The rollout of India’s new biometric identification system is not without problems as outlined in a story in The Wall Street Journal Friday.
One of the biggest reasons there are still issues with the biometric IDs–which are already being used widely to distribute subsidies for food and fuel–is the sheer scale of Aadhaar.
Here are a few of the numbers that point to the size of the program which is leading to the problems.
1.1 BILLION
The number of Aadhaar cards issued. Enrollment started in 2009, and now the system can process 1.5 million applications a day. That still leaves out about 150 million Indians without cards.
86%
The percentage of all Indians who hold Aadhaar cards. For those older than 18 the percentage is 99.5%. Most of those left out are infants, because fingerprint recognition isn’t reliable until a certain age. Still the government has already started to assigning numbers to newborns.
15 MILLION
The number of transactions per day involving Aadhaar. That is a five-fold rise from a year ago when there were 3 million a day.
4 BILLION
The total number of times the Aadhaar system has been used so far for authentication and identification.
377 MILLION
Number of Aadhaar number linked to bank accounts. Going forward, the connection to bank accounts will make transactions smoother and allow bank clients to move funds just by using their fingertips.
Source: India’s Massive Aadhaar Biometric Identification Program – The Numbers – Briefly – WSJ
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