Until some months ago, a resident of a poor neighborhood in New Delhi, college student Ashok Kumar, 21, faced a problem. With no identification such as a passport or a driving license, mobile phone operators refused to give him a number.Ignoring the headline, the article is a solid summary of the program and the benefits it aspires to confer.
That changed when Kumar was issued a 12-digit number as part of an ambitious project to give every Indian citizen a biometric identity.
He says with this number as proof of his identity, he was issued a mobile phone number. He has opened a bank account. And when he traveled to Bangalore recently, he showed his biometric number when asked to prove his identity.
But for now, UID only has a mandate for enrolling 200 million people. Given India's population, and assuming the use of plain language, it's hard to square the headline's assertion that UID is required — although it is obviously highly desirable to many people such as Mr. Kumar.
Perhaps it should be required. Perhaps it will eventually be required. Perhaps the headline writer is conflating the census with UID. Perhaps it's a far more mundane mistake. But it's hard to see how UID enrollment is required at the present.
Anyway, it's probably just a mistake. The article itself is quite good.
