[Reader-list] India’s ID project catches fancy of US lawmakers- 163

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/23174307/India8217s-ID-project-catch.html?h=B

India’s ID project catches fancy of US lawmakers

“So they (India) are taking on a humongous scale something that we
have been struggling with for 20 years,” John Cornyn, the Republican
Senator from Texas, said
PTI

Washington: With work poised to begin on providing unique
identification cards to all Indians, the ambitious project has already
caught the attention in the US, with lawmakers asking the government
why it could not implement a similar project here.

“So they (India) are taking on a humongous scale something that we
have been struggling with for 20 years,” John Cornyn, the Republican
Senator from Texas, said this week during a Congressional hearing on
the country’s employment verification system.

Ex-Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani has taken over as head of an
authority that will work on the project of giving unique
identification numbers and cards to all citizens.

“The predicted cost is £3 billion for 1.2 billion citizens and will
replace what right now is 20 different proofs of identity that are
available and require in the words of the gentleman who’s been
appointed to head up this project a ubiquitous online database, and
that will have to be impregnable to protect against loss of
information,” Cornyn said.

He is also the Co-Chair of the Friends of India Caucus in the Senate.

Senator Cornyn went on to ask Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel, US
Citizenship and Immigration Services: “Why is it that we’ve been
struggling for 20 years to do this, Mr. Melmed? Do you think it’s
because we lack the knowledge, or is it a lack of political will?”

Testifying before the Immigration, Refugees and Border Security
Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Melmed said it is
partly due to lack of technological capabilities and partly due to
reluctance on the part of the people to accept it.

“I think there are two limitations over the past 20 years. The first
is technological.

“The capabilities that the government has today are far superior than
it had 20 years ago, and even the discussion about the issue of an
identification document when I have looked at the Congressional
testimony from the 1986 debate surrounding a national ID card, it is a
different environment and I think Americans are much more comfortable
with the use of identification throughout their lives,” Melmed said.

“So I think it’s a mix of both technological developments and social
acceptance of the use of technology. I think more recently, however,
it’s just a challenge of coordinating employment verification with the
other issues related to immigration reform and the recognition that
dealing with the workplace with illegal workers in the workplace is
inextricably tied to fixing the legal side of the immigration system,”
Melmed noted.