekends and see that nothing catastrophic has cropped up.
People who aren't willing to put in even this much time don't deserve a job.
Maybe slashdot ought to start a section on IT jobs, just like yro.slashdot.org, politics.slashdot.org, and so on... a new one called jobs.slashdot.org - and there, people like you can post such queries for the slashdot community to respond to....
A "co-pilot" is extremely essential for 'redundancy'. We need that second guy in the cockpit to take care of eventualities like the pilot sufferring a heart attack or some similar ailment mid-flight...
I've seen that in the giant service houses like Accenture, Infosys, Cognizant and so on, almost every damn programmer dreams of becoming a 'team lead' or 'assistant project manager' as soon as they've put in 4-5 years in the company. This trend has become all-pervasive and people who really love technical stuff and who want to just keep coding are considered losers. Most of these companies just don't offer growth opportunities in a purely technical sense. Even your manager will tell you, "Congratulations, you're being promoted to the position of Team Lead" and henceforth you need to involve yourself in progress reports and 'people management'.
This, IMHO is one of the prime reasons for the lack of management skills in the software industry today.
I'm based in Bangalore, India, and occasionally travel to the US on a business Visa (B1) for initial discussions or during go-live. I'm better than most American programmers I've met, and I know several others in India who are as good as, or better than I am. I'd wager that you're a crappy coder yourself. I'm getting a bit sick of these generalizations and wildly exaggerated claims of Indian incompetence that I keep hearing from American programmers. The experiences that I've had working (and sometimes leading a small team) of American programmers do not bear out the claims of extreme superiority of the American programmer that one sees on slashdot. Generally they're just ok, and quite a few really suck. Some are brilliant. Nothing extraordinary or great about the average American programmer vis-a-vis his Indian/European counterpart.
The US introduced nukes to this planet.
Seriously, when a terrorist state is next door, and a huge communist dictatorship is next door too, what the fuck d'you expect? That India should just roll over and die? Thank god India managed to develop nukes when it did!
Not a single Soviet soldier set foot on Indian soil. They never had any say in Indian politics or internal affairs. India was never part of a pact like Warsaw pact. So, allied is too strong a word to use. Anyway, that's just nitpicking. The point here is, your argument was flawed, in that India is 'not democratic' because it allied with the Soviets decades back, and with good reason.
If you cherrypick instances of hate, no country in the world is a liberal democracy, not even the USA. Ground Zero Mosque, Mexicans, Blacks, racism, yada yada yada... you get the point. All countries go through problems in their history - some big, some small. The USA has allied with some terrible dictatorships, and still does (Saudi Arabia, for example). That doesn't mean the US is not 'so democratic'. The USA is indeed democratic, while those dictatorships are totalitarian states! Simple.
Let me ask again - is critical analysis too tough for you? No one's casting Indians as the White Knight there - I never said that. Your point was that India is 'less democratic' because India leaned towards the Soviet Union in the cold war (we weren't allied, we used to lean towards them, to be accurate). Now, that statement of yous is bullshit, unless you have your own way of defining democracy. And if a country A sides with country B's existential foe, then country B will turn to country C for help, if country C happens to be A's existential enemy. That isn't too tough to understand!
Pakistan never posed a threat, coz' India had 10 times more population? Well, what the fuck - it's not about the population, even the USA had around one tenth of India's population at that time. Pakistan and India had a rough parity in the 1950s, and forgive me for this, but only an utter moron will compare USA-Canada and India-Pakistan!
Indians always had the choice to 'not menace the Pakistanis', you say? Who menaced whom? The Pakistanis sent tribesemen, followed by their Army into Indian territory, within one year of their formation, and has sent, and continues to try to send, terrorists to bomb public places and murder civilians, and you say they're the ones being menaced?
If you're pissed off with India and Indians over outsourcing, just say so. You really don't need to be a Pakistani apologist to do that.