New Delhi:
Sonia Singh: Our guest on Your Call is an Indian who has got the most challenging task at the moment..the task of giving a unique identity to every citizen. Nandan Nilekani...thank you so much for joining us on the show. What's fascinated so many people is the project you are now heading. What is the idea behind it? What drew you to this and what would you explain to our viewers as the big idea?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know when I wrote my book, this actually popped up as a big challenge in India, which is to give every Indian resident an identity because people in this country, especially the poor, have no identity and are being left out of the system. They can't access the public service, they can't really get opportunity and therefore the compelling big idea here is that if you give every Indian, especially poor Indians, a number- then they have better access to opportunity.
Sonia Singh- How would this be different from other government projects that we have seen before?
Nandan Nilekani- In identity or in general?
Sonia Singh- In implementation.
Nandan Nilekani- Well, we hope to have a very tight implementation, we have promised that we will have the first set of numbers issued in 12-18 months and few hundred million numbers in 5 years, so we have a very good team that we are putting together, both from the government and from outside and some of the best technology people want to volunteer for this project. So we hope we can bring all these people together and make it happen.
Sonia Singh- Well, what was actually the clincher that brought this project? We know that, of course when you get a call from Prime minister it is hard to refuse but was this an idea that had come up through conversations? Did you know about this project beforehand?
Nandan Nilekani- Well this project, you know, has been around for some time and it was taking shape and in the meantime the PM was kind enough to invite me to play some role in the government and when this particular thing was discussed it seemed to be the logical thing to do because on the one hand it was something that had the potential to have a lot of impact & secondly it played to my strengths because of my technology background. I would be able to bring that kind of managing large technology projects kind of background to the table, so it seemed to be a perfect fit. A technology based program which has a social impact.
Sonia Singh- What excited you the most about it and what scared you the most about it?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think the exciting thing is that if this is done well, if people have numbers and then top of that if our public service delivery systems are redesigned to use these numbers in an effective manner then it can have a big impact on the governance and impact on public services for the poor and we have been talking for years about governance reforms and all that ..so this would count as one of those and as I say one of the reasons why I took it up was the extraordinary support from PM Manmohan Singh and his colleagues. They went out of their way to make me feel at home. They have been generous and gracious and given me all the support and that gives me the confidence to take this on.
Sonia Singh- And nothing scared you before that when you discussed it with people close to you. Did you ever think that maybe I should....
Nandan Nilekani- Well, its just like jumping off a cliff and you don't know what's down there. But you know, I discussed this with my colleagues , my former colleagues at Infosys and they were all very supportive, they felt that this was a project that needed to be done and that you know that it was worth it for me to leave Infosys for this larger cause.
Sonia Singh -Really a grand cause. Well, Mr Nilekani its about people writing and asking questions and we have had a huge response on our website, let's just go across to the website. Ritu writes in from Delhi saying in simple terms, I want to understand the unique identity system, how will this concept work?
Ganesh Raghvan also writes in from Switzerland that we have ration cards, voters id cards, passports that identify the people of India. What difference or benefit value will this new ID card bring in for a simple common man to a VIP in India?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, first of all what we are giving is a number and not a card. The number will be uniquely identified to a person using biometrics like finger prints and we will make sure that there are no duplicates i.e one person has only one number and all this data stored in massive database and have online authentication, so you can go anywhere and you can verify who you are. So we think that it is very different from anything we have today. Because today many systems have a lot of duplicates and therefore its always difficult to pin down exactly who the person is. This system will allow one person one number and the online authentication will allow a lot of new applications to be thought of using this capability and really this number is for people who don't have any number, you know middle class and rich have passports, driver's licence, credit cards and all kinds of things but there are a huge number of people out there who don't have any number and every time they go to get a public service they have to re-authenticate themselves i.e to give details again and again and that leads to a lot of pain and harassment. Therefore we think especially for the poor having a number with which they can verify to anybody who they are is hugely empowering.
Sonia Singh- How will a poor person actually access this? Because of course other people, you mentioned, with a passport will have to go to a system which will issue that number. How does a poor person who has none of these or may have no use in daily life actually access this?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know we want to make this number attractive for people to have. So any kind of a benefit program that we have in government will ultimately have this number as a part of it for eg: NREGA, we had a big announcement on August 20 when we said NREGA would implement UID in the job cards.
Sonia Singh- Let's just go across to somebody else who wants to ask you a question. Someone I think you know- Lord Meghnath Desai joins us now with his question.
