Sanjay Dharwadker is currently with Sagem Sécurité South Africa as Head of Business Development - Banking, Health and ID for Africa. He has also been an independent consultant, with assignments in Africa and South-east Asia, including an Asian Development Bank Consultancy for the Government of VietNam. Mr. Dharwadker has helped pioneer many of India’s large ID smart card projects, such as: the driving licence, vehicle registration, health, ration, social security, farmer, fishermen and dairy cards. Besides India, he also advises many national governments on smart cards in the public domain. In India, Mr. Dharwadker successfully headed the marketing function at Smart Chip Ltd. Subsequently he was Managing Director at AKS Smart Card Systems Ltd. Mr. Dharwadker has also consulted for World Bank projects, UN, European Commission and bilateral missions. He was also associated with India's large IT initiatives under the National Technology Missions for rural development and child immunization. Mr. Sanjay Dharwadker is a post-graduate in Pure Mathematics from BITS, Pilani, one of India’s premier science & technology universities.

A Brief History of Biometrics. About three billion individuals have their biometrics on some sort of identification system worldwide. Of course, these are not all national identity systems, but the trend to trust the accuracy and speed of biometrics is irreversible. Records of using fingerprints for identification have been found in ancient China, Babylon and Persia. In 1686, an Italian, Marcello Malpighi from Bologna first scientifically noted the ridges, spirals and loops on the fingertips. This 1.8 mm thick layer of skin is known today as the Malpighi Layer. In 1858, the first handprint of Rajyadhar Konai was recorded for legal purposes by William Herschel, governor of Hooghly, (Bengal, India). Herschel also recorded his own fingerprints for a period of 57 years and noted their unchanging nature. And so the evolution of fingerprints continued until 1900 when the classification and use of fingerprints was so evolved it was adopted by the British government on the report and recommendation of Edward Richard Henry. The following year, Scotland Yard set up a Fingerprint Bureau based on the Henry classification. And the evolution continues, with vascular recognition coming of age in South Korea around the year 2000. While fingerprint biometrics are the oldest and most advanced form of identification at the moment, other forms, such as iris, palm, facial, vein, signature, speech and DNA are in various stages of development and will become more prevalent in the coming years.