After more than a billion humans, it's now the turn of India's cows and buffaloes to apply for Aadhaar.
Pashu Aadhaar, also known as the Information Network for Animal Productivity and Health (INAPH), is being developed by the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB). If implemented successfully, INAPH will be the world's largest database of animals.
Just like our Aadhaar cards, the INAPH will also assign a Unique Identification Number (UID) to each animal and keep a record of all the necessary information about the bovines. This will help the government in managing the country's vast numbers of livestock.
In 2015, a government committee had recommended UID for cows to prevent trafficking following a Supreme Court direction that heard a plea to stop cattle smuggling.
The first phase of the project is expected to cover 94 million productive “in milk” female cows and buffalos. Once these are covered, male cows and calves, as well as stray animals, will be counted.
Animals that get the Pashu Aadhaar will be provided with an ear tag that contains its own 12-digit UID. This will help in maintaining data of livestock such as the pedigree of the animal, calving, milk production, artificial insemination, vaccination, feeding/nutrition history and ancestral information.
Once the data is up on the site, officials will have to leverage this data for better management of the animals to ensure improved productivity and livestock product quality.
Although India has the world's largest livestock population and is the biggest milk producer, the country is not able to maximise its potential due to the abysmally low productivity and poor animal health, which the government attributes to the absence of animal identification and traceability mechanisms. The government expects INAPH to fill the void and make sure that future generations of livestock are healthier in order to contribute more.
So far, about 22.3 million buffaloes and cows have got UIDs and the data has been uploaded on the INAPH database.