ID, therefore I146;m not

That is, more than hire and fire provisions the counterpart of Chapter V-B of our Industrial Disputes Act, it was deviations from minimum wage and other social security norms, absence of unionisation, lack of inspection and lower procedural and compliance costs in general that drove growth. It is a separate matter that China has now from January 1 2008 tightened up labour laws to grant workers more rights. Coincidentally, the PM returns from China on January 15, the day Delhi8217;s LG lieutenant governor originally proposed to introduce the mandatory requirement of carrying ID cards.

We love this idea of controlling 8216;suspected persons8217; and their movements, enshrined partly in the hukou concept. Read Sections 109 and 110 of the Criminal Procedure Code CrPC, under which cops indiscriminately pick up 8216;suspicious8217; people, invariably, but not always, the poor. Read Surjit Singh Barnala8217;s Story of an Escape: Barnala, then CM of Punjab, vanished incognito for a few days and was picked up under these sections in UP. The history of such legislation goes back to English workhouses, where able-bodied vagrants were picked up and forced to work. And we carry these legacies not just in CrPC, but also in statutes like Delhi Police Act. Had one gone ahead with the hare-brained idea, these statutes, and perhaps the Foreigners Act, would have been used.

There is an extremely valid argument for introducing a multi-purpose identity card throughout India. For instance, Kelkar Task Forces on tax reforms and fiscal consolidation also recommended this. Other than security, this enables targeted delivery of public services, incorporation of subsidies and prevention of leakage. Technology also permits use of biometry. How can social security for the unorganised sector be delivered in the absence of identity cards? In the absence of an India-based ID, we fall back on PAN cards, passports, driving licenses, ration cards, voter cards and in Delhi8217;s original proposal, IDs issued by recognised companies. The point is a simple one. How many of the poor have access to such IDs? PAN cards aren8217;t IDs for everyone and never will be. For argument8217;s sake, what happens if Delhi cops confront someone from Sikkim? Those who live in Sikkim don8217;t pay income tax. Ipso facto, they can8217;t be issued PAN cards and for Delhi police purposes, may well be treated as foreigners. Why haven8217;t we gone ahead with the idea of all-India IDs? And when we do, we should make access to IDs sufficiently easy for the poor and reduce multiplicity. How easy is it for the poor, who don8217;t typically have access to gazetted officers, to obtain ration cards or open bank accounts? Why can8217;t issue of IDs be bundled with other schemes like say NREGA National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, so that the poor are not exposed to monopolies in issuing, with all the attendant problems of bribery and harassment? Has there been an attempt to incentivise demand for IDs, so that these costs are less than perceived benefits?

Delhi isn8217;t to India what Texas is to the US. Imposing mandatory IDs in Delhi, when we don8217;t have a pan-India one, has doubtful legal validity. Why did this become an issue in the first place? One isn8217;t convinced that security was the concern. Recently, a newsmagazine reported how it had driving licenses issued in the names of the president, PM and a former president from UP. These were genuine licenses, not counterfeit ones, with respective claimants never having stepped inside the premises of the concerned RTO. Delhi isn8217;t remarkably different. Delhi8217;s RTO isn8217;t much better, which is perhaps the reason why DDA no longer accepts driving licenses issued in Delhi as valid proof of identity. A TV channel obtained a ration card, PAN card, voter ID, birth certificate and passport for Anand Gupta in 45 days and Anand Gupta was a completely fictitious person, existing on paper. The driving license cost Rs 2,500, ration card Rs 800, income certificate Rs 1,700, birth certificate Rs 3,000, PAN card Rs 79 and tenancy proof for residence in Delhi Rs 14,000. For roughly Rs 35,000, one had the whole works of establishing identity. Those who wish to commit breaches of security are rarely impoverished and have the means to establish identity, since the system is rife with corruption. And those who are poor don8217;t possess legal identity at all.

That8217;s the reason security was a red herring. At the core of the hair-brained scheme was the hukou concept of keeping out the poor and migrants, since they were the ones who wouldn8217;t have legal identity. Think of the numbers involved. Out of Delhi8217;s population of 15 million all numbers depend on the year and are often estimates, 5 million are migrants and only 6 million have some valid ID. Eighty per cent of Delhi8217;s income now comes from the tertiary sector and around 80 per cent of this is from the informal economy, where no form of legal identity exists. Sixty-seven per cent of Delhi8217;s employment originates in the informal economy. The answer to solving Delhi8217;s and India8217;s urban planning and other policy problems isn8217;t in keeping the informal economy out, or in legitimising it overnight through the stroke of a legislator8217;s pen. The legislator8217;s pen only increases scope for bribery and harassment. Instead, one reduces costs for formalisation and increases incentives. Mandatory IDs would have served no purpose.

The writer is a noted economist bdebroygmail.com