Managing Massive Change: India's Aadhaar, the World's Most Ambitious ID Project (Innovations Case Narrative: Project Aadhaar)

Abstract

lished in Innovations in 2011, in which he described the actions taken in the first year of the project and the early results. He has continued to track the project since then to learn about the challenges of managing massive technological, organizational, behavioral, and societal change, and this article provides an update on Aadhaar in five parts: (1) a description of the situation in March 2014 prior to the Indian general elections held in May 2014; (2) a comparison of the actual outcomes from the Aadhaar project as of March 2014 versus the assumptions made when conceiving its theory of design and change in the fall of 2009; (3) a similar comparison of the actual results versus the initial plans for addressing the Aadhaar execution challenges; (4) a description of the situation in June 2014 immediately after the general elections and; (5) the situation a month later, in July 2014, when the newly elected prime minister of the rival BJP political party, Narendra Modi, announced his plans for Aadhaar, given all the controversy surrounding it prior to and during the general elections in May 2014. The author invites the reader to pause after reading the first three parts of this case narrative and to consider what is likely to happen next, based on the dynamics of the unfolding drama, before reading what happened next. This may make the story more interesting and also more instructive in terms of learning about the challenges of managing massive change. This case narrative is based on information in the public domain, and on interviews with observers both inside and outside UIDAI, the government agency responsible for Aadhaar, some of whom were interviewed for the original case study. Professor Sathe wishes to thank them all for their time and their insights.