India wants to know the people who live in the country; that is to say, identifying them not merely as statistics, but as unique individuals.

It makes sense. There is no single, nationally recognised identification system in India and the myriad process used by states and various government agencies, which are not always transferable across the country, are riddled with fraud and open to abuse, including identity theft.

Delhi mulled over the problem for several years, but was galvanised into action after last year's terrorist attack in Mumbai, amid deepening concern about the ease with which people wishing to do harm might enter the country and infiltrate the country.

So serious is Delhi taking the matter that last month Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not only named one of the country's leading IT entrepreneurs, Nandan Nilekani as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority, but gave him Cabinet rank to push through the ID programme. Mr Nilekani expects to begin distributing the first ID cards in the next year to 18 months and to have the country fully registered over the next several years, with unique biometric information on all 1.17 billion Indians on a central database.

Iris scan

But India is not the only country moving to implement a centralised, national identification system based on biometric information. Last week Mexico's Interior Minister, Fernando Gomez, unveiled plans, to be fully implemented by 2012, to have in the hand of each Mexican a national ID card that carries an iris scan and features of recognition information.

Like Mr Nilekani, Mr Gomez highlighted the economic potential of the system in reducing fraud in government support programmes and creating a standard platform for bringing into the formal economy. In India, for instance, millions of people are without bank accounts or can't apply for utilities like electricity because of the lack of formal identification. But Mr Gomez is not lost to the potential of the new system to help confront the country's security crisis, in which drug traffickers, who kill thousands, hide behind fake and/or stolen identities.

The point is that the problems that are egging India and Mexico to these technologically driven solutions are not unique to those countries. In Jamaica, our murder rate is over 60 per 100,000, near to the world's highest. Suspects are identified for less than one-third of the over 1,600 homicides here each year, and even fewer cases reach to court.

Multiple aliases

Yet the authorities suspect that many of the people who commit those crimes do other bad things, while being in contact with the official system. The problem is that they are not identified, given the penchant of Jamaicans to have multiple aliases or 'nicknames'.

A national identification system, based on biometric information on a centralised database, potentially offers a big part of the solution. The country's experience with the computerised voter identification system based on fingerprints underlines the possibilities. Voting fraud has reduced dramatically in the past decade and a half.

The Government, we feel, should accelerate plans, including the enactment of appropriate legislation for a national ID system. We expect the complaints by civil-liberty advocates about the potential for the abuse and invasion of privacy. However, we have to weigh the benefits against the potential harm. And it can't be beyond us to find the appropriate balance.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.