Submitted by Nafis Hasan on Tue, 08/09/2011 - 16:56
Tracking Aadhaar enrolments in Delhi
Introduction
The Identity Project at CSCS conducted field work in Delhi in July in an attempt to understand the eco-system developing around the Aadhaar enrolments. Having visited parts of Jharkhand and AP previously we were beginning to realize that a unique eco-system system specific to each locale is beginning to emerge. Delhi, also an important site for networked governance consisting of the state, private enterprises and civil society organizations, directed towards a common public good, provided us with a context to begin understanding the micro politics of the region. In the words of Ananya Bhattacharjee, from the Society for Labour and Development, speaking in the context of state aided networks of support for under privileged sections of society, “everybody wants to set up base there (in Delhi)… there is good infrastructure, good transport, the politicians are here, all the head offices are here, it’s a very convenient place for business.”
Field Sites:
The NCT is divided into nine revenue districts. Aadhaar enrolments in Delhi are being conducted by several Enrolment Agencies (see complete list). However, a major chunk of the enrolments are being conducted by Strategic Outsourcing Services (SOS), a Bangalore based online marketing and IT service provider. (See box for further details). According to the Senior Manager Operations for Delhi, SOS won the bid for enrolments for the entire state of Delhi. However the company decided to limit its reach to only two areas: South West Delhi and North West Delhi which contributes to 50%(about 60mn) of the entire population of the state. This was planned to be achieved by establishing 20-30 enrolment centers in these areas. In South West Delhi particularly, 12 centers have been established by SOS with the enrolments starting in January 2010. The Sub-districts in South West Delhi that SOS caters to are: Palam, Vasant Vihar, Najafgarh and Delhi Cantt and in North West Delhi to Saraswati Vihar, Narela and Model Town.
Palam Village
We visited five Aadhaar enrolment centers in Delhi, which included two in Palam Village, one in Raj Nagar (which comes within the Palam Colony area), one in Delhi Cant and one in east Delhi. Four out five enrolment centers were under the gamut of SOS. Palam in South West Delhi is situated near Janak Puri, Vikas Puri and Indira Gandhi International Airport. For purposes of Aadhaar enrolments, Palam Village in South West Delhi is divided into 3 areas: Chotiyal, Badiyal and a new proposed undisclosed site.
Chotiyal, Palam Village
According to the supervisor of the enrolment centre in Chotiyal, a total of 50 thousand people are being targeted for Aadhaar enrolments in this village. There seems to be huge demand for enrolment as visible from the crowd both outside and inside the enrolment centre. The supervisor also informed us that managing the crowds was one of the biggest challenges that her team was facing. Interestingly, to curb this problem support from local residents was being sought as the agency staff was clearly inadequate to manage these huge numbers. On our visit we noticed a couple of people who were not part of SOS, who along with SOS staff were involved in disciplining the crowd, making lines for enrolment, verifying documents, helping in filling up forms, allocating serial numbers for demographic and biometric captures and in certain cases turning down attempts by what were considered non-residents of Chotiyal from joining the waiting lines.
Key observations/issues
· What drives demand?: In addition to the huge demand for Aadhaar enrolments and the associated problems of management we found that neither residents nor the enrolment agency is clear on what benefits the Aadhaar card/number will entail. As per the supervisor from SOS, the importance of the card is that it provides a source of identity, an opportunity to hold a ‘proper’ document that will ascertain one’s identity as a resident. In addition, the supervisor believed that the Aadhaar card will stand in as a single source of identity in lieu of all the other several cards that the Government of India provides (PAN, driving license, etc.). The supervisor also alluded to the use of the card for opening bank accounts and obtaining rental agreements. The focus here is clearly on offline use of the card as a source of identity that will help legalize various ‘transactions’ that a resident enters into. No reference was made to aspects of online authentication for which the UIDAI is presently conducting test pilots in certain parts of Delhi.
Badiyal, Palam Village
The Badiyal enrolment centre in Palam village housed several more enrolment stations than the Chotiyal centre. Also the level of aggression in the crowd was significantly higher with residents resorting to pushing and shoving and attempting to break upon the door to the enrolment centre. The SOS and supporting locals were also similarly aggressive to deal with this situation. In Badiyal one of the lead supervisors was surprisingly not an SOS employee but a president of the Resident Welfare Association of that area. A sprightly lady having a lot of clout with local residents as seen from the manner in which village folk were flocking to her to get their questions resolved or register complaints on the huge waiting time. She described herself as someone who was there only for the purpose of social welfare and hence was not motivated by any larger goal which could be ascribed to the state.
