India’s digital identity systems like Aadhaar and e-passports are visionary, but risk excluding vulnerable populations- The Week

India’s embrace of digital identity has been rapid and, by most measures, visionary. Chip-embedded e-passports are now being rolled out in 13 cities under the Passport Seva 2.0 programme and are expected nationwide by mid-2026. These will store an encrypted facial photo and fingerprints to speed travellers through automated gates.

At home, welfare deliveries and bank transfers hinge on Aadhaar’s fingertip authentication, while private hospitals experiment with pay-by-palm check-ins. The stated goal is clear: to make essentials more accessible, transparent and efficient.

Yet, technology is only as inclusive as the biology it must read. Unless policy-makers and engineers account for the ways bodies age, work and scar, a system built to democratise services can end up locking out the very people it hopes to protect.

Ridge patterns on our fingertips are formed before birth, but the skin that carries them is anything but static. A 2018 study in Anthropometry found that ridge density declines steadily after about age 45, particularly along the outer (ulnar) side of the thumb. Think mountain peaks slowly weathering into gentle hills: the scanner sees fewer ridges to anchor its match, and the similarity score sinks.

Manual labour speeds up this erosion. Field researchers in rural Rajasthan recorded unusually high Aadhaar failure rates among farm and kitchen workers whose daily chores had “sanded down” ridge detail; households were sometimes denied subsidised grain because the device could not “see” a legal thumbprint. Dermatological health matters, too. A Malaysian hospital cohort showed that patients with moderate to severe hand dermatitis were four times more likely to fail fingerprint verification, as micro-cracks and scar tissue distorted the pattern.

Facial recognition fares better in office corridors than on village streets precisely because it was trained on clear, youthful images. Cross-age studies now show measurable drops in accuracy as wrinkles deepen and weight shifts; researchers have turned to generative adversarial networks to synthesise “age progressed” images in a bid to cut error rates, but the work is still experimental. Cataract surgery, common in later life, briefly clouds the near infra red light that iris cameras rely on. If enrolment records are not refreshed after the lens is replaced, match rates fall further—a predictable, yet often overlooked, consequence.

Put these facts together and an inequity pattern emerges. One in five Indians will be over 60 by 2030, and ageing alone diminishes ridge clarity and facial similarity scores. Years of manual work, from brick kiln moulding to cooking, physically erases fingerprint detail. And conditions like hand dermatitis or cataracts directly interfere with the very traits’ machines are designed to measure.

Exclusion is not merely an inconvenience; it can block rations, pensions, or a train ride to work. Development economists warn that “exclusion errors” in welfare schemes impose the heaviest cost on the poor, who lack alternative proofs of identity. A cook in her 50s who cannot clock in or withdraw wages because her thumb no longer scans, hence, bearing the penalty for a design gap she never created.

The answer is not to retreat from biometrics but to refine them deliberately.

Biometric templates must be treated like passport photos—updated periodically after surgery, major dental work, or visible ageing. 

Authentication methods need to be multimodal, combining, for instance, a face with a PIN, or a palm vein scan with a card tap, so that one worn-out trait does not close the gate. Welfare outlets and hospitals must retain assisted verification lanes; no one should lose food or care to a silicon glitch. Moreover, government tenders should mandate that algorithms are validated on older adults, manual labourers, and people with common skin conditions not merely on clean, urban datasets.

India’s biometric ambitions deserve applause. E-passports can cut airport queues, and Aadhaar has the potential to slam the door on ghost beneficiaries. But inclusion is not a byproduct; it is a moral imperative. If we wish to make progress, then we must also insist on guard rails that keep every thumb and face in the loop.

Because an identity system that fails the cook who feeds us, the mason who builds our homes, or the grandmother who raised us is not efficient at all. It is only half built.

Dr. Angela Chaudhuri is a public‑health specialist based in Bengaluru who serves on several WHO advisory committees.  The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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