In 2009, I became extremely concerned with the concept of Unique Identity for various reasons. Connected with many like minded highly educated people who were all concerned.
On 18th May 2010, I started this Blog to capture anything and everything I came across on the topic. This blog with its million hits is a testament to my concerns about loss of privacy and fear of the ID being misused and possible Criminal activities it could lead to.
In 2017 the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict after one of the longest hearings on any issue. I did my bit and appealed to the Supreme Court Judges too through an On Line Petition.
In 2019 the Aadhaar Legislation has been revised and passed by the two houses of the Parliament of India making it Legal. I am no Legal Eagle so my Opinion carries no weight except with people opposed to the very concept.
In 2019, this Blog now just captures on a Daily Basis list of Articles Published on anything to do with Aadhaar as obtained from Daily Google Searches and nothing more. Cannot burn the midnight candle any longer.
"In Matters of Conscience, the Law of Majority has no place"- Mahatma Gandhi
Ram Krishnaswamy
Sydney, Australia.

Aadhaar

The UIDAI has taken two successive governments in India and the entire world for a ride. It identifies nothing. It is not unique. The entire UID data has never been verified and audited. The UID cannot be used for governance, financial databases or anything. It’s use is the biggest threat to national security since independence. – Anupam Saraph 2018

When I opposed Aadhaar in 2010 , I was called a BJP stooge. In 2016 I am still opposing Aadhaar for the same reasons and I am told I am a Congress die hard. No one wants to see why I oppose Aadhaar as it is too difficult. Plus Aadhaar is FREE so why not get one ? Ram Krishnaswamy

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.-Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.Mahatma Gandhi

“The invasion of privacy is of no consequence because privacy is not a fundamental right and has no meaning under Article 21. The right to privacy is not a guaranteed under the constitution, because privacy is not a fundamental right.” Article 21 of the Indian constitution refers to the right to life and liberty -Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi

“There is merit in the complaints. You are unwittingly allowing snooping, harassment and commercial exploitation. The information about an individual obtained by the UIDAI while issuing an Aadhaar card shall not be used for any other purpose, save as above, except as may be directed by a court for the purpose of criminal investigation.”-A three judge bench headed by Justice J Chelameswar said in an interim order.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan describes UID as an inverse of sunshine laws like the Right to Information. While the RTI makes the state transparent to the citizen, the UID does the inverse: it makes the citizen transparent to the state, she says.

Good idea gone bad
I have written earlier that UID/Aadhaar was a poorly designed, unreliable and expensive solution to the really good idea of providing national identification for over a billion Indians. My petition contends that UID in its current form violates the right to privacy of a citizen, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. This is because sensitive biometric and demographic information of citizens are with enrolment agencies, registrars and sub-registrars who have no legal liability for any misuse of this data. This petition has opened up the larger discussion on privacy rights for Indians. The current Article 21 interpretation by the Supreme Court was done decades ago, before the advent of internet and today’s technology and all the new privacy challenges that have arisen as a consequence.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP Rajya Sabha

“What is Aadhaar? There is enormous confusion. That Aadhaar will identify people who are entitled for subsidy. No. Aadhaar doesn’t determine who is eligible and who isn’t,” Jairam Ramesh

But Aadhaar has been mythologised during the previous government by its creators into some technology super force that will transform governance in a miraculous manner. I even read an article recently that compared Aadhaar to some revolution and quoted a 1930s historian, Will Durant.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP

“I know you will say that it is not mandatory. But, it is compulsorily mandatorily voluntary,” Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Saba April 2017.

August 24, 2017: The nine-judge Constitution Bench rules that right to privacy is “intrinsic to life and liberty”and is inherently protected under the various fundamental freedoms enshrined under Part III of the Indian Constitution

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the World; indeed it's the only thing that ever has"

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” -Edward Snowden

In the Supreme Court, Meenakshi Arora, one of the senior counsel in the case, compared it to living under a general, perpetual, nation-wide criminal warrant.

Had never thought of it that way, but living in the Aadhaar universe is like living in a prison. All of us are treated like criminals with barely any rights or recourse and gatekeepers have absolute power on you and your life.

Announcing the launch of the # BreakAadhaarChainscampaign, culminating with events in multiple cities on 12th Jan. This is the last opportunity to make your voice heard before the Supreme Court hearings start on 17th Jan 2018. In collaboration with @no2uidand@rozi_roti.

UIDAI's security seems to be founded on four time tested pillars of security idiocy

1) Denial

2) Issue fiats and point finger

3) Shoot messenger

4) Bury head in sand.

God Save India

Thursday, February 26, 2015

7448 - 5,000 women from across district demand regular foodgrain supply - TNN

TNN | Feb 25, 2015, 03.54AM IST

KOLHAPUR: Around 5,000 women from across the district participated in a morcha organised by the Ration Bachao Samiti demanding regular supply of foodgrain at ration shops through the public distribution system (PDS). They also demanded cancellation of direct transfer of subsidy into the bank account of beneficiaries, saying that many poor people who do not have bank accounts or Aadhaar cards will not benefit from the scheme.

Chandrakant Yadav, leader of the samiti said, "We voted the Narendra Modi government to power hoping that he will take steps to ensure that all the poor people, including workers and farmers who are mostly dependent on the PDS, will get foodgrain cheap. But, instead of preventing irregularities in the system, the government is ensuring that the least number of people come under the scheme to reduce the burden of subsidies."

"From 2008, we were agitating for foodgrain for all through the PDS which resulted in the central government passing the Food Security Bill. We are not against linking the Aadhaar card with the ration card or modernisation of the PDS so that the right people will get the benefit. But that does not mean reducing the quantity of foodgrain that people get under the system. We want 10kg of foodgrain per person which is 5kg per person now. We also want sugar through the PDS as it was done previously," Yadav said.

DN Patil, another member of the samiti said, "In 2013, the BJP organised agitations for food security bill and foodgrain for all. Now, after coming to power, instead of providing more foodgrain through the PDS to serve the motive of the Food Security Act, the government is reducing the customer base."

Pushpa Raj Deshmukh, state president of the All India Fair Price Shop Dealers' Federation said, "Along with the demands of the people, the government should consider our long-pending demands also that include increase in transportation and supply commissions which have been stable since 2001. All the ration shop holders in the state are supporting the agitation and will participate in the next rally that would be organised at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on March 2 and at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi."

On Tuesday, the rally began from Mirajkar Tikti around 12pm and reached the collector's office via Binkhambi Ganesh mandir, Mahadwar road and Maharana Pratap chowk. The delegation of the Ration Bachao Samiti submitted a memorandum of their demands to the district supply officer Vivek Agawane who assured them to convey their message to the higher authorities.

7447 - 5,000 women from across district demand regular foodgrain supply - TNN

TNN | Feb 25, 2015, 03.54AM IST

KOLHAPUR: Around 5,000 women from across the district participated in a morcha organised by the Ration Bachao Samiti demanding regular supply of foodgrain at ration shops through the public distribution system (PDS). They also demanded cancellation of direct transfer of subsidy into the bank account of beneficiaries, saying that many poor people who do not have bank accounts or Aadhaar cards will not benefit from the scheme.

Chandrakant Yadav, leader of the samiti said, "We voted the Narendra Modi government to power hoping that he will take steps to ensure that all the poor people, including workers and farmers who are mostly dependent on the PDS, will get foodgrain cheap. But, instead of preventing irregularities in the system, the government is ensuring that the least number of people come under the scheme to reduce the burden of subsidies."

"From 2008, we were agitating for foodgrain for all through the PDS which resulted in the central government passing the Food Security Bill. We are not against linking the Aadhaar card with the ration card or modernisation of the PDS so that the right people will get the benefit. But that does not mean reducing the quantity of foodgrain that people get under the system. We want 10kg of foodgrain per person which is 5kg per person now. We also want sugar through the PDS as it was done previously," Yadav said.

DN Patil, another member of the samiti said, "In 2013, the BJP organised agitations for food security bill and foodgrain for all. Now, after coming to power, instead of providing more foodgrain through the PDS to serve the motive of the Food Security Act, the government is reducing the customer base."

Pushpa Raj Deshmukh, state president of the All India Fair Price Shop Dealers' Federation said, "Along with the demands of the people, the government should consider our long-pending demands also that include increase in transportation and supply commissions which have been stable since 2001. All the ration shop holders in the state are supporting the agitation and will participate in the next rally that would be organised at Azad Maidan in Mumbai on March 2 and at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi."


