UID project
By the year 2011, every Indian will be having an Unique Identification Card. Nandan M. Nilekani, a founder and former chief executive of Infosys Technologies, will leave his post as a co-chairman of the board to take on the ID card project. Nilekani has already stepped down from the post of the Chairman of Infosys following his appointment as the head of the National ID Card Project Authority. He has been given a cabinet rank also. This will be a very massive project and could bring a great change in the Indian IT infrastructure. The Government is spending about Rs 150,000 crores for this project. The effectiveness and advantages of this system will depend fully on the provision and norms of the data to be stored in the card. This could include information like the locations the individual travels, immigration, hotels, shopping centres, railway stations, etc. If every citizen has to go through a security gate to enter the airport and he needs to swipe his card, his visit is noted and suppose he is not supposed to enter that particular location, the entry should be restricted. There could be alarms set to a particular card to trace a particular persons location. Even I would suggest to have the card with health records. For example if I go to a particular hospital, my treatment, diagnosis should be updated to my smart card. Next time I go to another city need a Doctor’s consultation, I don’t need to carry my previous health record, instead, the Doctor can get my health record from my smart card. In case of loss of my smart card, I should be able to get my new card proving my identity or some security questions, password to get a new card instantly.
Advantages of having a Smart Identification Card for every Indians
- Every citizen of the country is accounted. All the information about that person can be saved in the smartcard and can be accessed and updated when needed.
- If this smart card has more information like health record, travel details (Check at immigration, airports, hotels) this will be of great use.
- This will really boost the IT infrastructure of the country, for instance every hotel or every shop should be connected to this system and records of every citizen should be updated. This can be very helpful in keeping a watch or tracking security issues.
- Right now we have many identification system, like the Voters card, Passport, Driving license, but once this system is introduced, we should follow one and only Identification system and this should be the Unique Identification Smart Card. For every purpose the card should be access, checked and updated.
- No need to carry health records if the card has a provision to store health records.
- Every prime location should be identified (Like Airports, Railway stations, Hotels, Universities) and the entry should be secured through these smart cards.
- This project will really improve the IT infrastructure of India. Every key location will be secure through these cards which will be very useful to track the visitors, time of visit, etc.
- Track ourselves – If we have provision to read our movements connecting the card to our home computer, we can know where we went on a particular day.
- Updates from different departments – Suppose the IT department wants to update you about your returns, they can do it from their system and when you read you card, you get the updates
- There will be lots of advantages using this smart card, but we need to wait and see the level of implementation, access level and security.
Already there are many developed countries has this system running, so we need to study those examples and create a smart card covering all the loopholes and problems to create a really SMART card. I am sure Mr Nilekani is the right man from India to head such a great project. Surely this will cause some barriers in the freedom of moment, but looking into recent security issues, we Indians should be ready to accept the conditions and hope for the best to our Country.
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