Why Aadhaar is needed ?

Governments transfer money to citizens for many reasons — student scholarships, old age pensions, subsidy for LPG cylinders etc. Such transfers are plagued by the problems of diversion, duplication and falsification, and a large part of the transfers does not reach the genuine beneficiaries. How do we get over these problems?

The answer was to ‘identify’ each beneficiary by a ‘unique’ number linked to minimum biometric data. Unique number schemes were not new to the country: the income-tax department has PAN for each assessee and a credit card bears a unique number for the card holder. In 2009, the UPA government decided to introduce Aadhaar. 

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was established by an executive order and Mr Nandan Nilekani was roped in to steer the programme and the Authority. Mr Nilekani brought his tremendous knowledge of technology and proven entrepreneurship to the UIDAI. What might have otherwise turned into another lackadaisical department of the government became a trailblazer on how to design and implement a transformational scheme. After proving the technology and running successful pilots, the UIDAI began enrolling people and issuing Aadhaar in September 2010. For complete and original post see here