On Tuesday, the rally began from Mirajkar Tikti around 12pm and reached the collector's office via Binkhambi Ganesh mandir, Mahadwar road and Maharana Pratap chowk. The delegation of the Ration Bachao Samiti submitted a memorandum of their demands to the district supply officer Vivek Agawane who assured them to convey their message to the higher authorities.

7446 - e-service centres launched

ERODE, February 25, 2015
Updated: February 25, 2015 05:36 IST

e-service centres launched
SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

A common facility centre got functional at the Taluk Office in Erode on Tuesday.— PHOTO: M. GOVARTHAN


Common facility centres were launched at the Erode and Perundurai Taluk offices by State Environment Minister Thoppu N.D. Venkatachalam on Tuesday.

The e-service facility created by Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable Television Corporation Ltd., paves the way for prompt and transparent processing of applications for certifications of Revenue Department: proof of residence, destitute certificate, first generation graduate certificate, and community certificate.
The centres would also play a pivotal role in streamlining the benefits of various Government schemes implemented through the Social Welfare Department.
Besides, the centre would process applications for securing Permanent Account Number from Income Tax Department, Aadhaar, providing printout of Aadhaar cards based on acknowledgment receipt, making corrections to voter identity cards, forwarding applications to Police Department for securing passport, and making payment of LIC premium.
Namakkal
As many as 1.49 lakh certificates were issued through the 139 common service centres in the district.
Under the National e-Governance plan, e-district services were introduced across the State to render the service of the Revenue Department of issuing community, income, and nativity certificates, certificates to first graduates of a family, destitute women and widow.
Currently, there are 79 centres in the district and 1,48,714 certificates were provided to the applicants. Also, services rendered by the Social Welfare Department such as marriage assistance for women and girl children assistance programme were also being included in the past few months.
In total, 641 applications were registered through these centres. Applicants can pay Rs. 30 for getting certificates issued by Social Welfare Department and Rs. 100 for getting certificates issued by the Revenue Department.
On Monday, 60 centres were started in Primary Agricultural Co-operative Societies were started. It includes 17 in Tiruchengode, 32 in Rasipuram, seven in Paramathi Velur, three in Namakkal and one in Kolli Hills.

The centres were inaugurated by Minister for Industries P. Thangamani in the presence of Collector V. Dakshinamoorthy, District Revenue Officer V.R. Subbulakshmi, and Tiruchengode Revenue Divisional Officer R. Suman.

7445 - RBI says overdraft under Jan-Dhan is priority sector lending - DNA India

Wednesday, 25 February 2015 - 5:55pm IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: PTI

Under PMJDY, the overdraft facility is permitted to Aadhaar-enabled accounts after "satisfactory operation" of accounts for six months.

File Photo dna Research & Archives

Giving a big boost to Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), the RBI today said bank overdrafts of up to Rs 5,000 in accounts opened under this financial inclusion mission will be treated as priority sector lending.

"...Overdrafts extended by banks up to Rs 5,000 in PMJDY accounts will be eligible for classification under priority sector advances ('others' category) as also weaker sections, provided the borrowers household annual income does not exceed Rs 60,000 for rural areas and Rs 1,20,000 for non-rural areas," the Reserve Bank of India (RBI said in a notification.

Under PMJDY, the overdraft facility is permitted to Aadhaar-enabled accounts after "satisfactory operation" of accounts for six months.

Last August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the scheme to provide all households across the country access to banking facilities.

As on January 31, more than 12.54 crore accounts were opened the scheme.

Under priority sector lending, RBI ask banks to provide a specified portion of loans to few specific sectors.

Priority sector refers to those sectors of the economy which may not get timely and adequate credit in the absence of the special dispensation.


As per the RBI, these are small value loans to farmers for agriculture and allied activities, micro and small enterprises, poor people for housing, students for education and other low income groups and weaker sections.

7444 - Selection as Enrolment Agency for AADHAAR enrolment in Bihar - Hindu Businessline



February 25, 2015:  
With reference to the earlier letter dated February 18, 2015, Alankit Ltd has now informed BSE that the Company has entered into a contract on February 23, 2015 with Government of Bihar for AADHAAR Enrollment with an estimated gross revenue of Rs. 59 crores.

7443 - Aadhaar seeding for Indiramma housing beneficiaries begins

NELLORE, February 25, 2015
Updated: February 25, 2015 05:51 IST

Aadhaar seeding for Indiramma housing beneficiaries begins

G. RAVIKIRAN

In an attempt to weed out fake beneficiaries and ensure that the true ones are benefitted, the district authorities have started seeding the Aadhaar cards of all the beneficiaries of Indiramma Housing scheme at a project located at YSR Nagar at Kothur on the Nellore outskirts here.

Despite objections from some quarters to the fresh drive, the officials set said that Aadhaar identification of beneficiaries has also been made mandatory, in addition to the ration cards which were taken as the criterion in the beginning of the project.
Under the YSR Nagar project, as many as 6,000 pucca houses have been proposed to be built for poor families. Nearly half of the houses have been completed, but not many beneficiaries have shifted to the place owing to various reasons. There were complaints in the past that most of the Indiramma houses were of very poor quality when it came to construction.

At that time, vigilance enquiries were also launched into the project. Following these reasons, most of the beneficiaries were residing at different places in the city.

In view of the fresh drive, they were called to their respective houses or plots where their photographs, along with their Aadhaar details were being collected.

At that time, the then opposition parties including the Telugu Desam Party and YSR Congress staged protests and demanded action against the alleged irregularities. Several beneficiaries are now alleging that they were made to wait for days together at their plots, but the Aadhaar seeding was not completed on the plea that the staff were busy.


In view of alleged irregularities, Aadhaar details of beneficiaries are being collected
The fresh drive aims at weeding out bogus beneficiaries

7442 - Aadhaar Enrolment Centre opened

MANDYA, February 25, 2015
Updated: February 25, 2015 17:37 IST

Aadhaar Enrolment Centre opened
M. T. SHIVA KUMAR


Revenue officials inaugurating the Aadhaar Enrollment Centre in Mandya on Wednesday.


The District Administration has set up an Aadhaar Enrolment Centre at Tahsildar’s office here.

E. Venkata Ravana Reddy, Planning Director of the District Urban Development Cell, and other officials inaugurated the Centre on Wednesday.

People in Mandya, who are yet to register for Aadhaar, can enrol themselves at the Centre, Mr. Reddy said.

Urging all the residents to get themselves enrolled, the officer opined that the Aadhaar cards will soon become the basis for accessing governmental social welfare schemes.

Mandya tahsildar V. Priyadarshini, District Social Welfare Officer B. Malathi and others were present.

7441 - Centre takes steps to convert PDS to cash transfers

Centre takes steps to convert PDS to cash transfers

UTs to do it first; pilots in select urbanised districts of states

Nitin Sethi & Surabhi Agarwal  |  New Delhi  February 24, 2015 Last Updated at 00:57 IST


The Union government has remained equivocal in public about the Shanta Kumar report and whether the National Democratic Alliance intends to follow up and change the National Food Security Act. But at least on one count it has moved fast to implement the report - converting the subsidised food supply into cash transfers under the Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme. 

The food ministry has written to the Union Territories to shift from physical supply of subsidised foodgrain to cash transfers. It is also readying plans to pilot this shift in some states, focusing first on urban areas.

Business Standard reviewed letters written by the Union food ministry to the state and Union Territory governments on the issue. The letter sent on February 10 reads, "Government is looking forward to implement DBT for food grains initially in Union Territories and few districts of the states on pilot basis."

The Shanta Kumar committee, meant to reform the management of the Food Corporation of India, had gone much further ahead and recommended that the government should progressively move away from distributing food and towards cash transfers. It had also recommended that the subsidy for food should be restricted to a maximum of 40 per cent of the population instead of the existing minimum 67 per cent limit under the National Food Security Act. Since then, food ministry officials have claimed off the record the government would not go for the 40 per cent cut-off limit but they have not publicly clarified the government's stand on all the recommendations of the high-level panel set up by the NDA government.

The first evidence that the government is moving fast on implementing other parts of the report comes from letters written by the food ministry to the states on converting the physical distribution of subsidised grain to cash transfers.

NDA has offered the states and the Union Territories three ways to convert the subsidised food supply to cash transfers. One option provided is that cash is transferred to the bank accounts of beneficiaries every month and they are left to purchase the foodgrain from the market. In the second option, the ration shops would be provided grains at near market prices or at minimum support price (that the farmers get for their produce). The people will be then asked to buy this grain at the market rates and the difference between the central issue price (the rate at which the Centre releases subsidised grain to the state for PDS) and the market price would be deposited in the beneficiaries' accounts. In the third option, the governments would continue to provide the subsidised grain but the authentication of beneficiaries would be done through Aadhaar and an electronic database.

