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other hand, was designed purely as a number for identity, carrying no information on the holder’s citizenship status. The UIDAI had also got off to a faster start than the home ministry; by the time Aadhaar enrolments had begun, the Registrar General of India (RGI) had only carried out a few pilot studies for the NPR. Even so, the idea that two separate government agencies would collect the biometric details of all Indian residents for two separate schemes was seen as a waste of government money by the Department of Expenditure in the Ministry of Finance.
    Given the overlap between the two projects, the home ministry wanted the UIDAI to stop enrolling residents, and instead act as a back-end organization, collecting and sharing all data with the NPR. The RGI and the home ministry felt that they were the agencies responsible for running any sort of identity scheme, and that the UIDAI was an unwelcome intruder into their turf, thus rousing their protectionist instincts. Eventually, a consensus was reached and the RGI agreed to become a registrar of UIDAI, in effect enrolling residents for the Aadhaar number. The government directed the UIDAI to carry out enrolment in half the states of India and the RGI in the other half. The software of the UIDAI and the NPR were also made compatible so that the data collected for Aadhaar could also be used by the NPR. This détente proved beneficial to both the projects, and nearly a fourth of all those who have received an Aadhaar number have been enrolled by the RGI. 9 Despite initialopposition, the then home minister P. Chidambaram was later quoted as saying that Aadhaar was a tool of empowerment for ‘those at the bottom of the pyramid, the poor, the migrant workers, the homeless and the oppressed’. 10

    The next speed bump centred around the UIDAI’s decision to use biometric authentication, specifically the use of iris scans. The Planning Commission formally raised the issue of whether the additional expenditure of capturing the iris data was justified.. 11 Expert members of the Biometric Standards Committee constituted by the UIDAI had suggested that fingerprint data alone would not be robust enough on which to base the promise of 1.2 billion unique identities. Fingerprints can wear out due to physical labour and are unstable in the case of children younger than sixteen. On the other hand, iris patterns are nearly fully developed at the time of birth and remain constant throughout an individual’s life. Despite what we may have seen in the movies, it is very difficult to duplicate someone’s iris, and multiple international security systems (such as border control and immigration) routinely capture iris data for security purposes.
    Given all these benefits, a cost analysis was performed by the UIDAI. Capturing and de-duplicating iris data was found to increase the cost of each enrolment by around Rs 4.40. Of this additional sum, the capture device cost Rs 2.90 while the additional labour as well as the iris de-duplication software cost 75 paise each. These numbers were projected to decrease as enrolments went up. The overall increase in the project cost was estimated at Rs 5 billion, an expenditure justified by the massive improvements in inclusiveness and data security that iris data can bring about. 12
    It wasn’t just the government that raised objections to Aadhaar. Concerns about national security led some people to protest on the grounds that any resident of India could enrol for Aadhaar, even non-citizens; they were apprehensive that illegal immigrants could use their Aadhaar number to bilk the government of funds by claiming social security benefits. These fears are not grounded in reality. As we’ve pointed out before, Aadhaar is purely an identity platform, and provides no information other than verifying who someone is. Itoffers no information on the citizenship status of the Aadhaar holder, and merely furnishing your Aadhaar number is not sufficient to get any