The Hindu Business Line : Unique identity project may get World Bank funding

After the Microsoft and Yahoo Chiefs, the World Bank President, Mr Robert B. Zoellick, is now scheduled to meet the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Mr Nandan Nilekani, during his four-day visit to the county starting December 2.

While talks are likely to centre around improvement of the public delivery system and governance, industry watchers say the possibility of future World Bank assistance could not be ruled out at this stage.

Sources told Business Line that the meeting would discuss the modalities of the UID project under which India is gearing up to hand out a unique identification number to each of its 1.2 billion residents in the coming years.

Between meeting the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, the Urban Development Minister, the Road Transport Minister and the Environment Minister during his visit, Mr Zoellick will also interact with select CEOs. He is slated to meet the UIDAI Chairman on December 4.

Already, the UID project has generated global interest. Earlier this month, the CEO of Yahoo! Inc, Ms Carol Bartz, offered to help India with the UID programme. Yahoo made it clear that it was not looking at any commercial interest but that its expertise in dealing with large databases could be of relevance to the project.

Earlier this year, the Microsoft Co-founder, Mr Bill Gates, had stated that his company is interested in partnering India in the project. He had also met Mr Nilekani during his visit to the country in July.

The scale of the UID project can be gauged from the fact that the Indian IT industry, including leading players such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro, are hoping that the project will galvanise the domestic software market, which has historically trailed software exports.

This is because the project will require a full technology backbone, massive computing power, database, storage, and biometrics.

The US has a social security number in place, but it does not offer biometric and online authentication. Similar projects elsewhere that embed biometric capabilities have, at best, touched 100-150 million users. In that sense, the UID project — that will incorporate identity fields such as fingerprints and, perhaps, an iris scan — will test the boundaries of technology.

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