UPDATE: I just wanted to preface this post by saying I do not think this IS The Mark, rather, it is merely the beginning of building a database that will allow for the categorizing of these numbers. It is an archetype of sorts… a step beyond even our SSN here in the States.
This article mentions fraud… but the only way you couldn’t have fraud is if at some point this number were attached somehow via biotechnology:
(Wall Street Journal) India’s vaunted tech savvy is being put to the test this week as the country embarks on a daunting mission: assigning a unique 12-digit number to each of its 1.2 billion people.
The project, which seeks to collect fingerprint and iris scans from all residents and store them in a massive central database of unique IDs, is considered by many specialists the most technologically and logistically complex national identification effort ever attempted. To pull it off, India has recruited tech gurus of Indian origin from around the world, including the co-founder of online photo service Snapfish and employees from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp.
The country’s leaders are pinning their hopes on the program to solve development problems that have persisted despite fast economic growth. They say unique ID numbers will help ensure that government welfare spending reaches the right people, and will allow hundreds of millions of poor Indians to access services like banking for the first time.
I have always said that people will voluntarily get the number per some benefit (say, 30% off you grocery bill). But as you can see government perceives the benefit for them already as not being able to defraud the government.