India's ID plan: An end to its inept bureaucracy or an Orwellian nightmare?

NEW DELHI // A plan to provide each of India's 1.2 billion citizens with a unique identification number has been praised as an essential programme to impose some efficiency on India's infamously inept bureaucracy.

But its opponents have said it is ripe for abuse. The government could use it to spy on its citizens and criminals could steal the data and create false identities.

Since the plan was launched in mid-2010, about 110 million Indians have queued up at data-processing centres across the country to have their irises scanned and their fingerprints recorded.

D_R_Pinksron's analysis:
"It collects not only fingerprints and irises, but also sensitive information such as caste and religion, which it wants to use for security purposes." Storing religion information? What security purpose would this accomplish?