Reliably proving your identity becomes very important in India due to the vastness of the population and the number of subsidies earmarked for the under-privileged. Subsidies aside, reliably identifying someone guarantees their right to suffrage. Umpteen columns of newsprint are devoted each election year to voter fraud - people go to their designated election office to cast their vote but are turned away because they have "already voted". Having a reliable way to identify an individual will reduce the occurrence of these activities, if not totally eliminate them.
I have railed about the corruption in India in earlier posts and comments. That the government has green-lighted a project that leverages India's strength in IT to actually help its citizens is a departure from the norm, and is worth lauding. It remains to be seen if this will actually be implemented once the current government's term runs out.
I was speaking to the broad generalization of JumpCrisscross who said that "Every government" needs to do this, for the sake of good democracy and social services. I disputed that broad generalization. Nothing I wrote should be construed to apply specifically for or against India.
As to voter fraud, of that I know only about the US. There is a handful of voter fraud in the US, and almost no in-person voter fraud at all[1]. What fraud there is is mostly via the absentee ballot. We had a long history of election fraud and vote rigging in the US, but little of that was due to the inability to reliably prove one's identity.
([1] When you vote, you sign your name to a registry, which is publicly reviewable. This biometric identifier is sufficient to detect, after the fact, if there is significant in-person fraud. This has not been demonstrated, despite a strong desire by some to show that it exists.)
I have railed about the corruption in India in earlier posts and comments. That the government has green-lighted a project that leverages India's strength in IT to actually help its citizens is a departure from the norm, and is worth lauding. It remains to be seen if this will actually be implemented once the current government's term runs out.