A worn thumb fails at the ration shop. Lower the threshold?

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A labourer's worn thumb fails at the ration shop. The answer comes back: no. The tempting fix: lower the fingerprint threshold. Don't.

The threshold isn't his alone. Lower it, and it drops for everyone. False accepts rise across the whole country. For a problem a fallback solves. So keep the bar. Give him another way in.

His thumb: captured, encrypted, checked. Aadhaar answers with one letter: n. No. Don't block him. Try another finger. Then his iris. Manual labour doesn't wear it down. Still nothing? A one-time password to his registered mobile. Or his face, with a liveness check. Now the answer is y. Yes. He gets his rations.

That last fallback, face, became huge. Launched in October 2021, built in-house by UIDAI. By January 2025: 100 crore face authentications in total. September 2025, a record. 1.5 crore in one day. By September 2026, more than 500 crore in all.

The people fingerprints failed now get through. And nobody's bar was lowered to do it.

One threshold protects a whole country. When it fails a real person, add a path. Never lower the bar.

Full breakdown in the lecture.