Hard to picture corrupt politicians allowing this to go through.
India’s identity scheme: The magic number
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#12I really dislike the economist. To me the very first thing this program makes me think of is how the government will abuse it. They briefly mention that there is the possibility that some sort of privacy issue might pop up in the future, but quickly dismiss the argument as outweighed by the ends these means achieve. They even get a swipe in at 'market distorting subsidies' while their at it. While other magazines mig…
I disagree. It may be misused, but the amount of abuse of poor people due to not having an identity is so much worse. Poverty itself is already very dangerous. But poverty without having the ability to prove your own existance is so much more dangerous. Having an own passport or ID card is a big step for many people who had never any official papers about their being.
As the Wikipedia article details, the system may not work fully acurate, but it is so much simpler to implement and more reliable than anything else I could think of. Giving out ID cards only? They get lost or destroyed, fakes get made, poors get talked into handing their ID card to that nice guy who will go for them to this-or-that office (especially for elections, etc). A biometric signal is so much more difficult to lose or falsify or get talking into giving it up.
And the psycological effect of "officially being a unique person" is quite large (take a look a Muhammad Yunus' book on how he invented the microcredit system and estabished the Grameen bank in Bangladesh).
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#13I really dislike the economist. To me the very first thing this program makes me think of is how the government will abuse it. They briefly mention that there is the possibility that some sort of privacy issue might pop up in the future, but quickly dismiss the argument as outweighed by the ends these means achieve. They even get a swipe in at 'market distorting subsidies' while their at it. While other magazines mig…
I really like The Economist. It's true that it's generally happy to espouse a point of view in its stories but that makes it much more interesting than, say, the BBC whose impartiality makes it somewhat bland.
Their research and standard of writing are excellent - on par with The Guardian or The New York Times - and they occasionally have headlines that make me chuckle (such as this: http://www.economist.com/node/17854975 )
But I admit that I also like it because it's political leanings are similar to mine (although somewhat more to the right) and because it covers topics I'm interested in.
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#14I really want this to work, but I'm skeptical. I've lived in India, and I know that corruption is rampant. These "middle men" will try hard to figure out another way to game this system. Hopefully it's the start of something, but I think the economist is being a bit too optimistic in claiming that this alone will transform India.
Forcing the middlemen to come up with new ways of cheating the system would be a huge step-up from the status quo. Presently they don't even need to think!
This will atleast make it costly for the middle men to cheat. It will be difficult to replicate the retina / finger print scan. And that will surely reduce the low level corruption that directly affects the poor. Surely, this will not remove the high level corruptions (2g scandal etc).
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forcing the middlemen to come up with new ways of cheating the system would be a huge step-up from the status quo. Presently they don't even need to think!
This will atleast make it costly for the middle men to cheat. It will be difficult to replicate the retina / finger print scan. And that will surely reduce the low level corruption that directly affects the poor. Surely, this will not remove the high level corruptions (2g scandal etc).
Things will certainly get more difficult for these "middle men", but not by all that much. There is no need for them to replicate the retina/fingerprint scans or do anything hi-tech/expensive like that. The poor will still need to exchange the money paid into their accounts for actual goods and supplies like food and clean water. Simply giving the money directly to the poor will not affect the scarcity of these resources.
What will happen is that the poor will simply withdraw the entire sum the day it has been paid in to their accounts, and give it to these "middle men". All that changes is the direction. Instead of the welfare money flowing down from the government to the individual programs to the "middle men", it will be flowing up from the poor through the individual traders to these same "middle men".
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#16How will people with no eyes or no fingers (it happens) use government services?
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#17The only reason why this project will fall-on-the-face is that here a Government with least technical competence (notwithstanding the down-votes) is dreaming to implement a solution (almost Utopian) to the most socio-technically challenging problem known worldwide and that too for a country of a billion bare-footed men. Besides, there is no-one to stop the nation from bleeding to scams and corruption.
Edited: Punctuation.
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#18If this was proposed for a 'developed' country, there would rightly be uproar from civil liberties groups, citizens etc. But because it's happening in an 'underdeveloped' country, it's somehow acceptable. I understand the challenges faced by the Indian government in providing services to a such a huge population but this approach is open to rampant abuse by the 'middlemen' and by elements in the government itself. Any self-respecting 'security' agency would get their tentacles into something like this asap. Doubtless, they're already involved in the implementation on the quiet.
[edit: corrected typo]
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#19I really dislike the economist. To me the very first thing this program makes me think of is how the government will abuse it. They briefly mention that there is the possibility that some sort of privacy issue might pop up in the future, but quickly dismiss the argument as outweighed by the ends these means achieve. They even get a swipe in at 'market distorting subsidies' while their at it. While other magazines mig…
I disagree. It may be misused, but the amount of abuse of poor people due to not having an identity is so much worse. Poverty itself is already very dangerous. But poverty without having the ability to prove your own existance is so much more dangerous. Having an own passport or ID card is a big step for many people who had never any official papers about their being. As the Wikipedia article details, the system may…
Applying rocket-science on poor people who don't understand social-profiling issues and intense racial issues sounds like a potent mix to me. System would not work at all, is different from "system may not work fully accurate" because well - you should read the fluff in their tender documents before you lose more tax-payers money.
Re: India’s identity scheme: The magic number
#20If this was proposed for a 'developed' country, there would rightly be uproar from civil liberties groups, citizens etc. But because it's happening in an 'underdeveloped' country, it's somehow acceptable. I understand the challenges faced by the Indian government in providing services to a such a huge population but this approach is open to rampant abuse by the 'middlemen' and by elements in the government itself. An…
Is social security number in US being misused? Developed countries would already have a unique ID in place.
Also, middlemen will not be able to take advantage of this. They will be cut out completely when the person has to avail the benefits after identifying himself/herself.