Sources said the government was keen to move the Union Territories and urban areas towards the first option as it was difficult to ensure supply of grains in rural India without state intervention.

The issue of substituting cash for foodgrain has been a political hot potato since the UPA regime days and continues to be so in the present NDA government. "The decisions are more political in approach," said a government official privy to the plans.

Some states, such as Andhra Pradesh have linked their PDS mechanism to Aadhaar cards but only for authenticating beneficiaries not for converting cheap foodgrain supply to cash transfers.

The NDA government has asked that states TO completely digitise their data of beneficiaries - referred to as priority households or BPL households - and then link the Aadhaar numbers of the beneficiaries with these cards.

In its letter, the ministry has said, "The complete digitisation of beneficiary data and Aadhaar seeding is a precondition."

The ministry has held one video-conference on the issue with the states and Union Territories and also held a meeting of the UT administration with the DBT authorities to fast-pace the process. The Union Territories were told in February to identify which of the three options they would go with and have a comprehensive plan ready to implement the conversion of food grains supply to cash transfers by the end of the month. All the states have been asked to provide monthly reports to the Centre on how they are implementing these changes
.

7440 - NDA govt moves on food subsidy rationalization after Delhi debacle - Live Mint


Cash transfer of PDS benefits would mean limiting MSP operations Sayantan Bera



If it is successful, the move could ensure better targeting of food subsidies and greater transparency in subsidy payouts. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint 

New Delhi: Undeterred by the humiliating defeat inflicted on it by the populist Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Delhi state assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) government is pressing ahead with efforts to reduce its bill on food subsidies. The government is initiating a pilot project in all Union territories and select districts in states under which consumers will be selected on the basis of their Aadhaar unique identification numbers and state administrations can choose to deliver benefits in the form of direct cash transfers or by supplying subsidized food through the public distribution system (PDS). 

If successful, the move could ensure better targeting of food subsidies and bring greater transparency in subsidy payouts. At the same time, it opens the door for cash transfers—something that is already being undertaken in the case of the cooking gas subsidy. 

The move follows the report of a government-appointed panel that said a large chunk of subsidized foodgrain wasn’t reaching intended beneficiaries of the PDS and instead suggested cash transfers, which it estimated could save the exchequer Rs.30,000 crore every year. 

The BJP was routed in the February Delhi state elections, winning only three out of the 70 assembly seats. The AAP’s landslide victory in the elections on the promise of reduced water and electricity prices raised concerns that the BJP-led government at the centre may go slow on proposed reforms, including efforts to pare subsidies. 

At the same time, the move to reduce the subsidy bill may be fraught with political risk and invite a potential rural backlash, one analyst said. “The decision could prove to be suicidal, more so at a time when rural India is badly hit. The ongoing protests on land ordinance amply shows that neither political parties nor farmers will pat it on its back for steamrolling reforms,” said Himanshu, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Mint columnist. 

The government’s decision to move to a direct cash transfer system for PDS was taken ahead of the budget to be presented on 28 February. In a letter to state governments on 10 February, Deepak Kumar, joint secretary in the food ministry, wrote that the centre was looking to implement direct benefit transfer (DBT) initially in Union territories and a few districts of the states on a pilot basis. A copy of the letter has been reviewed by Mint. 

The ministry suggested three possible models that could be adopted after complete digitization of beneficiary data linked to Aadhaar. 

Under the first model, the food subsidy will be transferred to the bank accounts of beneficiaries directly every month and households will have to purchase foodgrains from the market. 

In the second model, fair-price shops (FPS) will be supplied foodgrains at minimum support prices (MSP) or near-market prices. Beneficiary households will purchase foodgrains from the FPS and all transactions will be recorded on a point-of-sale device. 

The difference between the FPS price and central issue price (at which the beneficiary households are entitled to foodgrain, say, Rs.2 per kg rice) will be credited to beneficiary bank accounts against actual purchases. 

In the third model, states could follow the existing mode of manual distribution of foodgrains, but aided by a digitized database linked to Aadhaar. Whichever model states may choose, the directive from the centre makes it clear that the food subsidy will be linked to the Aadhaar database. 

The letter to states further urges them to be proactive in opening up of new bank accounts through the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana, which seeks to ensure a bank account for all households in India. 

The central government’s decision comes after a committee constituted by the Narendra Modi government recommended a complete overhaul of the 50-year-old Food Corporation of India (FCI) and its operations. 

The panel, headed by former food minister Shanta Kumar, recommended the government change the national food security law to reduce the coverage from 67% of the population to 40% and gradually introduce cash transfers. The panel calculated that leakages in existing PDS is as high as 47%, meaning a large chunk of subsidized rations are not reaching intended beneficiaries, and cash transfers alone could save the government Rs.30,000 crore every year. 

But an analysis by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, published in the Economic and Political Weekly this month, said the panel based its leakage estimates on erroneous calculations and in reality the leakages range between 32% and 42%. They argued that the FCI panel downplayed PDS reforms carried out in states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where leakages have declined substantially, to bolster the case for cash transfers. 

On Tuesday, the food ministry, in a written reply, clarified in the Lok Sabha that it will not amend the National Food Security Act to reduce the population covered—the other major recommendation of the panel. However, a transition to a cash transfer system would mean the government would have to limit its procurement of foodgrain from farmers to strategic buffer stocks. 

Once the government rolls out cash transfers, it will not require to procure so much grain—55-60 million tonnes a year now—because the food would no longer be physically distributed; it will have to cut procurement down to nearly a third for maintaining strategic buffer reserves of around 20-25 million tonnes. This could be another point of resistance for farmers’ groups. 

Additionally, marking benefits under the food security law through Aadhaar could be tough for the government. The Supreme Court in March last year had said no citizen can be deprived of any entitled service for want of an Aadhaar number. 

“Initiating cash transfers will completely destroy the PDS system, as procurement from farmers will eventually be cut down. Since biometric data cannot be collected for children under five, it may limit households’ entitlement if Aadhaar number is made mandatory,” said Dipa Sinha, a fellow at the Centre for Equity Studies, a Delhi-based research and advocacy non-profit group, and convenor of the steering committee of the Right To Food campaign. 

“Moreover, banks are not accessible to poor households in rural areas but ration shops are. The cash transfer rollout will adversely affect the food security of such households,” Sinha cautioned.

7439 - Aadhaar for baby orphans - Telegraph India


Ananya Sengupta

New Delhi, Feb. 21: Infants in orphanages will be given Aadhaar cards to check illegal adoptions and help the government monitor the children, prone to abuse at the shelters or to delinquency later.

These cards, which will be linked to the Aadhaar numbers of the orphanage superintendents, will also give the children a chance to trace their roots in future.

"The idea is to give the child an identity," said Deepak Sandhu, chairperson of the Child Adoption Resource Agency (Cara), the nodal government body that facilitates adoptions by mediating between orphanages and interested couples.

She said the cards would also allow the children to "open their own bank accounts without trouble at a later stage" and secure welfare in an era of direct cash transfers.

"Besides, since their biometric details will remain in the records, the children can be traced and even supervised, if necessary," Sandhu added.

Very few children have been issued with Aadhaar cards till now because their biometrics, especially those of kids under five, keep changing a lot.

Under the Unique Identification Authority of India's rules, a child aged above one year can apply for a temporary card, which eschews the child's biometric data and instead refers to the Aadhaar cards of its parents or guardians.

After the child turns five, its biometric data are collected and linked to its Aadhaar card. At 15 years, the biometric data are taken afresh and a permanent Aadhaar card is issued.

Two pairs of female twins at Punjab's Panjola village, aged 10 months and about one year respectively, became India's youngest Aadhaar card holders in May 2013 as part of a special government drive.

This was done to promote the Dhanalakshmi scheme, which aids girls' education, in Fatehgarh Sahib, the district with the worst child sex ratio in the country. The cards will allow the twins to secure the cash transfers when they start going to school.

Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi yesterday accused adoption homes (orphanages) of falsely claiming they didn't have adoptable children.

Orphanages may do so out of lethargy --- so they can avoid the cumbersome adoption process --- or to "sell" the children into illegal adoption.

Maneka slammed the agencies for "lying" and "cheating" and said the worst performing among them would be shut down immediately.
"I'm appalled by all of you," the minister told orphanage representatives from across the nation at a meeting here. "I've found bottlenecks, idleness, unconcern, deliberate lying.... In the process you have destroyed thousands of lives."

