[Reader-list] News Items posted on the net on Multipurpose National Identity Cards-118

[Taha Mehmood]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Multi-benefits/466967

Multi-benefits


The Indian Express Posted: Thursday , May 28, 2009 at 0023 hrs IST


Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s announcement that a multi-purpose
national identity card (MNIC) will be available from 2011 is welcome.
The National Population Register, to be compiled in a couple of years,
will provide a comprehensive list of Indians, who will then be given
unique numbers. The origin of the MNIC goes back to 2002, to the NDA
regime’s desire to curb illegal migration from Bangladesh. The UPA
also established pilot projects to test this, but the idea meandered
until 26/11, when a jolted Centre realised that a single all-purpose
identity card was a must for national security. The home minister’s
announcement seems to be driven by internal security considerations.

While the smart chip-enabled MNIC will certainly make policing easier,
to focus solely on this is a waste of an opportunity. India’s leaky
welfare schemes leak all the more because a sheaf of ID cards — from
PAN to ration to electoral — overlap, are poorly distributed, and are
often fudged. Worse, since most of these cards require home addresses,
India’s many illegal squatters, slum-dwellers, not to mention millions
of workers in the informal economy, remain beyond the reach of these
cards. The MNIC, based on an exhaustive population census, could bring
these invisibles onto master rolls and ensure that pro-poor measures
are better targeted. This is all the more important given that the
Congress, spurred by the belief that its public works scheme was a
vote-winner in the just concluded elections, has already announced a
slew of new welfare schemes. The large public monies flowing through
government pipes will need an identified tap at the end. The data
already collected by the government through the NREGA and Sarva
Shiksha Abhiyan must be incorporated into the NPR to ensure that the
MNIC is based on tip-top data. The MNIC will then have enough
credibility to entirely replace the current pack.

That its security value will overshadow the MNIC’s more benign use
leads to another worry — the possible misuse by an overbearing
security apparatus. It is one thing for a national identity card to
help prevent terror attacks, quite another for permanent check points
to insist that crossers produce ID cards as a matter of routine. There
is a fine line between a well-policed state and, well, a police state.