No unique IDs

In my microfinance class, the Professor mentioned that Indians do not have unique IDs. I was surprised to hear this, and immediately turned to my classmate sitting next to me and asked, "But don't people have birth certificates?" He replied no - and noted that he does not even have one!

I have never really thought about what having our social security numbers and birth certificates in the U.S. really facilitates. But it does so much in terms of social services, banking, loans, taxes and government assistance. Without unique IDs, not only is it difficult for India to provide any of the services mentioned, it must be really hard to grasp where and what India's true population is. More importantly, with an estimated 456 million in poverty, poverty alleviation is difficult - for example, banks need it to open savings accounts.

Since the India telecom market was liberalized very recently (in 1991), the closest thing to a unique ID that most Indians have are actually their cell phone numbers. Up until then, getting a landline phone seemed to be the only option, and it was extremely expensive. I even heard from class discussions that getting a phone line for a family member was considered a really good gift because of the time and expense involved. There are "benefits to coming late to the game," I read somewhere - must have been my Economics of Urbanization class. Meaning, because India never really had the infrastructure for landline phones, cell phone were able to take off very quickly.

The Microfinance class discussion continued to the fact that the political party in power had recently hoped to implement unique IDs to all Indians, but had not yet started to do so. But at a cursory glance though, the logistics of this seem so daunting - to find each and every Indian!

In a separate conversation, I learned that Indian taxes also have an April 15 deadline, like the U.S. But that this deadline is "open to negotiation" - meaning that nationally it usually gets pushed to May, June. I must have become used to the negotiating culture of India, because I wasn't surprised to hear that at all :)