I am delighted that the Parliament has passed the law to give legislative framework for the Aadhaar project. This law has launched a revolution which will transform India in many ways.
The legal framework for reforming subsidies given by central and state governments will help eliminate huge wastage in these subsidies. It will eliminate fraud and wastage, saving thousands of crores to the exchequer.
The money saved can be used for productive purposes to battle the major problems of the common man like poverty, illiteracy and disease.
There is overwhelming support in Parliament for the idea of a unique ID, which is reflective of the political consensus on Aadhaar. The UPA government had the vision to envisage the need for a national unique identity number to all residents for effective delivery of subsidies and other government services.
It was very gracious of the UPA government to invite me to head the project. They gave me full professional autonomy and independence to design the Unique Identity for every Indian resident.
By the time I moved out of the Authority, there were 600 million people to whom Aadhaar numbers had been issued. I am very happy that in a couple of weeks, the number will touch 1 billion Aadhaar numbers issued.
The initiative of the UPA government has been carried forward by the NDA government with a strong legislation. So it is a truly bipartisan initiative.
The government will now be able to expand the subsidy transfer in all areas like LPG, Kerosene, fertilizer, food, water, electricity, interest subvention etc.
The Aadhaar legislation will fundamentally reform the way the government functions.
The government has come up with JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar, Mobile) for direct transfer of benefits.
Using the ‘India Stack’ which is a set of programming interfaces based on Aadhaar, we will be able to reimagine all our systems to be cashless, paperless, and presence less.
This will transform the way government and business is done in the country. Ease of doing business will become a reality with the India Stack. A new delivery platform for giving credit at scale will spur economic growth.
Even as Aadhaar legislation has been approved, we are seeing comprehensive reforms in other areas. The guidelines on net neutrality by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the permission for starting of 21 new banks by the Reserve Bank of India and SEBI simplifying process so that people can buy Mutual Fund online are all part of the fundamental scaffolding for reforms and ubiquitous access to all.
The law approved by Parliament is robust and vigorous. It protects the privacy of the individual and has taken important inputs from the Justice A P Shah Committee report on Privacy Legislation, as far as Aadhaar is concerned.
Of course, the other privacy concerns in areas like telecom and health will have to be addressed by a comprehensive law on privacy. I am delighted that Parliament has put its seal of approval of a legislation which will help every Indian in multiple ways, as well as transform the governance and economy of India.
(Nandan Nilekani was the first chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which undertook the world's largest ever unique individual identity programme. He is also a co-founder of Infosys and was its Chief Executive Officer. )
