Aadhar, Part 1: The Lego Block


The story behind why Aadhar was launched is well known. Sonia Gandhi wanted a system that would enable subsidies to reach the people, ergo a unique identity for everyone. She brought in Nandan Nilekani, who demanded a cabinet minister post, so he would have the clout and power with the different ministries and bureaucrats he knew he’d have run-ins with.

The book, The Aadhar Effect, describes the two options Nilekani had: build a pipe, or build a platform. But, first here’s the difference between the two options:
“In the pipe model, value gets created at one end (by the producers) and it gets consumed at the other end (by the users)… A platform, on the other hand, just attracts producers and consumers to it, and enables transactions between them.”
YouTube, Uber and Facebook are platforms. See what a platform can do?
“Platforms can scale up… (they) can cater to a range of services… Platforms can nurture diversity… (They) can gain momentum very fast… (And they) can dramatically change the industries they operate in.”

Nilekani comes from Infosys/software/Bangalore. No wonder then he chose the platform model for Aadhar:
“Nilekani said that when they were building Aadhar, they took GPS and the Internet as inspirations.”
Huh? Like GPS and the Internet, he intended to build a system that could be used in ways unimaginable at conception. And so here’s how Aadhar was designed:
  1.  A Lego block: “Not a solution by itself” but “one piece in a larger system”, as “something that can accelerate a solution”;
  2. One job only: It provides you with an identity. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t prove citizenship, it doesn’t entitle you to anything;
  3. Ensure uniqueness: Hence biometrics. Of all ten fingers. And retina;
  4. Incentives driven: It makes itself appealing to so many possibilities, thereby attracting more uses, and thus users. In fact:

“It does nothing by itself. (People) would see the value only when it was used in solutions.”

This was the very opposite of how a government operates: policies and schemes are never open-ended, let alone this open-ended! There is no one future that must play out in such a model, but there are endless possibilities.

The Congress (UPA 2) had initiated the project for one purpose only: to enable subsidies to reach those it was meant for. The BJP expanded the scope to more and more areas, starting with the financial sector:
“The difference between Congress and BJP was not just about scope but also about speed.”
Intentionally or not, Modi was deploying Aadhar the way it was designed. What would it all lead to?

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