2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(2) than human rights or development 91 — thus undermining the promised cost savings of digital ID. 92 One frequently cited example of the benefits of leapfrogging the overlong process of civil registration is the Indian Aadhaar (‘foundation’) program, established in 2009, which issues a 12-digit unique identity number to any resident of India, after collecting biometric data and other basic information. 93 As of 2019, 95 per cent of adults and 75 per cent of children in India — more than 1.2 billion people — had been issued an Aadhaar number. 94 The Aadhaar register provides a short cut to proof of individual identity, concentrating only on uniqueness and not on other elements of identity; it seeks to sidestep difficult questions around determination of eligibility for citizenship, and bypasses the National Register of Citizens and national identity card proposed since 2003. 95 The Aadhaar approach is favoured by the World Bank, and promoted elsewhere (for example in West Africa). 96 However, even as biometric registration programmes proceed apace, enrolment into new national registers has in other countries not been delinked from nationality. The legislation establishing national identity registers generally requires governments to record legal status — as citizen or alien — as part of the registration process, even if it also authorises the collection of biometric data (not always the case, even if biometric data is being collected). As these programmes are rolled out they are often accompanied by a strong assertion of biometric registration as a necessary component of national security, providing a ‘single source of truth’ for all personal data (a term derived from information systems design), to be certain that citizens are clearly distinguished from foreigners, and to eliminate fraudulent acquisition of documents and access to the benefits and rights granted to citizens. 97 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 Mushtaq Khan and Pallavi Roy, Digital Identities: A Political Settlements Analysis of Asymmetric Power and Information (Working Paper No 15, Anti-Corruption Evidence Research Consortium School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, October 2019) <https://ace.soas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ACE-WorkingPaper015DigitalIdentities-191004.pdf>. Julia Clark, Public Sector Savings and Revenue from Identification Systems: Opportunities and Constraints (Report, World Bank 2018) <http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/745871522848339938/Public-Sector-Savingsand-Revenue-from-Identification-Systems-Opportunities-and-Constraints.pdf>; Olivia White et al, Digital Identification: A Key to Inclusive Growth (Report, McKinsey Global Institute 17 April 2019) <https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinseydigital/our-insights/digital-identification-a-key-to-inclusive-growth>. Vivek Raghavan, Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, ‘India Stack — Digital Infrastructure as Public Good’ (2019) 62(11) Communications of the ACM 76. State of Aadhaar: A People’s Perspective (Report, Dalberg and Omidyar Network India 2019) (‘State of Aadhaar: A People’s Perspective’). See below n 106. Srijoni Sen, A Decade of Aadhaar: Lessons in Implementing a Foundational ID System (ORF Issue Brief No 292, Observer Research Foundation May 2019) <https://www.orfonline.org/research/a-decade-of-aadhaar-lessons-in-implementing-afoundational-id-system-50464/>. ‘West Africa Unique Identification for Regional Integration and Inclusion (WURI) Project’, World Bank (Web Page) <https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/projectdetail/P161329>. See, eg, Robert Mugo, Ministry of Information Communications and Technology, Kenya, ‘Kenya National Integrated Identity Management Systems (NIIMS)’ (Conference Presentation, ID4Africa Conference, 18 June 2019) <https://www.id4africa.com/2019_event/presentations/PS1/2-Robert-Mugo-Kenya.pdf>; for a summary of the issues in Kenya, see Varun Baliga, ‘Kenya’s Huduma Namba: Ambition Fraught with Risk’, Ikigai Law (Web Page, 22 April 2020) <https://www.ikigailaw.com/kenyas-huduma-namba-ambition-fraught-with-risk/>. 264