'Rahul Gandhi first offered me HRD minister role': Nandan Nilekani recalls 2009 call before Aadhaar

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has revealed that he was offered the post of Human Resource Development (HRD) minister by Rahul Gandhi in 2009 before being asked by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to lead India's landmark Aadhaar project.

"I got a call in the middle of May 2009 from Rahul Gandhi saying, 'Do you want to come and be HRD minister? So I said, that's a good idea. Let me go and fix India’s education system," Nilekani said in an interview with Groww. 

He said he even discussed the proposal with his Infosys co-founders. "I checked with my co-founders, they said - okay, go and do some national service. So I got permission from my co-founders."

However, the offer did not materialise. "At the last minute, they said - not possible because it's a big job and everybody wants that job and some fellow from Bangalore getting it and all, not going to happen. So they didn’t give me that job," Nilekani recalled.

He said it was then that Dr. Manmohan Singh personally reached out to him. "Then Dr. Manmohan Singh called me and said - Do you want to be a Member of Planning Commission? I said, boss, I don’t want some member Planning Commission. If there's something that has some action in it, I’ll come. And that’s how finally we landed on this ID project."

Nilekani said he saw the opportunity as both a challenge and a natural fit. "It was a very clear thing - give everyone an ID, 1.4 billion people. It was a lot of tech in it. So, I said this will play to my strengths. I met him in June of 2009 and said I'll take up this role of giving an ID. I accepted this challenge to go to Delhi and give everyone a unique ID, so that’s how I landed up in Delhi in July of 2009."

Nandan Nilekani served as the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) from July 2009 to March 2014.​

The idea for a national identification system, Nilekani said, had been taking shape for some time. "To be fair, the government was also very much planning some ID. It's not that it's my idea alone. They had issued the order to set up this thing called the Unique Identification Authority of India. My value add was I said I’ll make it digital, online, cloud-based - so that's what we pushed to the next level."

By the time he stepped down, Nilekani said the project had issued 600 million Aadhaar numbers. "We wanted enough momentum," he said.

Recalling the challenges, Nilekani said there were at least "six or seven times" when he thought the project would fail. "Once there was a lot of political opposition, then a lot of these NGOs were there. They lobbied to stop the project, privacy issue, they went to the Supreme Court. In fact, the Aadhaar case in the Supreme Court is the second-longest case in the history of India," he said.

Nilekani, who served as the CEO of Infosys from March 2002 to April 2007, said he has always thrived on taking instinctive decisions. When asked if there was any mistake he was glad he made, he said: "Not going abroad, not joining IIM."

Asked about decisions made purely on instinct, he replied, "Just everything I've done - not appearing for IIM exam, walking in for a job interview, going to the Government of India - all taken on the spur of the moment."