Identity woes: Its the execution, stupid!

Time and again in this country we see political and bureaucratic herd (not class) keep talking about making some sort of identity checks. We have seen some talk after Delhi blast, some talk after Bangalore blasts, some talk of after the bought old bi-cycles used in the bomb blasts in Jaipur and other places.

Now the new one is for issuing the new SIM cards. The current mechanism of identify check is completely in the hands of the Telephone companies and they knowingly let the rules break.

Here is the new attempt of the Government (see article) to solve the problem:

"In its efforts to check the use of mobile phones in terror activities, the Ministry of Home Affairs is likely to advice the Department of Telecommunication to direct all mobile phone operators to get two existing cellular customers as guarantors before issuing SIM card to new customers. ... The Ministry is likely to suggest the DoT to come out with a guidelines that makes it mandatory for SIM card vendors to take instant photograph of new customers, sources said"

The problem with the above approach is in the implementation. Banks might be able to do things over the time, but the Telecom industry is growing much faster than the banking industry in terms of number of connections. Also the banks have a better and powerful regulator in the name of RBI.

I suggest a slightly different approach:

1. Today new connection seeker will need to give Photo Identify Proof: Let us add that user will need to give a recent photograph also. Just like a bank account.

2. Today user will need to give Address proof. No change in that.

These two are sufficient to come up with a noval scheme of things to make sure the new SIM is reached to the right person.

First, the SIM and/or an activation code is not directly handed over and but sent to the person to the given address in a speed/register post. That way the address can not be fake. Banks already follow similar process to dispatch credit cards, ATM and other PIN.

Second, let the Telecom company print the photograph of the person next to the address on the speed/register post envelope. Let the post man check the identity of the person to ensure it is delivered to right person. Today post man's already check for identity for delivering important docs like passports. This is not a big deal for the post-man.

Third, let the activation code expire every six months and make it mandatory for Telecom company to send the activation code in the same process described earlier.

This way the identity of the person and the address can be ensured that it is not fake. Also, you will be promoting the Department of Posts and can earn premium money for this service. And the Telecoms probably going to raise the same old pitch "this will cause inconvenience to the users, make them less effective since they have wait for a day-or-two for the phone activation", I would just tell them that this world existed and worked equally effective even before the cell phone was invented. A person waiting for a day-or-two will not make any significant loss to this world.


Hope some political/bureaucratic herd is reading this!