Lord Meghnath Desai- Nandan I am very pleased that you are doing this very difficult job and I do not doubt your competence. My main concern for you is that, will you have the patience to withstand all the frustration and all the kind of backsliding which is a normal thing in politics. In business you can compete, your competitors are straight forward, rivals going after the same thing. In politics I have found in my little experience that people never tell you a straight answer to a question and you may find that there are vested interests & all sort of backsliding and despite the PM's fervent support, you may run into blockage. Will you have the patience to overcome these frustrations?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think Lord Desai made a very important point, he has been in politics so he understands these things but I think I have first of all braced myself for the fact that this is a different world, I understand this is not Infosys and I am in it for a long haul you know five years is the commitment that I have given to the PM and I am also a patient guy, I don't get hassled too easily, so I am willing to live with some of these things and I think, I found that I went out and reached out to people, I have gone in the last 8 weeks, met lots of ministers, lots of bureaucrats and once you talk about what you plan to do and what's the hope for it, I find we get a very positive response so I am hopeful that we will build a consensus around this whole project, it is definitely time consuming.. fortunately for the last 10 years I have been on the fringe of doing some kind of government thing so I have some sense of some of the challenges that are there in the system.
Sonia Singh- And how to navigate them.
Nandan Nilekani-Yeah.
Sonia Singh- It was a different time but many have compared your appointment to Sam Pitroda when he came in during the Rajiv Gandhi era and the kind of flak he got. You have mentioned, ranging from being called a CIA agent. Now it's a different time but many of the undercurrents are the same. How will you look at that?
Nandan Nilekani -Oh absolutely, I think Sam is very much a role model for what I am doing. In fact, Sam is my mentor in this whole thing, he's been giving a lot of support and advice.
Sonia Singh- He didn't get the solution but he still told you to go for it.
Nandan Nilekani- Despite health issues, he is very positive and confident. So I said if he can do it, why can't I do it, in the sense that inspite of all that he has gone through he has retained his optimism, so I said if he can do that then I can also retain my optimism and work on the job.
Sonia Singh- I think actually you have made public sector fashionable in a way cause I have read so many of your colleagues & businessmen saying that its wonderful and this is something that they would like to do as well or join public service given the opportunity.
Nandan Nilekani- Absolutely, I get a lot of calls from people, just this morning a guy met me, he is 55. He has been the CEO of a company for 11 years. He says, I am retiring in December and can I help you for a few years and he wants nothing..he just wants to give back. So I think , in some sense, yes if a lot more people who had a successful life in corporate sector want to contribute and some such avenues are available, it certainly can make a difference.
Sonia Singh- No, actually its a huge opportunity. Meghnath Desai brought up politicians and we have some questions that have been raised by other people as well. We have D Raja of CPI who wants to ask you a question, let's just go across to that now.
D Raja - Hello Nandan I have no objection to new identity card for Indian citizens. In case of citizenship what is the case and how is it going to be successful because there are many apprehensions. One is ..the unique database identification consists only of one person however capable he is as a person...but is it enough for such a grand project for a vast country as ours?
Nandan Nilekani- I think Raja is a good friend of mine and is making a very valid point. This is definitely not some one man show kind of thing I mean right now because I give all the interviews, it looks like that but actually in reality we are building a solid organization and this a very consultative process, you know in the last 8 weeks we have met may be 30 different agencies of government. We have met five state governments and in the next 12-16 weeks we are going to meet all the state chief ministers, so it's very consultative, we are working very closely with the finance ministry Mr Mukherjee has been very supportive, Mr Chidambaram has been a great supporter and we have worked closely to align the home ministry and what we are doing and so on. So its absolutely going to be a very collaborative open inclusive process, its not just about one person.
Sonia Singh- Mr Raja mentions security concerns and we know that atleast having an Indian citizenship many are seeing this id number as equivalent to Indian citizenship and especially in the issue of illegal migrants politically its hugely sensitive. How are you affecting those aspects into this?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, this number does not confer any rights, it does not confer any benefits, it does not confer any entitlements. It's just a number authenticating that you are who you claim to be.
Sonia Singh- It does authenticates that you are Indian.
Nandan Nilekani- No, It authenticates who you are.
Sonia Singh- Right.
Nandan Nilekani- If somebody's name is Madanlal and if this Madanlal is in database with finger prints then if Madanlal goes somewhere and says I am Madanlal 123, the system will say yes this is Madanlal. That's it. Its only a verification system and all the residents of the country can get this number. What are the rights, what are the benefits, what are the entitlements are things that will be done by other systems that will use this core system for identity verification only.