She said that many couples were opting for illegal adoption because the legal agencies "trouble them a lot".

An effort began last year to enrol India's street children too in the Aadhaar programme to allow them, in principle, to obtain school admission, open bank accounts and secure government welfare.

Most street children live with their parents --- mostly migrant labourers staying in makeshift roadside or construction site camps. But some have no guardians and live on railway platforms or near tracks.

For the latter group, NGOs and government child welfare committees are being drafted so they can "introduce" the children for Aadhaar enrolment and, if necessary, obtain affidavits from gazetted officers that will serve as address and identity proof.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

7438 - Don't harass pensioners: Govt tells banks - Business Standard



Press Trust of India  |  New Delhi  February 23, 2015 Last Updated at 18:35 IST

In the backdrop of complaints of pensioners' harassment, the government has directed banks not to insist upon retired government employees for their presence to give life certificates for continuation of pension.

The move comes after pensioners' associations raised the issue of non-adherence of rules with regard to submission of life certificate by authorised banks. It was said that the some bank branches were insisting on personal appearance of pensioners for submission of life certificate along with pension payment orders (PPOs), a Ministry of Personnel official said.

"All banks have been instructed to strictly adhere to existing norms and not harass the pensioners or family pensioners by insisting upon physical presence in the bank if their life certificate is submitted duly signed by the authority concerned and including Aadhaar-based authentication of life certificate," he said.

The government has also informed banks about the scheme for pensioners to prove their existence through Aadhaar-based authentication of life certificate, which has been started as part of the Prime Minister's 'Digital India' mission.

All pensioners were required to give proof of their existence annually before the pension disbursing bank.

As per rules, a pensioner is exempted from physical appearance if he gives a life certificate duly verified by a member of Parliament, state legislature, person exercising the power of the magistrate, a gazetted government servant, a police officer not below the rank of sub-inspector in charge of a police station, a block development officer, tehsildar or naib tehsildar and treasury officer, among others.

In the case of pensioner drawing his pension through a public sector bank, the life certificate may be signed by an officer of the public sector bank.

"A pensioner not resident in India in respect of whom his duly authorised agent produces a life certificate signed by a magistrate, notary, a banker or a diplomatic representative of India is exempted from special appearance," according to the rules.

7437 - Soon, your mobile phone to double up as a debit card - Business Standard

Soon, your mobile phone to double up as a debit card

Tinesh Bhasin  |  Mumbai  February 23, 2015 Last Updated at 23:28 IST

Imagine a future where you don’t need to carry any cards, and all transactions such as booking a taxi, buying from an online retailer, and paying utility bills are done instantly using a mobile phone. This could be a reality with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) launching a unified payments interface that makes your mobile phone as good as a virtual debit card.

“The interface will allow account holders across all banks to send and receive money from their smartphones using their Aadhaar number, mobile number, and a virtual payment address. The user doesn’t need to enter any bank account information.” said a top NPCI official.

According to NPCI, this will help in bringing down cash transactions. Currently, the number of non-cash transactions per person per year is at six. And, only 600,000 of the 10 million-plus retailers in India have card payment acceptance infrastructure.

Banks and the regulator are planning towards changing this by developing infrastructure that will enable all kinds of transactions using a mobile phone. “About 150 million smartphone users exist and that number is expected to grow to 500 million in the next five years,” says a report from NPCI.

“This also complements the payments bank for which the Reserve Bank of India will soon hand out licences. These banks will use such technology to keep costs down,” said the head of retail banking with a private bank.

The transaction is similar to National Electronic Funds Transfers (NEFT). A person needs to add a beneficiary to the account, which is authenticated by the bank. Once the credentials are checked, the account holder can start transferring funds. Banks using unified payment gateway, however, will offer more features and this will be available 24/7 unlike NEFT.

For example, person A who has an account with State Bank of India wants to transfer funds to person B, whose account is with Punjab National Bank, using a smartphone. Both the parties would mandatorily need to have Aadhaar cards and submit them to the bank to start this service.

First, they need to download the banking apps by their respective institutions (or NPCI app) on their smartphones and log into their accounts using online banking username and password. To start using the new service, they would need to generate a one-time MPIN and a unique virtual address like ACCD.21@sbi.

Once these are in place, person A will add person B’s profile to this account using the virtual address, name and mobile number, and then transfer the money.

“This will also help individuals to keep a record of where they are spending money. Usually, people withdraw a bulk amount from ATMs and don’t keep a tab on spending,” said Malhar Majumder, a certified financial planner.

According to NPCI, this system will be as secure as NEFT. In every transaction between individuals, the system will authenticate the profile using the Aadhaar card and mobile number of the sender and receiver. For transactions involving entities, the authentication will involve PAN card number and other details. In addition, none of the information such as PIN, passwords, biometrics, etc, is allowed to be stored by the bankers and all information is encrypted.


According to the NPCI official, this service will be available in six months.

7436 - ECI nod to use EVMs in Tripura ADC election - TNN

TNN | Feb 23, 2015, 06.00AM IST

Agartala: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has allowed the state election authorities to use electronic voting machines for the first time in autonomous district council (ADC) elections in Tripura's tribal areas, which are scheduled to be held by April-end.

State chief electoral officer ( CEO) S K Rakesh on Sunday said ECI has sanctioned 1,450 EVMs for holding elections in 1,071 booths in the tribal areas. About 7.60 lakh odd voters will exercise their franchise this time in EVM. Traditionally, ballot papers have been in use for ADC polls since 1982.

"EVMs have been used in Tripura since 2003 assembly polls but this is the first time we will be using them in ADC elections", Rakesh stated.

Don't buy shares in any company unless these eight criteria are met
Career Specialists for Executives & Professionals. Contact Us Now
The draft electoral roll of ADC has shown an increase of 19.3% voters this year compared to last election in 2010, he added. However, the final roll will be published on March 18.

Tripura ADC is currently under CPM rule with all the 28 seats belonging to it and there is no opposition in the house. This time ruling CPM will face the challenge from tribal-based Indigenous Peoples' Front of Tripura (IPFT) and BJP. Both the parties have strengthened political base in the hills.

Rakesh said ECI is all set to launch an electoral roll authentication and purification drive across the country from March 1 by linking Aadhaar with electoral roll database.

"The mission is to check the duplication of voters' name in more than one constituency. Aadhaar is basically identifying the right person by thumb impression and eye balls and ECI wanted to connect it with EPIC data base to authenticate the voters. Tripura has already covered 90% in Aadhaar registration," Rakesh said.

Chief election commissioner H S Brahma has convened a meeting with all the CEOs of the country on Monday in Nirvachan Sadan to discuss various other methods of electoral roll purification, he added.

7435 - eGovWatch: Aadhaar cards for children in adoption homes -Financial Express

By PTI on February 23, 2015


- See more at: http://computer.financialexpress.com/egov-watch/egovwatch-aadhaar-cards-for-children-in-adoption-homes/9503/#sthash.LhUJidGz.dpuf

Aadhaar cards will be issued to children in the adoption homes across the country to empower them with an identity of their own.


Aadhaar cards will be issued to children in the adoption homes across the country to empower them with an identity of their own.

“To give identity to the children, Aadhaar cards will be issued to all the children in the adoption homes across India.

This has already been started as a pilot project in Delhi. It will eliminate false identities,” said Dr Veerendra Mishra, Secretary of the Child Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).

The announcement came at the end of a two-day national meet on adoption organised by CARA of the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Responding to concerns expressed by various stakeholders about the difficulty of making Aadhaar card for infants and small children, he said that for children who are below 5 years of age, biometrics are not collected, they are tagged to the parent/guardian’s ID. Legal experts also addressed the concerns raised by the agencies.

Aparna Bhat, former member of the NOC Committee of CARA, said due caution should be exercised to follow all rules during the adoption process and there should be complete documentation to prevent adoption from being declared illegal at any stage. On inter-country adoption, representatives from MEA revealed that e-seva kendras have been opened to speed up and simplify the passport making process.

Earlier, adoption agencies expressed their apprehensions about not getting enough children because of illegal adoptions at hospitals and maternity homes. They also pointed at delays caused by police and judiciary, as well as passport issuing authorities, in giving clearances.

The meet concluded with the message that all stakeholders should make every possible effort to ensure that the interests of the children are given utmost importance in the process of adoption.

The meet was inaugurated by Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, who stressed that any kind of delay in adoption process will not be tolerated and the entire process of adoption of a child should not take more than four months. 

During the sessions, various stakeholders including child care agencies, legal experts, representatives from MEA and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) discussed issues and processes related to the implementation of adoption guidelines.

