UIDAI or the unique ID project is superfluous.

2011 has been a bad year for the ruling government. Already haunted by the ghosts of the infamous scams, the government came under further criticism thanks to their policy inactions. Things became worse when they decided to backtrack on the issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail just days after approving it. Now it is likely that the government will do another U-turn on another popular project. This time the project under the spotlight is the UIDAI or the unique ID project that was started under the supervision of Nandan Nilekani. The parliamentary standing committee on finance is of the opinion that the Rs 178 bn UIDAI project is costly, unnecessary and will lead to communal disharmony in the country. They also feel that the project is just a duplication of data already collected under the National Population Register. The biometric data collected for UIDAI is also under the scanner with the committee stating that the data is a privacy breach and could be misused.

The thing is that the project is a brilliant idea to ensure that people have a single identification card that takes care of their social security, their voting rights and everything in between. Thus, the question that one needs to ask is whether the concerns raised by politicians genuine? Or are the so called 'intelligent' politicians threatened by Mr Nilekani's presence. He is after all not a politician but an ex-bureaucrat. Nevertheless, by the looks of it, another good proposal of the government is headed down the drain.

Every where we have vote bank politics in India.
A brilliant project envisaged by Manmohan Singh is on the verge of closure because of vote bank politics.
The standing committee is made up of corrupt politicians who depend on the Muslim vote bank.
If each citizen of India is identified and marked, they cannot then add to the numbers by infiltration from Pakistan and Bangladesh hence their clamour. Further, the poor will then get their money directly through banks instead of middlemen who loot them.
As far as duplication is concerned, it is a myth.
The data collected by the National Population Register is useless as it does not have the iris scan and hence there can be false registration.
As Anna said, politicians are the greatest threat to the country.