Sonia Singh - A question comes in from Shridharan Nath in Auckland. He says; I congratulate you for accepting such a daunting task but my question is how would you overcome interference from political parties who may engage in tampering the very record on which you depend to collect the data for your ID project. It is very common in the country where voters list is tampered with for their political interests.
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know, what we are doing is the enrollment process and the enrollment data is very rigorously mandated and we actually intend to provide a software programme which our registered partners have to imbed in their application, so that is not negotiable. So whatever is the application ,they have to insert this so that when they collect details of a person that will be done with our piece of code which will enforce the standards, so we hope to have things like that which will make the data collection standardized across a lot of agencies. And one more thing in Mr Raja's point, there is a PM's counsel of 10 or 11 members which includes the PM, the home minister, the finance minister, the external affairs minister and all the senior ministers who oversee this project. And you know any decision that we take in terms of the direction has to be approved by this group. So there is an oversize group of very senior ministers under the PM which is over seeing the project.
Sonia Singh- Let's now go across to where it all began to your school Bishop Cotton school, Bangalore. We have some young students who want to ask you a question. We will just go across to that now. If you can hear me, go ahead with your question from Bishop Cotton.
Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore: Hello Sir, it's a great honour to be able to speak to you. I have a question on your UID. If you are planning to have so much on your Intel card, how do you plan to keep it safe from professional hackers who can misuse the data?
Nandan Nilekani - Well, I think that is a very good question. First of all we are not capping it as a card, this is in the central database and will be issuing a number. And this whole system will be well protected with all kinds of securities and authentication measures, firewalls and other things is that nobody can read data from the system. All you can do is you can query the system and ask if the person who he or she is claiming to be. So the really answer you get from the system is yes or no, to that extend it is protected from being read. But I agree with you that it is a big issue which we have to make sure works well.
Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore: Hello Sir, I am Sharavan and I am in 11th standard, I just wanted to ask you, if you plan to create database using the current sources, how would you plan to eliminate fake IDs?
Nandan Nilekani- Well I think that is again a very good question, so we are actually not doing it from current sources. We are going to build this data base from the begining, so when we begin there will be no records but we will work with all these existing registrars dealing with people and from a particular day, all new people that get in to the way will come with the biometrics into our system and at that time we will a de-duplication check. We will check whether they are duplicate or not? That's how we will prevent duplicates and make sure that only one number to one person.
Sonia Singh- Well, we will go across real time to another campus where there is huge interest in what you are doing in IIT Bombay. Lets just go across to that now. Hi, go ahead with your question from IIT Bombay for Nandan Nilekani.
IIT Bombay- Hello Nandan, this is Johny. Why UID? Why not use something which is already existing in our system? Why not implement the same system in our voter card? Why go for a new system altogether?
Nandan Nilekani- You see the thing is that we need something which has the biometric way of identifying a person ,so that you can uniquely identify a person, we need a system which allows us to eliminate the duplicates so that there is one number per person and we need something which has the infrastructure for online authentication and given all these three factors we felt it was best to build a new system as oppose to use data from an existing system. However, we will use all the agencies which currently deal with these kind of things as very valuable partners in what we are planning to do.
Sonia Singh- Well, thanks so much all of you for joining us from IIT Bombay. Nandan your memories of this campus.. that's actually where it all began. I think you came out as a fresh IIT graduate and then met Mr Narayan Murthy.
Nandan Nilekani- That's right. He gave me a job in Infosys, well in Patni and then in Infosys.
Sonia Singh- What's your fondest memory of that time. When you look back now years later.
Nandan Nilekani- I think it looked like a fun thing to do. At that time technology, IT was just coming in a big way. So to be at the ground floor of that revolution was really exciting.
Sonia Singh- We now have Mohandas Pai joining us.
Mohandas Pai- Hi Nandan, you articulated the idea of flat world and infact you flatten the world for sometime. So what will be the next big idea which will impact the world?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know, I think by giving UID to every Indian resident, if that can make them plug into the future of this country, that will have huge impact.
Sonia Singh - You have left Infosys behind but I wanted to ask you Nandan..We saw what happened earlier this week in West Bengal when they could not give land to both Infosys and Wipro for various reasons, do you think that's an idea in conflict which is going to be very crucial in terms of development and which way a state is going to go or which way state politics is going to go?
Nandan Nilekani- The fact of the matter is that we will have to create beyond agriculture in the rural area in industries and in the cities and therefore there will be a certain amount of land that will get converted from agriculture purpose to....and that process has to be handled very sensitively, very dedicatedly keeping in mind the interest of all stakeholders, that's what we really need to evolve, if you really want to make that migration from agriculturally concentrated society to a diversified society.
