Info 202 F12

In the Indian nation of more than a billion people with more than seventy percent being rural population , a 

complex governance structure of shared power between a central,state,local governments and government agencies , effective governance presents a challenging problem. The identity of an Indian citizen is 

distributed across the hundreds of disparate organizing systems. The information is often duplicated across 

different agencies and there is no common way to tie all the information together , a big hurdle for effective 

governance.The need for "The discipline of organizing" lead to an initiative called "AADHAR" by the "Unique 

Identification Authority of India(UIDAI)" , a vision to create a "Unique Identification Number?(UID)" for every 

Indian citizen which would be linked to demographic and bio-metric information of each individual. The information would be maintained in a central database and every citizen would be given an unique identification which is independent of social status,gender or any other attributes of the citizen. The UID project has enrolled 200 million from 2009 and is slated to hit the 400 million mark by end of this year. This has been possible with a significant investment of resources and buy in from government and private agencies. The UID initiative though on paper a voluntary process is being advocated by government agencies that have partnered with the UID team to mandate the possession of a UID number. 

The initiative will help the government and citizens alike. The impact on rural India would be immense. The UID for many would serve as a first means of  identification do not yet have any form of identification making them eligible for benefits through government schemes. For instance, the article observes that most worker class are migrants and a uniform identification system would ensure that benefits would reach the people without corruption or lack of identity coming in between people and the benefits they are entitled to. The government would be able to execute policies in a better way and ensure they reach the people. The benefit is also uniformity of information retrieval across systems through a common identifier - the UID. Government and private agencies could integrate their database with the UID. There are concerns raised on the accuracy of data collected and the privacy issues that come with it which are polarizing and not inclusive in nature. The author calls for an inclusive approach given the potential of the initiative to ensure governance.

The article also discusses "AADHAR" as a case of corporate expertise meets governance. The initiative is headed by one of the most successful corporate czars , Nandan Nilekani. The success of the initiative would inspire more individuals from the industry to cross over to governance. A trend of this kind would bring corporate vision and expertise to governance. This would help bridge the gap that exists in professionalism in a government run initiative increasing the chances of success. The project due its massive scale does have imperfections but the author calls for positive outlook towards the project in view of the value it will create for the nation. The positive outlook and intellectual debate on how to make the project better would only mitigate the anomalies in the project. 

From an information organization standpoint ,  this article discusses various aspects of organizing systems in 

terms of what is being organized and most importantly why it being organized. The organizing is being done with clear social and institutional goals. The organizing activity is being shaped by corporate expertise and been given impetus by private and government players assisting in the activity. This establishes the fact that information organization is interdisciplinary in nature with generic organization principles - an abstraction presented by the Information organization and retrieval course.