Finally Microsoft Research Finds New Love In India’s Unique ID Project

Earlier, we told you how Google, Yahoo, Cisco & Intel have expressed a lot of interest in India’s Unique ID Number project – which is an initiative by the Indian Government set up a centralized identification system for the Indian citizens which can be used for various kinds of identification purposes. Now Microsoft has joined the race too!

Finally the research wing of Microsoft feels that it may have some exciting opportunities for itself in the UID Project in areas related to user interface, multi-lingual systems, mobility and secure database management according to a  news report and for this Microsoft Research is already discussing possible options with Mr. Nandan Nilekani who is the Chairman of the UID Project.

Dr P. Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research (MSR) India while speaking at TechVista 2010′ research symposium expressed his interest in the UID project saying that it presents exciting challenges and interesting research possibilities for MSR. Mr. Nilekani who was also present at the event unveiled a computer science community portal ResearchAndYou.com, an initiative by Microsoft Research India, which seeks to provide a forum for students to connect with researchers and explore research opportunities. Currently, MSR has over 40 researchers in their labs in India.

So far so good. Biggies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are finding interest and opportunities in the UID project. But will the research Institutions and colleges having state-of-the-art research facilities find interest in this project too? Definitely they should. Limiting the implementation only to large business minded organizations will not give a proper direction to this project. The involvement of highly able professors and bright students may give a better direction to the UID project. Ofcourse, final implementation will always require skilled and experienced people to work on the UID project. Only time will tell, how this entire UID project turns out to be.