From its humble beginning 12 years back, Aadhaar has now become almost ubiquitous as an enabler in residents’ daily lives.
The 12-digit Digital ID has been facilitating residents to avail benefits and unlock values while interacting as beneficiaries, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs with various stake holders.
Aadhaar, held by almost one-sixth of the population of the world, residing in India, is the foundation of India’s digital democracy. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has enrolled more than 1.34 billion residents so far and authenticated them more than 82 billion times!
The scale and facilities, facilitated through Aadhaar are unheard of in the entire world. In several sectors, ranging from banking to education, ration to pension, Aadhaar is now a tool to empower residents.
The core strength of Aadhaar is its ability to be authenticated anytime, and from anywhere. This completely digital and portable nature of Aadhaar makes it a ready candidate for an enormous number of applications and use-cases. The economic and financial landscapes are being revolutionised by the rapid and continuous breakthroughs in technology, which more often than not, are disruptive with immense long-term potential to benefit the society at large.
Just not in India, Aadhaar is garnering global applause for how it is facilitating a digital revolution. Several multilateral agencies and countries are looking upto Aadhaar, and how it is aiding inclusive economic growth in India. International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently underlined how India Stack, of which Aadhaar is a key component, is revolutionalising access to finance.
Just take the example of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS), that is playing a stellar role for financial inclusion at the bottom of the income pyramid. Cumulatively, almost 15.5 billion last mile banking transaction numbers have been made possible through the use of AEPS and the network of micro ATMs by the end of September 2022.
In September alone, over 252 million e-KYC transactions were executed via Aadhaar, almost 7.7% jump in such transactions when compared with August. An e-KYC transaction is done, only with the explicit consent of the Aadhaar holder, and eliminates physical paperwork, and in-person verification requirement for KYC.
Aadhaar e-KYC service is increasingly playing a crucial role for banking and non-banking financial services by providing better and transparent customer experience, and ease of doing business.
Aadhaar is the digital backbone for good governance, social welfare, accountability and transparency. From aiding elderly to get their pension via face authentication to enabling the fintech sector offer services to residents with ease, Aadhaar is quintessentially making residents life better. Not to forget, how Aadhaar played an important role in the COWIN platform, and in the transparent execution of the Covid-19 vaccination drive run by the Government of India during the pandemic.
Digitization of governance brings about efficiency, transparency, and accountability, and Aadhaar is one of the best showpieces of digital infrastructure for promoting digital governance. Here, it is important to underline that Aadhaar has been playing a crucial role in bridging the digital divide and saving public money. Aadhaar and DBT jointly have helped in saving over Rs. 2.2 trillion to the government exchequer by the end of 31 March 2021 by curbing leakages and improving efficiency.
From reuniting family members missing for years, to becoming a preferred financial address, Aadhaar digital backbone is supporting flagship government schemes, programs, and initiatives like PDS, MGNREGA, PM KISAN, UPI, e-KYC, e-Shram, Jeevan Pramaan, and several other schemes run smoothly.
Aadhaar as a robust digital ID solution, acts as a non-invasive tool of inclusive good governance. It has a multilayered secure architecture and attaches highest importance to safety and security of residents’ information. UIDAI has put together state-of-the-art techniques and technological advancements in Information Security, and conceptualized models and frameworks to explore some of the best ways to protect the integrity of the system. UIDAI also ensures continued adherence and compliance to the best practices in security by Aadhaar ecosystem partners through regular security audits of the partner infrastructure and processes.
As part of Aadhaar 2.0, UIDAI is working on several new initiatives, and one of them is to help residents use Aadhaar voluntarily for availing multiple services of their choice, a move that would expand usage of Aadhaar and support ease of living further. This initiative leverages three existing Aadhaar components – Offline KYC Verification, Local Face Matching and mAadhaar Application to unlock new user experiences. The guiding principles of these initiatives are – simplicity in usage for the residents, respecting the privacy of every individual, and empowering resident to share their information voluntarily to transact and avail a host of services of their choice.
The decade gone by has been highly eventful for Aadhaar. UIDAI has rolled out the largest, sophisticated, and one of its kind in the world. Digital Identity program has allied the fears of skeptics. However, the future holds more promise for Aadhaar and UIDAI.