Sonia Singh- The other big political debate on at this time Nandan and I don't know whether you have been watching it and laughing over it..is this whole debate of austerity and I know that in Infosys all of you set an example because you were different from other businessmen of the time. I mean everybody has lived lives according to their own ideals. But do you think this whole issue of living in austerity is because there is a collective idea of Indianness and if there is a whole section of India which is going through drought ,our politicians and our people in public life must reflect that?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think it's a fact that in public life you do need to conduct yourself in a particular way.
Sonia Singh- And of course you have always got someone reminding you at home, your wife Rohini is very involved in social causes. How do both of you contribute to each other's profession? I mean you giving her result oriented ideas all the time and does she remind you of social conscience all the time?
Nandan Nilekani- Totally, I give advice on making her organisation more efficient and effective and she makes sure that I do more humane things.
Sonia Singh- What advice did she give you before you set on for this project?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think its just the same, make sure that you really look at the concerns of the underserved and not the people who already have.
Sonia Singh- That way this project is so exciting. Well, I have someone else and we talked of politics but we have not talked of bureaucracy so much and I know you have already dealt with that- the Bangalore agenda task. Tell us about your experiences there.
Nandan Nilekani- I think I learnt a lot in some sense. That was a sort of trial run for this job and you know there is a lot of difference between the private and the public sector. Private sector is a homogeneous group with a common value system, you are all going to the same strategy. Public service is much more complex, their agendas and their aspirations are diverse.. getting all this to work towards the common goal is much more difficult and secondly in the public space equity is very very important. In the private sector we don't think about equity so much. We think of efficiency, effectiveness, profitability but not equity. And I think that's one thing I realised that in the public space you have to look at it from equity point of view and often equity is important even if it means being a little inefficient is fine but equity comes before everything else. So these lessons I learnt actually from my BATF days. And i am trying to make sure that I apply those lessons here.
Sonia Singh- Well, I have someone, an old associate who has been with you from your BATF days, Kalpana joins us from Bangalore with her question. Let's see what she has to say.
Kalpana- Having worked closely with you for 6 years one has seen Nandan version 1.0 from Infosys becomes version 1.B at BATF then version 2.0 Nandan the author ,version 3.0 Nandan, Chairman UID. I know how much you plan and think ahead. What is Nandan version 4.0 going to be like ?
Sonia Singh- Do you plan and think ahead a lot?
Nandan Nilekani- Version 4.0 is going to the hills.
Sonia Singh- Well I don't think this job is going to let you be Nandan 4.0 for a long time. It actually has been a huge shift for you personally, professionally...You have left the company you had worked for so many years, you have moved to another city across the Vindhya as it were...What's it like moving from Bangalore to Delhi?
Nandan Nilekani- It has been destabilising and the big destablisation is that I was set, I was in a comfort zone of my system, my office, my job and my home. Everything was working, I could touch one button and forget, things were done. All of that is completely dismantled. I have to recreate- that's the most disconcerting for me.
Sonia Singh- Traffic is worse in Bangalore or Delhi?
Nandan Nilekani- I still think Bangalore. Delhi in the rains but otherwise Bangalore is still worse.
Sonia Singh- Jaideep Sahni has a question for you...lets see what he has to say.
Nandan Nilekani- Yeah dear friend.
Jaideep Sahni- There is something very nicely subversive about the fact that the effects of the UID which is IT based and country wide is going to be pretty much reversable....so what's the most common first reaction you find from the people in the existing set up when this reality first dawned upon them. Is it excitement or is it fear?
Nandan Nilekani- No I think there is a lot of excitement. People are very keen and committed to make a difference and I think if they see this thing done well, it can have a material impact on how things are done, it will help common people have their aspirations, empower them. There is a huge bubbling young population, written about in a book, is yearning for future.
Sonia Singh- Nandan you are also a movie buff. You like the movies of that time Deewar and all we talked about. The change now with the movies like Chak de and Slumdog Millionaire, what's the kind of genre movies which you think represent the new India. What do you think symbolises the India today. You are talking about India in Flux.
Nandan Nilekani- I think its the India of aspiration which Jaideep captures very well in his movies. It's about the fact that this huge young bubbling population is exposed to media, TV and wants a better life and it's straining and growing against the older system and its really the intergenerational kind of battle which is going on. And i see this project as something which will help those young aspirational people move ahead in life.
