But perhaps the most far-reaching use of biometrics in India will start in the next few weeks. The Indian Census, with the support of the Central government, will roll out its National ID Card pilot programme in 13 districts of 13 states. The mundane information, like name, date of birth, etc., has already been collected from the pilot's three million participants. Now each village in the 13 districts will be visited by a fingerprint scanner and a camera for picture identification. The fingerprint data will be encoded in smart cards, which will serve as permanent national IDs.
"We are making this facility available to people at their

Domestic companies need to have good contacts abroad, as no one in India is capable of producing the core technology - the scanning apparatus - yet. This is because it requires huge investments and specialist expertise.

Dheeraj Kumar of BioEnable, an Indian firm that develops and manufactures non-core hardware and software for biometric systems, says: "There are some things which we need, and we weave the system around them."

Mumbai-based biometrics firm Jaypeetex has tied up with US-based Bioscript to get the core technology. And while the US, Europe and Japan are still the sources for most core technology, companies in Taiwan and Korea are also starting to manufacture the technology.

Biometrics At Your Desktop?

In 2000, Frost & Sullivan found the size of the Indian biometrics market was just 6% of the total electronic access control (EAC) market then. But it was also projected as the fastest growing EAC market segment: Frost & Sullivan expected it to touch $2.5 million-3 million by end 2003. That figure, say industry folk, has been reached. About 20 companies are involved in biometrics in India now. Though the market is still very open, companies like Jaypeetex, Datamatics, Zicom and Johnson Controls are leaders.

In the rest of the world, the market is rising, but isn't reaching any lofty heights. There is no identifiable leader; the main players are NEC, Infineon, Fujitsu MicroElectornics, Atmel and Iridian, to name a few. According to Acuity Market Intelligence, a US company that publishes regular biometrics reports, the post 9/11 projections for the industry were overblown. Having set global revenues targets between $500 million and $1 billion by 2003 for the core biometrics technology (which accounts for around one-fourth of the entire biometrics market), the actual 2003 numbers were just $240 million-400 million. One reason for the lag is that pro-privacy groups have lobbied hard against the use of biometrics in public spheres. Another was the technology's high cost.

But now, costs are coming down world-wide. When Girish Podar started Jaypeetex back in 1994, he sold fingerprint scanning devices for over Rs 2 lakh. Now, he sells working devices with fingerprint scanners for Rs 25,000. This price includes an intelligent processor, memory - the works. Also, the 100%-plus tax on imported technology is down to around 30%. Face and iris scanners are still expensive, with prices above Rs 1 lakh.

Iris recognition is expensive and inconvenient, but it's the most accurate, measuring more than 250 distinct features. Fingerprint scanning captures 40-60. Finger scanning has several methods such as optical, ultrasound and silicon sensors, which work in different ways. Atmel's silicon sensor chip, for example, measures temperature differences between ridges of the fingertip.