But there are others who have no idea how the card will help them.
"I dont know what this means, I will understand only if someone explains it to me," said Sant Ram a tailor.
The UID number is allotted two weeks after enrollment. A bank account is opened and the card holder is officially identified as a resident of India. But are there privacy and security concerns?
"The benefit for a few hundred million poor people of India who don't have an identity, who don't get benefits. Giving them this is more important than the risk. And we must ensure that the risks are completely mitigated," said Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UID Project.
The benefits are already being felt by the likes of daily wage labourer Ram Babu, who finally has a cellphone thanks to his UID. "Before I had no identification, so I how could I get a number, now I have it thanks to this," he said.
The ambitious Rs 3,000-crore UID project starts becoming a reality in small pockets where the poorest of the poor are being identified. Its estimated that by 2014, 600 million Indian residents will have UID numbers.
Even beggars like Hari Singh, who lives on the railway tracks under Delhi's Okhla flyover, have hope that life could get better - thanks to a few digits.
As the project goes digging through the narrow gallies of India, its seems to be a start in the right direction. The only hope is that this ambitious project doesn't turn into a series of empty promises for India's poor.
nrega news. mgnrega