Ritwik Mukherjee

Kolkata

Availability of technology notwithstanding, India will face more challenges than one in introducing one identity card for its citizen. At least that’s what Jolyon Barker, global managing partner (technology, media & telecommunications), Deloitte, feels.

A unique identification card (UID) will be issued to all Indian citizens under a national programme. The government has provided Rs 120 crore in the budget for the project. The project is based on computer application called SCOSTA.

Speaking to Financial Chronicle here on Wednesday, Barker said, “Technology is just an enabler and technology related to biometric smart cards is available. However, there will be a number of challenges that India will have to face while executing it— of connectivity and scale and possibly political challenges — once various ethical issues and issues of individual privacy come up.”

The biometric smart card will have personal details related to retina, fingerprints, credit histories, name, sex, address, marital status, photo, identification mark and criminal background details (if any). These details will be linked to a central online database or repository.

While admitting that the issue of such ID cards is meant to be a move toward better governance, Barker said, “It will certainly be interesting to see how this is finally rolled out.”

In a different context, Barker said that when it comes to technology adoption, urban India is following global speed, but since it started late, it still had lot of catching up to do.

Barker said that smart mobile phones with low-cost model and attractive bundle offers, sharing of such mobile phones for common commercial purposes within a group, linking them with agro businesses, information kiosks (ITC’s e-Choupal or Srei Sahaj) would grow phenomenally.

“In all such cases, interesting contents will play a major role. There has to be a perfect balance between value-added services and utility services in all such cases,” Barker said, adding that this would also foster rural penetration of technology. “Despite the Satyam episode, India has ambassadors such as Wipro, Infosys, TCS in the world of technology. India should leverage that and come up a true global leader in technology,” he said.