The experts also addressed and took due note of the concerns and issues raised by various agencies especially, Specialised Adoption Agencies (SAAs).

The proposed guidelines governing adoption of children, 2015 were discussed.
The guidelines have been framed keeping in mind the issues and challenges that have been faced by CARA, adoption agencies and prospective adoptive parents (PAPs).
With the new guidelines, it will become possible for PAPs to track the status of their application. It will also make the entire system centralised, transparent and efficient.

CARA Chairperson Deepak Sandhu said that all stakeholders present at the meet are involved in the task of protection of rights of the children and all should work together to achieve this objective.

She also emphasised on the role of awareness campaigns so that illegal adoptions can be checked and the rights of the child can be protected in future.

- See more at: http://computer.financialexpress.com/egov-watch/egovwatch-aadhaar-cards-for-children-in-adoption-homes/9503/#sthash.LhUJidGz.dpuf

7434 - 3.16 crore get Aadhaar numbers in Bihar - TNN

Madan Kumar, TNN | Feb 23, 2015, 03.46AM IST

PATNA: With Aadhaar enrolment moving at a fast pace, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) on Saturday crossed a significant milestone of generating 3.16 crore Aadhaar numbers in Bihar. 

"Currently, around 6,000 enrolment stations are working in different districts in Bihar, with more than 3 lakh enrolments per day. In Patna and Kishanganj districts, the Aadhaar enrolment coverage is more than 70% of their respective population," a UIDAI official told TOI. 

He said enrolment coverage in seven districts - Arwal, Muzaffarpur, Sheikhpura, Gopalganj, Saharsa, Sheohar and Katihar - has crossed 50% of their respective population. The enrolment for Aadhaar is going on at more than 1,800 centres across Bihar. 

The UIDAI's Ranchi regional office, which looks after the organization's operations in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, last year initiated fresh interaction with Bihar government, its various registrars and enrolment agencies to speed up enrolment exercise in different districts, especially Patna urban area. Two mega training camps were organized in Patna and thereafter several districtwise camps were organized for training the workers of enrolment agencies, testing and certification of operators. More than 1,500 operators were certified at these camps, the officer said. 


He said Ranchi regional office has planned regular training camps to induct more operators. Recently, on the request of state registrar (Bihar's rural development department), a special two-day camp for training of trainers was organized in Patna, where more than 40 trainers were trained. These trainers will train the operators at district level and it is expected that the state registrar will also induct more operators in UIDAI ecosystem. He said the UIDAI was going to open an Aadhaar facilitation centre at its camp office in Patna, with facilities of Aadhaar enrolment, Aadhaar correction/updates, e-aadhaar printing and dedicated lease line for uploading the residents enrolment data packets. 

7433 - Bus Porters’ Petition for Aadhaar – A Political Analysis: - Kafila

Bus Porters’ Petition for Aadhaar – A Political Analysis: Tarangini Sriraman
FEBRUARY 22, 2015


Guest post by TARANGINI SRIRAMAN

Porters at ISBT  (Image courtesy DNA)

Barely six years into its introduction, the Aadhaar project, otherwise known as the Unique Identification (UID) project has been studied and critiqued extensively – its promises to strengthen welfare delivery, curb corruption, exorcise ghost beneficiaries from government databases, initiate financial inclusion and enhance intra-governmental coordination have been enthusiastically received in certain corporate and technocratic circles and skeptically, if not scathingly viewed in other academic and journalistic quarters. The liberties this far-advanced project has taken with individuals’ privacy and its failure to acquire a statutory basis (even as enrollment drives continue unabated) have justly attracted severe censure. And until recently, the surreptitiously mandatory nature of the project – where welfare entitlements were linked to the possession of numbers – was cause for alarm. The Supreme Court judgment in 2013 challenging this mandatory linkage between Aadhaar and subsidies/entitlements may have slowed down processes of the number’s proliferation as an exclusive proof.

However, since the new government at the Centre took over, newer uses and linkages are being imagined. How indispensable the Aadhaar will be to such schemes and entitlements only time can tell: cases in point the Jan Dhan Yojana (JDY) and the linkage of the Aadhaar with the passport. As new linkages appear in place of the old, the new government is urging all of us to walk boldly into the embrace of biometric identification that will, to a certain extent, at least, pervade public transactions (for some) and their very socio-economic chances of welfare support (for most others).  It was against this conceptual and empirical backdrop (so competently elucidated by the various scholars, lawyers and journalists following this project) that I decided, as part of my work on a larger book project, to speak with a migrant community in Delhi about their Aadhaar-related experiences – did they wish to get these numbers, if so why?

For these purposes, I picked a community of bus coolies or porters in North Delhi most of whom were migrants from different parts of the country and who stayed in a makeshift residence on the premises of the bus terminal. What were the political prisms of the porters’ unionized existence through which they viewed the project? What anxieties and aspirations underlay their responses to Aadhaar and this project’s assorted self-representations? Did this universal identity infrastructure translate into a specific set of urban resources that eased coolies into exclusive city-based schemes? And conversely, did the Aadhaar insulate this community from city-specific burdens of proof in matters of enumeration and access to welfare schemes? 

Given that the Aadhaar claims to especially emancipate the migrant worker from encumbrances of being verified afresh for claiming city-based entitlements, this seemed like a valid line of inquiry. Considering that identification and enumeration processes have traditionally turned on stable residences, coherent city addresses and fixed IDs, it is egregious that the Aadhaar was sought not so much as a universal, nation-wide proof but as a point of entry into the city’s (Delhi’s) welfare networks. The argument this piece makes is that the porter community’s experiences underline the specifically urban stakes in acquiring an ostensibly fluid and mobile ID – the Aadhaar however seemed to fall short of these expectations as I shall demonstrate.

Over the last eight-nine months, I met and spoke with 70 porters and all the union members at ISBT, Kashmere Gate, and I also met transport department officials, interviewed UIDAI officials and visited Aadhaar enrollment camps in North Delhi. I also managed to speak to some bank officials to get a sense of linkages between the Aadhaar and JDY and the insurance angle in this new banking for the poor scheme.

 As part of my earlier research on IDs, I had already spoken to a lot of food officials to better understand the working of welfare schemes meant for the urban poor encompassing the homeless, rural migrants and slum residents. By connecting the various dots that these interviews yielded, I hope to convey a picture of (a) the everyday politics of the porters’ petition for an Aadhaar (b) the incredibly formidable challenge that the porters faced in simply acquiring the Aadhaar and (c) the immense difficulties they faced in using it as a link to city-based welfare schemes. 

 At the end of this piece, I reproduce an Open Letter written by the Porters’ Union to the Unique Identification Authority of India, which expresses their understanding of the issue and how it impacts them.

I start with a brief sketch of the porter community at ISBT that will then allow us to reflect on their collective and individual anguish to be enumerated reflexively and to be given the freedom to create (to channel Lawrence Cohen’s ideas here) a variegated demographic field of one’s own choice.

A Short History of ISBT
The Maharana Pratap Inter-State Bus Terminal was created in the year 1976 and today, runs services between Delhi and seven other states, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. Prior to this, a makeshift bus terminal was operational first in New Delhi and then Old Delhi. However, a high-end and spacious terminal that could accommodate the burgeoning numbers of inter-state passengers, with its own government-based regulatory authorities was desired. The Delhi Development Authority initially took over the operation and maintenance of the terminal and later the Delhi Transport Department became the governing authority in 1993. 

Around the same time, two other bus terminals at Anand Vihar and Sarai Kale Khan also became functional. Over the years, this move saw the diversion of many crucial inter-state bus services to the new terminals, resulting in the steady decline of work for the porters at Kashmere Gate. 

In the last few years, the porters have also been distressed about the declining commerce in their terminal which they see inversely proportionate to the increasing popularity of the other two bus terminals in the city. This prompted some of the porters to seek transfers to the new terminals and some even managed to get them; however, they failed to find work at these two new terminals owing to political and administrative tussles. 

Ever since 2010, the Transport Department has authorized a fully government owned corporation called the Delhi Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (DTIDCL) to operate and manage all functional and non-functional ISBTs (there are two non-functional terminals at Dwarka and Narela). 

With this move, the porters too automatically became the charges of the new corporation.  I use the word ‘charges’ here with some reservations – because although the corporation was to issue these porters new ID cards (where earlier, they were issued these by the Transport Department), they did not consider them their responsibilities in any paternalistic welfare sense. The Department and now, the Corporation has deliberately avoided treating these porters like government employees for that would entitle them to salary, pension, leave and insurance which have eluded them (even though the Union has repeatedly petitioned several Delhi government authorities for these privileges). 

