As India’s biometric national ID program continues to grow and extend across the country, its benefits in areas ranging from everyday banking to transportation are becoming increasingly apparent. 
But it could also offer a transformative impact on deeper socioeconomic level, with the system being linked to a new program aimed at getting underprivileged kids into the education system.
As Safran Identity & Security suggests in a new post on its website, Aadhaar is going to be used in the “Street to School” campaign. Approved by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the program aims to bring children who have been living on the street into the school system.
Further details about the program are scant at this time, but it echoes another recently-announced NGO effort to use mobile biometric technology to identify unaccompanied minors in India, highlighting the utility of this technology in a society in which digital identity plays an increasingly important role. And while Safran Identity & Security notes that fingerprint biometrics are currently too unreliable to be used with children under five years of age, research advancements suggest that fingerprint biometrics could hypothetically be used to identify subjects as young as six months old, hinting at impactful applications in pediatric care and related fields – including education for the underprivileged, as programs like Street to School continue to develop.
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March 3, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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