Massive Biometric Project Gives Millions of Indians an ID

(upbeat techno music)

The idea that the government is scanning

the fingerprints and irises of every single

person in the country.

You tell that to people in America

and they're horrified.

To us it sounds like 1984

meets Minority Report.

But no one was worried about that in any

of the enrollment centers that I went to.

The thing is, so many people there are invisible

in a way that's hard to imagine

in the first world.

There's literally no record of their existence.

They can't prove when they were born,

who their parents are, whether they're citizens.

To those people there's a tremendous upside

to getting an official ID.

Part of why they're so accepting too

is that a lot of them barely understand

what's going on.

These are slum dwellers,

rural farmers, people who have zero experience

with this kind of technology.

Of course there are plenty of educated,

urban types in India who are concerned about

the civil liberties implications of all this,

as they should be.

The Aadaar program

could do a lot of good for India,

but it could also be very bad news

for the rights of individual Indians.

(upbeat techno music)