Sonia Singh- Thank you so much for joining us on Your Call and we are really interested in your project.
Nandan Nilekani- Thank You.
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know when I wrote my book, this actually popped up as a big challenge in India, which is to give every Indian resident an identity because people in this country, especially the poor, have no identity and are being left out of the system. They can't access the public service, they can't really get opportunity and therefore the compelling big idea here is that if you give every Indian, especially poor Indians, a number- then they have better access to opportunity.
Sonia Singh- How would this be different from other government projects that we have seen before?
Nandan Nilekani- In identity or in general?
Sonia Singh- In implementation.
Nandan Nilekani- Well, we hope to have a very tight implementation, we have promised that we will have the first set of numbers issued in 12-18 months and few hundred million numbers in 5 years, so we have a very good team that we are putting together, both from the government and from outside and some of the best technology people want to volunteer for this project. So we hope we can bring all these people together and make it happen.
Sonia Singh- Well, what was actually the clincher that brought this project? We know that, of course when you get a call from Prime minister it is hard to refuse but was this an idea that had come up through conversations? Did you know about this project beforehand?
Nandan Nilekani- Well this project, you know, has been around for some time and it was taking shape and in the meantime the PM was kind enough to invite me to play some role in the government and when this particular thing was discussed it seemed to be the logical thing to do because on the one hand it was something that had the potential to have a lot of impact & secondly it played to my strengths because of my technology background. I would be able to bring that kind of managing large technology projects kind of background to the table, so it seemed to be a perfect fit. A technology based program which has a social impact.
Sonia Singh- What excited you the most about it and what scared you the most about it?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think the exciting thing is that if this is done well, if people have numbers and then top of that if our public service delivery systems are redesigned to use these numbers in an effective manner then it can have a big impact on the governance and impact on public services for the poor and we have been talking for years about governance reforms and all that ..so this would count as one of those and as I say one of the reasons why I took it up was the extraordinary support from PM Manmohan Singh and his colleagues. They went out of their way to make me feel at home. They have been generous and gracious and given me all the support and that gives me the confidence to take this on.
Sonia Singh- And nothing scared you before that when you discussed it with people close to you. Did you ever think that maybe I should....
Nandan Nilekani- Well, its just like jumping off a cliff and you don't know what's down there. But you know, I discussed this with my colleagues , my former colleagues at Infosys and they were all very supportive, they felt that this was a project that needed to be done and that you know that it was worth it for me to leave Infosys for this larger cause.
Sonia Singh -Really a grand cause. Well, Mr Nilekani its about people writing and asking questions and we have had a huge response on our website, let's just go across to the website. Ritu writes in from Delhi saying in simple terms, I want to understand the unique identity system, how will this concept work?
Ganesh Raghvan also writes in from Switzerland that we have ration cards, voters id cards, passports that identify the people of India. What difference or benefit value will this new ID card bring in for a simple common man to a VIP in India?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, first of all what we are giving is a number and not a card. The number will be uniquely identified to a person using biometrics like finger prints and we will make sure that there are no duplicates i.e one person has only one number and all this data stored in massive database and have online authentication, so you can go anywhere and you can verify who you are. So we think that it is very different from anything we have today. Because today many systems have a lot of duplicates and therefore its always difficult to pin down exactly who the person is. This system will allow one person one number and the online authentication will allow a lot of new applications to be thought of using this capability and really this number is for people who don't have any number, you know middle class and rich have passports, driver's licence, credit cards and all kinds of things but there are a huge number of people out there who don't have any number and every time they go to get a public service they have to re-authenticate themselves i.e to give details again and again and that leads to a lot of pain and harassment. Therefore we think especially for the poor having a number with which they can verify to anybody who they are is hugely empowering.
Sonia Singh- How will a poor person actually access this? Because of course other people, you mentioned, with a passport will have to go to a system which will issue that number. How does a poor person who has none of these or may have no use in daily life actually access this?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know we want to make this number attractive for people to have. So any kind of a benefit program that we have in government will ultimately have this number as a part of it for eg: NREGA, we had a big announcement on August 20 when we said NREGA would implement UID in the job cards.
Sonia Singh- Let's just go across to somebody else who wants to ask you a question. Someone I think you know- Lord Meghnath Desai joins us now with his question.