Relatively, the bus porters feel that the railway porters are better placed – they have one sanctioned holiday for the family per year, two uniforms for which they bear no cost, medical facilities at a railway hospital, concessions related to admission of children in railway schools subject to availability of seats. 

Porters pointed out, that that in recent times, railway employees were even given permanent sweeper jobs.  The only substantial government subsidy they ever received was a small piece of land which the DDA sanctioned to them in the 70s, conditional on the payment of a deposit. Owing to the deposit, only the relatively better-off porters could lay claim to these plots which were situated in Sunder Nagari near Dilshad Garden in North East Delhi.

Porters’ licenses
The porters at ISBT were originally inhabitants of different states in North, Northwest and South India like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Most of them are seasonal lower caste or Muslim farmers who flit between ISBT and their fields because they find either source of income to be inadequate per se. 

The ISBT porters’ union acts as a strong nodal point of the coolies’ negotiation with disparate authorities like the DDA, Transport Department and the Social Welfare Department among others. The union steps in to take care of various pressing everyday matters like applying for porters’ license, renewing such IDs, resolving questions of inheritance therein and fixing the shift system (where porters share the workload in an equitable arrangement where they are assigned spots on rotation). While the existence of the union has greatly sheltered and strengthened individual porters who wish to be taken seriously by authorities, it has occasionally wielded its formidable influence to get its own way in matters of porters’ appointments. The union has always believed that it was important to deny entry to those outside the existing kinship network. If they opened the gates to all job-seekers, then their daily wages, already compromised by the two new terminals, would shrink even further. And so the union bitterly fought a dozen men who in the early 90s sought work outside this network, but the outsiders sued the union and the Delhi Transport Department in the Delhi High Court and eventually won.

Porter licenses or ID cards can be ‘inherited’ or passed on from father to son, brother to brother, father-in-law to son-in-law, grandfather to grandson (both son’s son and daughter’s son), uncle to nephew (both sister’s son and brother’s son). Some of these relationships were recently recognized as legitimate for purposes of inheritance – they were the result of the sustained pressure that the union brought to bear on successive Transport Department Ministers to recognize indirect and non-blood based kinship ties like the one between the father-in-law and the son-law. 

The porters are intensely uncomfortable with the nomenclature of the DTIDCL because it has made their already fragile jobs seem even more tenuous – the ‘Limited’ part of the DTIDCL lends the authority the aura of a company. While the porters always wanted their jobs to more secure, – they have, for instance craved salaried payment and pensions – they never had to regard themselves as contractual employees. Porter after porter testified to the fear that they were now rendered ad hoc employees of a ‘limited-wallah adhikari’

The new regime has also made timely medical tests compulsory and has made the renewal of ID cards once in 5 years contingent on MBBS-certified medical certificates. Ageing porters and those recovering from a debilitating fall and sickness are particularly at risk of losing their licenses. Some porters asked indignantly, ‘shouldn’t other blue-collared government employees like sweepers, clerks, postmen be held up to the same mandate of medical fitness? Why should our licenses alone be held ransom to our state of health?’ When the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan kicked off in ISBT, the porters uncomplainingly pitched in. But they couldn’t help wondering if they were government employees in the sense that this Abhiyan rendered them, why could they not be employees in the more privileged sense of the term involving pensions and concessions?

In recent years, ISBT has got a swank new look with regulated entrances, elevators and escalators, clean toilets and Metro-style X-ray machines, but this has not entailed an improvement of their own living conditions. The porters still stay at a decrepit vishram griha or a dorm-like single rest room with battered lockers and poorly functional toilets. It is only after several years of ceaseless negotiations that there has been some progress in this regard recently – a plan for an expanded rest room as well as its refurbishment is in place; the plan has been very slow to get off the ground. The rest room did not simply serve as a material comfort in that it buffered the porters from the extremities of the infamous Delhi weather. The porters mobilized the restroom into an official Delhi address by listing it as their place of residence in the license. If one were to leave out the few Delhi-based residents, this license served as the only proof of their stay in Delhi for most other migrant porters. Of the 70 porters I interviewed, only 16 porters resided in Delhi and possessed IDs and addresses pertaining to the city. One porter stayed at a mosque in Old Delhi and lacked any proof other than the license to substantiate this. Voter identity cards and ration cards, for the rest of the migrant porters could only be issued by authorities in their home states. The union, through the admirable help of an NGO sought repeatedly to get voter identity cards and ration cards issued to some migrant porters on the strength of their bus adda rest room address. Briefly, the Food and Supplies office and the Voters’ Registration Centre obliged them – but the few cards that were issued were rapidly cancelled owing to political interference from a few MLAs. In a classic story of diminishing electoral returns, these MLAs decided they would hinder the porters’ chances of getting these documents by raising objections to the porters’ lack of legitimate Delhi-based residence proof (One NGO’s take on this has been that Mission Convergence which privileged NGOs and Gender Resource Centres in aiding urban poor enumeration may have made MLA recommendation letters less indispensable to the process). Through these objections, they were able to get such cards cancelled. As such, those porters who lack IDs in their own home states have not had luck getting them in Delhi either. Many of the porters believed that the Aadhaar could mitigate this inexorable quest for an assorted basket of IDs that would enable access to different spatial (rural/urban) networks. Those of them who did acquire Aadhaars from their home states found that Delhi’s banks and welfare schemes required city-specific proofs – the porters’ ability to open an account in the city and to access welfare schemes depended on the ability to produce such proofs over and above the Aadhaar.

The everyday politics of the porters’ petition for Aadhaar
It is important to note that the porters have not endorsed the Aadhaar in the way it has unfolded. Far from it, they were highly critical of aspects such as the insistence on address and ID proof. Their views on biometrics are more ambivalent, with many not being clear as to its purpose in the first place. The emphasis on proofs angered them – what is so unique about this project if it replicated the same burdens to produce proof of address and identity, they often asked me. However, they could not cut themselves off from an Aadhaar especially if it resulted in a city-specific ID and if it was mandatory for enjoying coherent welfare benefits.

This article cannot hope to give an empirical and historical outline of what the Aadhaar has entailed. This is an enterprise that is being comprehensively undertaken in various academic circles – entire M.Phils and PhDs are being written around the UID project both in India and abroad even as we speak. Suffice it to say here that this project has entailed the collection of demographic and biometric information stored in a central database, and the creation of a unique 12 digit identity number that links to it. Bank accounts on the one hand and government schemes like direct cash transfer benefits, pensions, scholarships, rations, employment guarantee wages are integrated with the number. Unlike the National Population Register, Aadhaar is not mandatory across the Indian states which are free to distance themselves from this identification exercise. But in states where Aadhaar was approved, there have been feverish enrollment drives – the impetus to such drives was supplied by the linkage of the Aadhaar with marriage certificates, PAN cards, LPG gas connections but also ration cards and bank accounts. Delhi showed an exceptional enthusiasm, with Sheila Dikshit’s government spreading the Aadhaar net wide in terms of linkage – a few outstanding examples are Annashree Yojana, free gas connections and the Food Security Scheme in the welfare scheme bracket and marriage registration, property registration, income certificates, caste certificates in the certification bracket.

Of all the porters I interviewed though, not a single one had benefited from any of the welfare schemes linked to the Aadhaar, and barely a handful had heard of them. The more recent Jan Dhan Yojana promised them certain financial benefits: but considering that an Aadhaar was neither mandatory to open an account nor to lay claim to the insurance entitlement, why bother? What then prompted them to get an Aadhaar ID? To understand this demand, we need to grasp the everyday politics of the porters’ struggles around identification. The porters’ documentary predicament reminded them of their liminal presence in the city – they had to renew their porter licenses after getting medical tests that exposed them to job termination. Besides, these licenses were not even properly state government-issued: the limited wallah card underlined for them the ad hoc nature of their jobs. If earlier, they had little luck approaching banks with just their porters’ licenses, now they felt even less sure. The porters also can’t help regarding with consternation all the talk about modernization of the ISBTs that the Delhi Transport Department as well as the Union Transport Minister, Nitin Gadkari have recently indulged in. After he read the newspaper report in which Gadkari promises airport-style ISBTs, one of the union office-bearers immediately asked me, ‘trolleys are more consistent with a posh ISBT than porters, no?’. These concerns only emphasized the patent unreliability of the porters’ license as an urban ID and intensified their search for other cards that could account for their presence in the city.

