India to give 600M people ID numbers

NEW DELHI, March 28 (UPI) -- The Indian government says it hopes assigning 600 million of its people a 16-digit identification number will help get food and government services to the poor.

At the same time, the government hopes the identity project will cut corruption in a country where officials often plug fake names into welfare databases to steal money that's supposed to go to the poor, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

By preventing thefts, the system will save $4 billion a year, the government said.

"It has the potential to plug the hole in the leaking bucket that delivers government services and benefits to the poor," said Bibek Debroy, an economist at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. "The current identity databases are not clean and have many fake names and addresses and duplication."

Government officials said the move will also bring more people into the banking system, increasing the number of people paying the country's 5 percent income tax.

The 600 million Indians are to get their identification number by 2014 in the project's first phase. Fingerprints and iris scans are to be done within eight years.

Voting, income tax and passport databases are now kept by different departments, which rarely share information, the Post said.

Some critics don't like the identification system idea.

"We do not want an intrusive, surveillance state in India," said Usha Ramanathan, a lawyer who has written and lobbied against the project. "Information about people will be shared with intelligence agencies, banks and companies, and we will have no idea how our information is interpreted and used."