Column: Taking stock of population, but for what?

The idea of a national population register (NPR) isn?t new. It has been floating around since the multipurpose national identity card (MNIC) idea was proposed in 2002 along with the subsequent amendment of the Citizenship Act (and rules), which provides mandatory registration and provision of identity cards. Subsequently, in 2009, MNIC was subsumed and overtaken by Nandan Nilekani?s national unique identity (NUID). The advantages of NPR and NUID are obvious.

First, e-governance can improve, subsidies targeted better and leakage reduced in the public delivery of goods and services. Second, eliminating the need for multiple identity proofs can slash transaction costs, which are often not distributionally neutral since they hurt the poor more. Therefore, reduced transaction costs also help in curbing exclusion. Third, security concerns become easier to address, including concerns connected with illegal migration. As Nandan Nilekani has often said, these objectives require laying a complete pipeline where NUID is only the first length of pipe. For instance, NUID will provide a 16-digit identity numbers to all residents, not all Indians. It will not issue cards. It will not identify below poverty line (BPL) households for us. How it takes off is contingent on how much demand there is, and this is also relevant for inclusiveness. On NUID, there are some immediate concerns, like the right to privacy and individual security, or supply-side systemic problems on biometry delivery and reading.

The Cabinet has now approved the creation of NPR to complement NUID. Now we are talking about several different lengths of pipe. First, there is NUID for residents, and this includes citizens and non-citizens. At some stage, someone (home ministry?) has to take a call on who the citizens are. That?s a political hot potato, but it isn?t an issue that can be ducked. Once that is done, we can have a national register for Indian citizens and another national register for non-citizens, both issued with multi-purpose national identity cards. Once that is done, citizens can be divided into BPL and APL. That?s a political hot potato, too, and someone (rural development ministry?) will have to take a call on identifying the poor. It cannot be the Planning Commission because the National Sample Survey (NSS) will not be acceptable. Apart from other reservations, it is a sample, not a census. In July 2009, in the President?s address to Parliament, which is like the new National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) for UPA-2, the government effectively opted for the decentralised identification of BPL. While these principles are clear, there doesn?t seem to be great deal of clarity on what is going on. At one point, the home minister gave us the impression that NPR would be spliced with Census 2011. That is, the Registrar General of India will develop NPR with more fields than those in NUID, and NPR would then be sent to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI) to eliminate multiplicity. Therefore, by 2011-12, we should be in a position to resolve the citizen/non-citizen issue, though not the BPL/APL one.

The new Cabinet approval suggests a different route. We won?t wait for Census 2011. Instead, NPR will effectively be independent of the census and this seems to be a take-off on the pilot projects undertaken for MNIC by the home ministry. For instance, data has been collected on some coastal states and union territories. There will also be a House Listing and Housing Census from April to September 2010, followed by Census 2011, canvassing information on NPR. To make things fuzzier, NPR will list ?usual residents?, not residents. That information, with biometric information, will be placed in the public domain for raising objections, including by third parties. There is a decentralised vetting idea there, too, through gram sabhas and local bodies. While it is clear how this will work for rural India (assuming gram sabhas meet), it is not quite obvious how one makes it workable in urban areas, with large chunks of casual and unskilled migration.

Interestingly, no one seems to trust the electoral database. Looked at differently, the MNIC/UID/NPR idea originally emanated from two different sources?security/illegal migration and targeting (subsidies) and delivery of public goods and services. The former is the home ministry?s turf (less so MEA) and the latter, the Planning Commission/rural development ministry?s turf. Though UIAI is located in the Planning Commission, the latter idea of targeting subsidies seems to be stuck, with four different sets (Planning Commission, Arjun Sengupta, Suresh Tendulkar and NC Saxena) of poverty numbers floating around. But with the new home minister, the ministry seems to have woken from its somnolence and that?s one way to interpret what is going on. There is no monolithic, homogenous and cohesive government. Instead, there are several different government ministries and departments, often wishing to pass the hot potato around. With some ministries more interested than others, little bits of the jigsaw are falling into place.

The author is a noted economist