India : A failure of management -- Aadhar
The failure of Nandan Nilekani and the UIDAI to introduce the Aadhar card into the the mainstream of India's economic life is one more example of management failure in India. What is most frustrating in the case of Aadhar was that there was a clear need for Aadhar, patterned on the US Social Security Number, and the biometric technology was very much in place to uniquely identify each "warm body" and connect him or her to a unique number. Yet we failed - Why ? Let us study this in a little detail and then try to generalise the same for other similar projects across the country. I believe that Aadhar failed because of a combination of one or more of the following reasons : In general Indians are suspicious of and reluctant to adopt new practices. Starting from social mores like homosexuality and inter-caste marriages to business practices like insisting on revenue stamps and stamp paper for legitimizing contracts or looking for three (possibly dummy) tenders for eve...