The Arrival of Aadhaar

The Advent of Aadhaar 

Aadhaar was designed to to provide universal citizen identity to residents. Aadhaar, which means foundation in Hindi, is the foundation of the India Stack. The intent of the program, which was initiated in 2009, is to eliminate the inefficiencies in the public distribution system as well as to facilitate the disbursement of cash transfers directly from the government to the intended beneficiaries, cutting out middlemen.

Aadhaar is an identity program for all residents of India and despite its opt-in nature, about 1.12 billion have Aadhaar identity cards today. The 12-digit card number is linked to an individual's biometric and basic demographic data including a photograph, iris scans, fingerprints, name, address, date of birth and gender. The Aadhaar number can be used in combination with any of these factors' for multi-factor authentication. The Aadhaar database containing all of this information is the largest biometric database in the world and was built using internet-scale technology. It is important to note that Aadhaar is purely an identification tool, so having an Aadhaarcard affords no privileges to an individual; unlike a driver's license for example, which allows one to drive. The goal, therefore, is to build an identity platform and allow others to build an ecosystem around it, or link services to it. The Aadhaar database can be queried (or pinged) by a bank to verify a person's identity: Is this person who they say they are? the database returns a binary (yes/no) response to the query.