Onus of ensuring inclusion of all citizens in welfare schemes on governments: Experts Premium

At the Trustworthy digital identity international conference by International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore and Alan Turing Institute, experts highlighted the need for inclusion being the northstar while designing a universal digital ID system.

About two weeks ago, in a report prepared for G20 prior to the Leaders’ Summit, the World Bank praised the way India harnessed the power of digital public infrastructure such as Aadhaar and UPI to improve financial inclusion and delivery of public goods and services. 

The report which was part of G20’s financial inclusion action plan for 2024-2026 shaped under India’s presidency also mentioned other digital ID systems such as Singapore’s Singpass, Philippines’ PhilSys, and UAE’s UAE-Pass.

With more than 1.3 billion registered users, Aadhaar is the largest national biometric digital identification programme in the world. Modular Open-Source Identity Platform (MOSIP), a digital identity platform developed by the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIITB) has been working on a project to provide digital identities similar to Aadhaar in nine countries including the Philippines, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Ethiopia, Republic of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and Togolese Republic.  

While India’s digital transformation has achieved huge strides in financial inclusion, the system is not entirely foolproof yet. The twin aims of Aadhaar have been eliminating corruption from the system and inclusion of the underprivileged and weakest sections of society through proof of identity for every citizen.  

However, cases of people being excluded from welfare schemes due to failure of authentication or lack of documents like Aadhaar still continue. The onus of fixing it always falls on the citizens, and experts have been pointing out how problematic it is.  

“A person’s unique ID is the coming together of their history, the history of a larger administrative system, and various other aspects. That’s why people’s vulnerabilities around IDs are also very unique,” said Dr. Janaki Srinivasan, Associate Professor, IIIT-B. She was part of a panel on ‘Digital divides and inclusion’ at the Trustworthy digital identity international conference by IIITB and The Alan Turing Institute. 

“The story we often hear is that when people have multiple IDs it is to make wrong use of the available benefits. But what we found in our research was that in some cases it was simply a way of coping,” said Dr. Janaki, citing the example of women who had to move from their native place after marriage.