Lord Meghnath Desai- Nandan I am very pleased that you are doing this very difficult job and I do not doubt your competence. My main concern for you is that, will you have the patience to withstand all the frustration and all the kind of backsliding which is a normal thing in politics. In business you can compete, your competitors are straight forward, rivals going after the same thing. In politics I have found in my little experience that people never tell you a straight answer to a question and you may find that there are vested interests & all sort of backsliding and despite the PM's fervent support, you may run into blockage. Will you have the patience to overcome these frustrations?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think Lord Desai made a very important point, he has been in politics so he understands these things but I think I have first of all braced myself for the fact that this is a different world, I understand this is not Infosys and I am in it for a long haul you know five years is the commitment that I have given to the PM and I am also a patient guy, I don't get hassled too easily, so I am willing to live with some of these things and I think, I found that I went out and reached out to people, I have gone in the last 8 weeks, met lots of ministers, lots of bureaucrats and once you talk about what you plan to do and what's the hope for it, I find we get a very positive response so I am hopeful that we will build a consensus around this whole project, it is definitely time consuming.. fortunately for the last 10 years I have been on the fringe of doing some kind of government thing so I have some sense of some of the challenges that are there in the system.
Sonia Singh- And how to navigate them.
Nandan Nilekani-Yeah.
Sonia Singh- It was a different time but many have compared your appointment to Sam Pitroda when he came in during the Rajiv Gandhi era and the kind of flak he got. You have mentioned, ranging from being called a CIA agent. Now it's a different time but many of the undercurrents are the same. How will you look at that?
Nandan Nilekani -Oh absolutely, I think Sam is very much a role model for what I am doing. In fact, Sam is my mentor in this whole thing, he's been giving a lot of support and advice.
Sonia Singh- He didn't get the solution but he still told you to go for it.
Nandan Nilekani- Despite health issues, he is very positive and confident. So I said if he can do it, why can't I do it, in the sense that inspite of all that he has gone through he has retained his optimism, so I said if he can do that then I can also retain my optimism and work on the job.
Sonia Singh- I think actually you have made public sector fashionable in a way cause I have read so many of your colleagues & businessmen saying that its wonderful and this is something that they would like to do as well or join public service given the opportunity.
Nandan Nilekani- Absolutely, I get a lot of calls from people, just this morning a guy met me, he is 55. He has been the CEO of a company for 11 years. He says, I am retiring in December and can I help you for a few years and he wants nothing..he just wants to give back. So I think , in some sense, yes if a lot more people who had a successful life in corporate sector want to contribute and some such avenues are available, it certainly can make a difference.
Sonia Singh- No, actually its a huge opportunity. Meghnath Desai brought up politicians and we have some questions that have been raised by other people as well. We have D Raja of CPI who wants to ask you a question, let's just go across to that now.
D Raja - Hello Nandan I have no objection to new identity card for Indian citizens. In case of citizenship what is the case and how is it going to be successful because there are many apprehensions. One is ..the unique database identification consists only of one person however capable he is as a person...but is it enough for such a grand project for a vast country as ours?
Nandan Nilekani- I think Raja is a good friend of mine and is making a very valid point. This is definitely not some one man show kind of thing I mean right now because I give all the interviews, it looks like that but actually in reality we are building a solid organization and this a very consultative process, you know in the last 8 weeks we have met may be 30 different agencies of government. We have met five state governments and in the next 12-16 weeks we are going to meet all the state chief ministers, so it's very consultative, we are working very closely with the finance ministry Mr Mukherjee has been very supportive, Mr Chidambaram has been a great supporter and we have worked closely to align the home ministry and what we are doing and so on. So its absolutely going to be a very collaborative open inclusive process, its not just about one person.
Sonia Singh- Mr Raja mentions security concerns and we know that atleast having an Indian citizenship many are seeing this id number as equivalent to Indian citizenship and especially in the issue of illegal migrants politically its hugely sensitive. How are you affecting those aspects into this?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, this number does not confer any rights, it does not confer any benefits, it does not confer any entitlements. It's just a number authenticating that you are who you claim to be.
Sonia Singh- It does authenticates that you are Indian.
Nandan Nilekani- No, It authenticates who you are.
Sonia Singh- Right.
Nandan Nilekani- If somebody's name is Madanlal and if this Madanlal is in database with finger prints then if Madanlal goes somewhere and says I am Madanlal 123, the system will say yes this is Madanlal. That's it. Its only a verification system and all the residents of the country can get this number. What are the rights, what are the benefits, what are the entitlements are things that will be done by other systems that will use this core system for identity verification only.
Sonia Singh - A question comes in from Shridharan Nath in Auckland. He says; I congratulate you for accepting such a daunting task but my question is how would you overcome interference from political parties who may engage in tampering the very record on which you depend to collect the data for your ID project. It is very common in the country where voters list is tampered with for their political interests.