The porter’s union was a beehive of always ongoing paperwork. Apart from handling new applications, a record was meticulously maintained by the office-bearers with each page serving as a paper trail of the porter’s ID history. If the first part of the page contained the porter’s family predecessor (who he inherited his ID from), the latter part contained details of the present incumbent. The details for both the previous and the incumbent porter were the same: the photo, name, father’s name, temporary address, permanent address and age, signature or thumb print. Every time the porter took leave, he had to leave his badge (a metallic token bearing a number) behind along with a leave letter. These various documents carried immense evidentiary value – the leave letter supported by the register and the badge recorded the days of his absence thus helping many a porter fend off criminal charges when he was falsely accused of some crime back in his village. The fear of criminal taint over and above police harassment was one that drove porters to crave a document like the Aadhaar. Back in the bus adda, every time a bag or suit case went missing, the porters were routinely hauled up. Almost all the porters I spoke to believed that the fingerprints captured in the Aadhaar were there to apprehend criminals and rescue blameless people like themselves from criminal liability. On every field trip I made to ISBT, Kashmere Gate, the entry to the terminal was heavily policed with a bomb detection squad van parked outside. This routinized everyday fear which is a direct consequence of the nature of their work is a crucial link to understanding the porters’ desire for a biometric ID. In a way, the appeal of the Aadhaar would perhaps be greatly diminished if this deeply internalized fear were to be first addressed.

Migrant porters who inhabited two worlds – one an agricultural/rural world and the other an urban, unionized yet unorganized urban labour world – craved a documented presence that was wide-ranging. This may be a very obvious assumption to make – and their porter IDs should have normally sufficed to account for their presence in this other urban world. But strangely enough, this ID has worked for them as a government ID only within the commercial confines of the bus adda. The Aadhaar computer operators have categorically refused to accept a legitimately and rather comprehensively issued ID from a government authority. (I say legitimately and comprehensively issued ID because the application for a bus porter’s license which was submitted earlier to the Delhi Transport Department and now to the DTIDCL, not unlike the railway porter’s license, requires all manner of proofs, statements and affidavits ranging from proof of identity and proof of address documents to police verification certificates, medical certificates, NoCs from competing sons and even daughters). Why do these cards then fail to be ‘pukka’ as the common usage goes? The official line on this is multifold but I will construe it in two senses of the coolie license’s claim to be an address proof and an ID proof: (a) the bus adda is a government undertaking, the rest room is not a private residential space and such an address would lack legitimacy. (b) the porters are not government employees, hence this cannot be a proof of ID either in the strict sense of the term. Just as they are not entitled to salaries and pensions, they lack any prima facie claim to government IDs either. This has left the porters desperate for an ID outside their porter network in the city, and the Aadhaar has eluded them for the same reasons that they have desired it. If they saw the Aadhaar as a card that would override the need to procure other cards, they needed to show proof that they were certified to begin with. And certified in an all too conventional sense – an address and ID proof were necessary.

