It’s been almost a year since the big move from private sector to government

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service happened for IT guru Nandan Nilekani. The man who oversaw the company he co-founded grow into a multi-billion dollar business, is now on the cusp of realising his dream of giving a unique identity to every Indian, come August.

Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, who completes one year in office on July 23, told Financial Chronicle in an e-mail interview that the past year had been very challenging and exciting.

“The challenges in the public space are very different from those in the private sector. But we have made substantial progress in the past one year,’’ he said.

Nilekani, who spoke about a reform approach that included the poor in his book, Imagining India, is confident of reaching the planned target. “The Aadhaar project is on schedule and we are confident that we can achieve our objectives,” he said, adding that he was determined to roll out between August this year and February next year.

In the first phase, the authority targets to issue 600 million unique 12-digit numbers over a five-year period, beginning August. It now plans to issue 100 million numbers before the end of March.

So what’s been done so far? According to Nilekani, a number of milestones have been achieved -- 100 personnel in eight regional offices, including people who work as volunteers, or are working on a sabbatical or internships, visits to 24 states and gaining support from their chief ministers, finalisation of biometric and demographic data standards, proof of concept studies to test the technology in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar, establishment of a pilot data centre in Bangalore and selection of an application software development agency.

A key initiative has been the signing of memorandums of understanding with registrars for enrolling people. Almost all state governments have signed such memorandums. The few that are left will be signing them soon. LIC, State Bank of India, Bank of India and Central Bank of India have also entered into memorandums; and the railways are interested.

Nilekani said the authority had come out with a strategy for micro-payments in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks Association which, he believed, could achieve financial inclusion to a large extent.

The pieces are all falling in place for arguably the biggest e-governance project in India. Few more components, including choosing the biometrics provider and managed service provider, will be completed soon.