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know, what we are doing is the enrollment process and the enrollment data is very rigorously mandated and we actually intend to provide a software programme which our registered partners have to imbed in their application, so that is not negotiable. So whatever is the application ,they have to insert this so that when they collect details of a person that will be done with our piece of code which will enforce the standards, so we hope to have things like that which will make the data collection standardized across a lot of agencies. And one more thing in Mr Raja's point, there is a PM's counsel of 10 or 11 members which includes the PM, the home minister, the finance minister, the external affairs minister and all the senior ministers who oversee this project. And you know any decision that we take in terms of the direction has to be approved by this group. So there is an oversize group of very senior ministers under the PM which is over seeing the project.
Sonia Singh- Let's now go across to where it all began to your school Bishop Cotton school, Bangalore. We have some young students who want to ask you a question. We will just go across to that now. If you can hear me, go ahead with your question from Bishop Cotton.
Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore: Hello Sir, it's a great honour to be able to speak to you. I have a question on your UID. If you are planning to have so much on your Intel card, how do you plan to keep it safe from professional hackers who can misuse the data?
Nandan Nilekani - Well, I think that is a very good question. First of all we are not capping it as a card, this is in the central database and will be issuing a number. And this whole system will be well protected with all kinds of securities and authentication measures, firewalls and other things is that nobody can read data from the system. All you can do is you can query the system and ask if the person who he or she is claiming to be. So the really answer you get from the system is yes or no, to that extend it is protected from being read. But I agree with you that it is a big issue which we have to make sure works well.
Bishop Cotton School, Bangalore: Hello Sir, I am Sharavan and I am in 11th standard, I just wanted to ask you, if you plan to create database using the current sources, how would you plan to eliminate fake IDs?
Nandan Nilekani- Well I think that is again a very good question, so we are actually not doing it from current sources. We are going to build this data base from the begining, so when we begin there will be no records but we will work with all these existing registrars dealing with people and from a particular day, all new people that get in to the way will come with the biometrics into our system and at that time we will a de-duplication check. We will check whether they are duplicate or not? That's how we will prevent duplicates and make sure that only one number to one person.
Sonia Singh- Well, we will go across real time to another campus where there is huge interest in what you are doing in IIT Bombay. Lets just go across to that now. Hi, go ahead with your question from IIT Bombay for Nandan Nilekani.
IIT Bombay- Hello Nandan, this is Johny. Why UID? Why not use something which is already existing in our system? Why not implement the same system in our voter card? Why go for a new system altogether?
Nandan Nilekani- You see the thing is that we need something which has the biometric way of identifying a person ,so that you can uniquely identify a person, we need a system which allows us to eliminate the duplicates so that there is one number per person and we need something which has the infrastructure for online authentication and given all these three factors we felt it was best to build a new system as oppose to use data from an existing system. However, we will use all the agencies which currently deal with these kind of things as very valuable partners in what we are planning to do.
Sonia Singh- Well, thanks so much all of you for joining us from IIT Bombay. Nandan your memories of this campus.. that's actually where it all began. I think you came out as a fresh IIT graduate and then met Mr Narayan Murthy.
Nandan Nilekani- That's right. He gave me a job in Infosys, well in Patni and then in Infosys.
Sonia Singh- What's your fondest memory of that time. When you look back now years later.
Nandan Nilekani- I think it looked like a fun thing to do. At that time technology, IT was just coming in a big way. So to be at the ground floor of that revolution was really exciting.
Sonia Singh- We now have Mohandas Pai joining us.
Mohandas Pai- Hi Nandan, you articulated the idea of flat world and infact you flatten the world for sometime. So what will be the next big idea which will impact the world?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, you know, I think by giving UID to every Indian resident, if that can make them plug into the future of this country, that will have huge impact.
Sonia Singh - You have left Infosys behind but I wanted to ask you Nandan..We saw what happened earlier this week in West Bengal when they could not give land to both Infosys and Wipro for various reasons, do you think that's an idea in conflict which is going to be very crucial in terms of development and which way a state is going to go or which way state politics is going to go?
Nandan Nilekani- The fact of the matter is that we will have to create beyond agriculture in the rural area in industries and in the cities and therefore there will be a certain amount of land that will get converted from agriculture purpose to....and that process has to be handled very sensitively, very dedicatedly keeping in mind the interest of all stakeholders, that's what we really need to evolve, if you really want to make that migration from agriculturally concentrated society to a diversified society.