Getting the Aadhaar
A cursory look at the application form would suggest that getting the Aadhaar is superlatively simple: observe the impressive list of 18 Proof of Identity documents and 33 Proof of Address documents that an applicant can pick from. Visiting the enrollment camps suggested otherwise.
Even if the ID was issued technically by a government undertaking, the address in the ID card could not be that of a government undertaking. A certificate of identity with a photo issued by a gazetted officer such as a doctor with an MBBS degree may suffice as Proof of Identity (PoI). That would still require the applicant to submit Proof of Address (PoA) (and we saw how PoA was the trickier one for the porters). An MLA could provide a certificate of address but computer operators stopped taking such certificates from applicants after the Delhi Assembly went into a state of limbo since the dissolution of the AAP government. At a certain point in time early on in the UID’s life, an introducer could by giving his own fingerprints testify to the identity and the address of an applicant. This provision is all but absent now in the application process: by the UID authorities’ own admission but also by the testimony of various NGO figures, this has not been feasible because introducers don’t want to be legally liable in compromising criminal situations involving the person (often homeless person) who lacked the means to demonstrate his identity or address.
Mission Convergence was a flagship program introduced by the Sheila Dikshit government to provide what was termed a single window to fragmented government schemes strewn across various government departments. This program considered its purpose to be the ‘convergence’ of various social service schemes. It went about doing this through intermediaries such as Gender Resource Centres, Suvidha Kendras and District Resource Centres. But before scheme-related awareness could be disseminated and beneficiaries identified, it was considered necessary to first carry out massive surveys of poor households both of those staying in slum and resettlement colonies, and the homeless. This program also sought to (a) enable the homeless to acquire Aadhaars and (b) facilitate the integration of its various schemes with the Aadhaar. In the early days of the Aadhaar’s life, the ‘introducer’ facility – where an NGO representative or a householder provides her own address details and fingerprints to vouch for the undocumented, often homeless, person – within the Aadhaar was invoked to ease the entry of the homeless into the central database. A few NGO figures have been rightly been critical of the very elite premise behind the introducer. The representative of one such NGO which was at one point associated with Mission Convergence, asked, ‘who are we to introduce the undocumented? Why must an undocumented person become more trustworthy just because an NGO or a middle-class employer vouches for her/him? Does (s)he not have her own identity, her own dignity?’ Such an ID bearing another’s address denudes the bearer of any real sense of being documented. This particular NGO has, in its own efforts tried to get voter identity cards and ration cards issued to the porters and other homeless persons in Delhi; in doing so, it has sought painstakingly to ensure that these documents bear their own address even if such an address consists only of a street name.
Of the 70 porters I interviewed, 32 porters did manage to get their Aadhaar made. Only a couple of them said they got their Aadhaars made at the enrollment camp set up in Kashmere Gate. All of them were able to do so because they had traditional documents like voter identity cards and bank accounts. Of the 168 porters working at Kashmere Gate, at present, roughly 60 porters are in need of getting their Aadhaars made (since I could not interview all of them, I cannot vouch for this number). A few of them had the proofs required to submit to the Aadhaar authorities but their timing was never right; they were visiting their villages when the enrollment camps took place in Delhi or vice versa. Others were present when these camps took place but had left their ID proofs at home. At some point, computer operators in Delhi were given explicit instructions not to accept forms of homeless and other urban poor persons who approached them through the introducer. When existing IDs like the porter license were not valid, and traditional proofs like PAN card, bank accounts, voter identity cards, ration cards not available, the process was far from being self-evidently simple. Perhaps stranger than everything else was the fact that there was an enrollment camp for a couple of days held at the ISBT porters’ union office that failed to resolve any of the problems. The computer operators left abruptly when there was a power breakdown without even issuing receipts for those who had their biometrics captured. Only a few were issued Aadhaars to start with – in the wake of repeated phone calls to the operator and petitions to the UID authorities at various levels, some receipts were issued (presumably to those whose biometrics had already been captured). But none of these petitions have prompted the Aadhaar authorities to return to set up another camp, one that they could at least see through.
Aadhaar and government schemes
Tragically, while some migrant porters from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh managed to get their Aadhaars made, neither they nor the Delhi-based porters were able to lay claim to any government schemes linked to the number. Of all the porters I spoke with not even a single one of them had heard of the Annashree Yojana (a direct benefit transfer scheme) under the Sheila Dikshit government, much less applied for it. This includes the porters who did possess the Aadhaar numbers. For the fleeting time that the scheme was introduced, the meagre 600 rupees per month it entitled beneficiaries to was meant only for those who could prove they were residents of Delhi for the last three years, who lacked BPL/Antyodaya Anna Yojana ration cards and who earned less than a lakh a year. A food official from the Food and Supply Department added that the possession of even an APL ration card would disqualify the applicant in this scheme. While the databases of the Food and Supplies Department would be relied on to determine if an applicant had an active ration card or not, the scheme did seem to allow for some discretion in determining eligible beneficiaries. How can an applicant demonstrate the non-possession of a card, I asked him. He nodded very sadly and said, ‘perhaps if you have an old card which has been cancelled?’ The few porters who resided in Delhi possessing the Aadhaar would have possibly failed to demonstrate their non-possession of ration cards. The other migrant porters were of course, not eligible, owing to the Delhi clause – for even though they had resided in Delhi for a long duration of time, their cards would have probably not satisfied the definition of a legitimate government-issued residence proof. All this is hypothetical, of course, as the porters barely knew about the scheme. But for those who possessed them, Aadhaars seemed meaningless if they did not result in coherent and meaningful linkages with government benefits.
In contrast, the national scheme of Jan Dhan Yojana – which bears linkages with Aadhaar – with its striking allures of a zero balance bank account, an accident insurance and life insurance was one that almost every porter had heard of. While opening an account under the JDY was possible even without an Aadhaar or for that matter any government-issued ID, such accounts would be ‘small’ with very limited benefits vis-à-vis credit, balance, aggregate withdrawals. To make a bank overdraft, for example, the Aadhaar would be mandatory. And for such an account to stay functional, proof would have to be produced within 12 months of opening it.
Those scholars studying the Aadhaar-related experiences of marginal subjects have remarked on the various definitions of identity that social welfare projects invariably hinge on. Ursula Rao, for instance, suggests that the reason banks are not satisfied with Aadhaar when they are carrying out transactions with the homeless poor is because their notions of identity encompass not simply the physical trace of the individual but also social standing and trust. While my own interviews reinforced this observation, I was struck by something else as well, namely the bank officials’ hardheaded interpretations of financial inclusion. One SBI bank official in Delhi, who requested strict anonymity, informed me that the RuPay debit card which alone entitles the JDY beneficiary to claim such insurance is very unlikely to be issued to what he termed a ‘low-cadre and low-profile’ clientele like the porters (who are capable of maintaining only basic and small accounts). The scheme was introduced for two purposes, he insists. One was to foster the habit of ‘savings and thrift’ among the poor and to train them to keep their accounts alive and the second, to prevent the duplication of account-based identities for the purpose of monitoring beneficiaries of government-issued entitlements. Though they cannot disallow it, bank officials governed by the RBI norms related to the scheme have not really favoured giving cheque books under this scheme (these can be secured at a cost of 100 rupees for a book; the first 20 leaves are free. The rate seems to be variable across banks). For doing so would only encourage account-holders to enter transactions with third parties like the BYPL and the LIC which would make it too messy; this scheme was meant for limited personal transactions. So, RBI norms state that that an applicant under JDY should not possess any alternative account (and if she did, then her existing account could be linked to the scheme).  The JDY’s features seen in conjunction with these norms are designed to discourage account-holders from using their accounts for anything other than creating savings and receiving government benefits. Financial inclusion must be construed to mean enabling the entry of the poor into the banking system – it did not necessarily imply the systematic provision of financial benefits, such as insurance on a social welfare basis or the creation of incentives for personal banking. It could well be that the insurance entitlements are a smokescreen of a more narrowly defined scheme. So, even though the porters were enticed enough by the JDY to acquire the Aadhaar, union office-bearers were able to disabuse them, to a certain extent, of the exaggerated possibilities of this scheme.
Conclusion
Leaving aside for a moment questions of what enumeration entails in welfare terms, one can argue that a genuine concern in enumerating the poor in India has to be manifest in a paradoxical sense – such a drive has to waive the emphasis on stable and legitimate address proofs and yet be able to create a spatially specific proof. And such an ID should be that of the bearer in every coherent sense of the term (bestowing to the bearer her own address and demographic details and if at all needed, her own fingerprints). Owing to its flawed introducer scheme, and its mulish insistence on specific forms of PoA and PoI, the Aadhaar may not have lived up to these expectations. But one cannot ignore what the Aadhaar means in a welfare sense either. If the porters have insisted on their right to acquire the Aadhaar, they have simultaneously been critical of its various claims of number portability, universal welfare support, financial inclusion, etc. Their immediate political context of struggles around bus licenses, tokens, applications for transfer of licenses, medical fitness certificates is relevant to their wish to acquire a mobile but city-specific ID. Though the Aadhaar belies such an expectation, the porters still seek it because they do not wish to be tricked out of possible financial benefits that accrue to the unimaginatively defined – in terms of income levels, possession of BPL cards – poor community in India. But they also recognize that it is their ever-present fears coloured by the heavily policed nature of their work that produces a collective desire for a biometric ID.  It is not merely a new ID that they crave. It is quite specifically an ID that contains their physical fingerprints which, they believe, will bail them out in a criminal situation where they may be held culpable. Their organized yet unorganized statuses, defined by the tentativeness of their jobs and the fragility of their porters’ licenses, are also illuminating of their petition for the Aadhaar. In explaining why they thus must wear metallic tokens bearing numbers – not unlike Amitabh Bachchan and Govinda in films that have framed the coolie in unforgettable Bollywood idiom – one porter put it like this, ‘number wallah coolie chor nahin ho sakta’ (the number-bearing coolie cannot be a criminal) – this perhaps more than anything else explains why the bus porters want the Aadhaar but also recognize that this desire is politically fraught. It is not a cultural or political void that produces desires and anxieties around processes of marking, classifying, codifying and enumerating persons. The political prisms through which the porters perceive and relate to the Aadhaar cannot be isolated from a larger migrant and marginal experience of identification. And within a city like Delhi, such a marginal position mandates not so much a portable form of identification as a spatially enabling one.
Below I reproduce an open letter from the porters of ISBT to the UIDAI, where they express their unhappiness at the difficulty they have faced in acquiring Aadhaars. The porters request the setting up of an enrollment camp at the earliest to help them gain access to a document that they believe may affect them adversely in its absence.
To
The Director General, Unique Identification Authority of India, Government of India
Dear Sir,
We work as bus coolies at ISBT, Kashmere Gate, and our union is registered under the Societies’ Registration Act, 1860. We are licensed workers (though not government employees) first under the DDA, then under the Delhi Transport Department and now under the Delhi Transport Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited. Your office was kind enough to set up an Aadhaar enrollment camp for three days at our porters’ union office at ISBT in the month of May 2014. Unfortunately, owing to a voltage problem, the computer that the operator was using broke down. Many porters had turned up for their Aadhaar enrollment. However, only a few of them managed to get their receipts issued before this happened. The operator promised to meet us the very next day and deliver the receipts of those whose biometrics had been captured but he failed to turn up. Repeated phone calls to the operator yielded some result. He appeared one day after a couple of months to give us the Aadhaar receipts of some porters who had submitted their demographic and biometric information. But, there are still many porters who wish to get their Aadhaars made. Some of them showed up at the camp but failed to produce documents that could work as Proof of Address (PoA) and Proof of Identity (PoI) at the time, but are now in a position to do so. Others were not present when the camp was held – being seasonal farmers, many of us have to flit between our homes and fields in our villages, and our place of work at ISBT. We petitioned your office both directly and indirectly, requesting you to hold another camp. We believe that we have made our case known to you at various levels – the Deputy Director General, one of the Director Generals as well as the computer operator who came to ISBT have all been informed of our need and demand for universal coverage.
Our requests:
  • An Aadhaar enrollment camp must be set up at the earliest in ISBT. We should be informed a week in advance, so that we can communicate this to all our coolie brothers both in the city and at their homes away from Delhi. This way, all of us who want to be enrolled can be present on the day. This will also give us the time to get our documents in order.
  • A few of us lack all government IDs except for the porter’s ID card issued earlier by the Delhi Transport Department and now by the DTIDCL. But since this card cites our permanent address and is issued by a government authority, it should be recognized as proof (especially if the porter in question lacks all other ID). Your own Aadhaar form lists government photo ID card/service photo ID card of a public sector undertaking as acceptable PoI and PoA. Since the DTIDCL qualifies as a fully government-owned (Government of NCT Delhi) private enterprise, the photo IDs issued by them should count as proof of address and proof of identity. (In the past, the computer operators have rejected these cards, we fail to see why they cannot be recognized. After all, at the time of joining, each of us porters had to produce various proofs and undergo elaborate police verification of our address in order to get these cards made by the transport authorities). We fail to see why they cannot be accepted as legitimate ID for purposes of enrolment.
We believe that you wish to increase the number of those enrolled under the Aadhaar on a daily basis. We understand that your record of the present Aadhaar enrollees has crossed 1 crore just in Delhi and 63 crore all over India. Our numbers don’t match up to this record (we believe that 60 porters still wish to be enrolled) – you will only be able to increase your figures marginally if you set up another camp for us. But we also wish to believe that you are interested in addressing marginality and poverty per se: and surely, numbers alone are not going to add up to this goal.
We wish you all the best in your endeavours,
Best regards and signed by
Representatives of the Porters Union,
Maharana Pratap Inter-State Bus Terminal, Kashmere Gate, Delhi 110006.
Name           Designation
Lashmi Narayan Bagri       President
Chhajuram    General Secretary
Shyamlal      Vice-President
Dhanpal        Vice-President
Rajkumar      Joint Secretary
Aneesh          Office Secretary
Atmaram       Treasurer
Tarangini Sriraman teaches at a college in Delhi University. The fieldwork for this article was undertaken during her term as a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the Social Sciences and Humanities (previously called the Centre de Sciences Humaines).