Sonia Singh- The other big political debate on at this time Nandan and I don't know whether you have been watching it and laughing over it..is this whole debate of austerity and I know that in Infosys all of you set an example because you were different from other businessmen of the time. I mean everybody has lived lives according to their own ideals. But do you think this whole issue of living in austerity is because there is a collective idea of Indianness and if there is a whole section of India which is going through drought ,our politicians and our people in public life must reflect that?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think it's a fact that in public life you do need to conduct yourself in a particular way.
Sonia Singh- And of course you have always got someone reminding you at home, your wife Rohini is very involved in social causes. How do both of you contribute to each other's profession? I mean you giving her result oriented ideas all the time and does she remind you of social conscience all the time?
Nandan Nilekani- Totally, I give advice on making her organisation more efficient and effective and she makes sure that I do more humane things.
Sonia Singh- What advice did she give you before you set on for this project?
Nandan Nilekani- Well, I think its just the same, make sure that you really look at the concerns of the underserved and not the people who already have.
Sonia Singh- That way this project is so exciting. Well, I have someone else and we talked of politics but we have not talked of bureaucracy so much and I know you have already dealt with that- the Bangalore agenda task. Tell us about your experiences there.
Nandan Nilekani- I think I learnt a lot in some sense. That was a sort of trial run for this job and you know there is a lot of difference between the private and the public sector. Private sector is a homogeneous group with a common value system, you are all going to the same strategy. Public service is much more complex, their agendas and their aspirations are diverse.. getting all this to work towards the common goal is much more difficult and secondly in the public space equity is very very important. In the private sector we don't think about equity so much. We think of efficiency, effectiveness, profitability but not equity. And I think that's one thing I realised that in the public space you have to look at it from equity point of view and often equity is important even if it means being a little inefficient is fine but equity comes before everything else. So these lessons I learnt actually from my BATF days. And i am trying to make sure that I apply those lessons here.
Sonia Singh- Well, I have someone, an old associate who has been with you from your BATF days, Kalpana joins us from Bangalore with her question. Let's see what she has to say.
Kalpana- Having worked closely with you for 6 years one has seen Nandan version 1.0 from Infosys becomes version 1.B at BATF then version 2.0 Nandan the author ,version 3.0 Nandan, Chairman UID. I know how much you plan and think ahead. What is Nandan version 4.0 going to be like ?
Sonia Singh- Do you plan and think ahead a lot?
Nandan Nilekani- Version 4.0 is going to the hills.
Sonia Singh- Well I don't think this job is going to let you be Nandan 4.0 for a long time. It actually has been a huge shift for you personally, professionally...You have left the company you had worked for so many years, you have moved to another city across the Vindhya as it were...What's it like moving from Bangalore to Delhi?
Nandan Nilekani- It has been destabilising and the big destablisation is that I was set, I was in a comfort zone of my system, my office, my job and my home. Everything was working, I could touch one button and forget, things were done. All of that is completely dismantled. I have to recreate- that's the most disconcerting for me.
Sonia Singh- Traffic is worse in Bangalore or Delhi?
Nandan Nilekani- I still think Bangalore. Delhi in the rains but otherwise Bangalore is still worse.
Sonia Singh- Jaideep Sahni has a question for you...lets see what he has to say.
Nandan Nilekani- Yeah dear friend.
Jaideep Sahni- There is something very nicely subversive about the fact that the effects of the UID which is IT based and country wide is going to be pretty much reversable....so what's the most common first reaction you find from the people in the existing set up when this reality first dawned upon them. Is it excitement or is it fear?
Nandan Nilekani- No I think there is a lot of excitement. People are very keen and committed to make a difference and I think if they see this thing done well, it can have a material impact on how things are done, it will help common people have their aspirations, empower them. There is a huge bubbling young population, written about in a book, is yearning for future.
Sonia Singh- Nandan you are also a movie buff. You like the movies of that time Deewar and all we talked about. The change now with the movies like Chak de and Slumdog Millionaire, what's the kind of genre movies which you think represent the new India. What do you think symbolises the India today. You are talking about India in Flux.
Nandan Nilekani- I think its the India of aspiration which Jaideep captures very well in his movies. It's about the fact that this huge young bubbling population is exposed to media, TV and wants a better life and it's straining and growing against the older system and its really the intergenerational kind of battle which is going on. And i see this project as something which will help those young aspirational people move ahead in life.
Sonia Singh- Thank you so much for joining us on Your Call and we are really interested in your project.
Nandan Nilekani- Thank You.
Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