Key observations/issues
What drives demand?: The RWA president in Badiyal had a different, a seemingly more realistic take on why the centre was experiencing so much demand. She was of the opinion that the idea of a free card was attracting people and she ascribed that to the dominant village mentality. Lack of any clear goal or knowledge about what the card/number would entail did not seem to particularly bother her. Here again as in Chotiyal the objective behind the huge demand was for a card that was perceived to guarantee a sort of legality to resident transactions and no reference was being made to the online authentication aspects of the number.
Micro Politics: In our conversations with the RWA president and local residents at the enrolment site in Badiyal we were privy to an incident that categorically suggests factionalism in the guise of an endeavor for better management. A resident who had been repeatedly seeking clarifications on the nature of documents that she needed to provide for herself and her family was questioned by the RWA president as to her place of residence. On determining that her place of residence was the Harijan basti (not sure if the reference was to Sultanpuri as in the case of Chotiyal), the RWA president summarily avowed that the card was not being made for people from Harijan Basti. The president later told us that another centre would open in that area and the Badiyal centre could cater only to people from its own area, but she did not specify anything about it to the resident. On the UIDIA website, it is stated that “residents need to go to the nearest Enrolment Camp to register for an Aadhaar”. This does not seem to suggest a restriction on the enrolment centre that a resident approaches for Aadhaar. Both the Chotiyal and Badiyal cases of turning down residents seem therefore motivated by a different reason, one that prima facie could be attributed to caste politics.
Rag Nagar, Palam Colony
Very little information exists on the demographic and social aspects of Raj Nagar. However it has featured in the media as recently as April 2011 in relation to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Sajjan Kumar, a Congress leader was accused of instigating mobs against Sikhs in 1984. In 2011 he and a few others were accused of making efforts to influence key witnesses to not name him in the riot cases. (A lot of literature exists on the 1984 Anti Sikh riots with specific references to Raj Nagar. My attempt will be the glean political facts from this material and create a fact sheet of Raj Nagar)
Given this torrid political landscape, it was not surprising to find extensive political interference in the workings of the Raj Nagar Aadhaar enrolment centre. The centre is housed in a Manav Kalyan Sadan in a congested by-lane with houses on either side. When we arrived there was a power outage (this centre did not have a generator like in Palam village) and so all the stations were idle. There were hoards of people standing outside, some of whom had arrived at the centre as early as 3 AM in order to get themselves enrolled. Inside the centre a Congress Pradhesh Vice president and his BJP counterpart rallied against SOS for the poor infrastructure provided, inadequate machines and resources, poor crowd management techniques, etc. The Congress VP claimed that the population of Raj Nagar was 1.5 lakhs but the area had only 4 enrolment centers with 6 stations in each centre managing to enroll about 300 residents per day per centre whereas resident turnout on any given day was close to 5K. In addition, residents were being assisted in filling their forms by representatives of political parties instead of the SOS staff which was another point of contention.
The political interference was being referred to as counseling or monitoring by the SOS staff, however it was quite evident from informal conversations with the staff that counseling was only a guise for larger political agenda.
Key observations/issues
Micro Politics: Going by the manner in which both the Congress and BJP VP’s were calling the shots at the centre, it suggested a clear upper hand of political objectives over corporate practices. Even the district coordinator of SOS, toeing the political line, suggested implicitly that enrolments could not have been possible without help from local politicians and Resident Welfare Association members. The Manav Kalyan Sadan seems to be run by the local political party and hence infrastructure costs (rent, electricity, etc.) continue to be incurred by the state. The Congress VP drew attention to this while pointing out that SOS is receiving Rs 25 per successful enrolment from the UIDAI but infrastructure costs continue to be incurred by them. The suggestion made from this as well as the criticism against low number of centers available for enrolment points to a framing of SOS as basically motivated by its own profit margins as opposed to the welfare stance of political parties. In the Congress VP’s rant against private agencies one sees a clear distinction being made between private interests and general public good. The president went as far as pointing out that letters of introduction from local MLA and MP’s were not verified by the SOS staff which led to a huge probability of fraud. Further, both the BJP and Congress party members were drumming down their party affiliations and constantly referring to their roles as welfare workers for the betterment of society.
Violence: The level of aggression in Raj Nagar was quite palpable. We were also informed of some recent incidents, one of which involving the supervisor of the centre himself. The Congress VP referred to an incident in which a residents hand was cut as a result of a stampede and in another case a resident’s fingers were cut when a fight broke out at the centre. The supervisor related an incident in which a person from the police department in civil dress had come to get himself enrolled. On seeing a huge crowd he got agitated and beat up the supervisor who had tried to prevent him from breaking the line. This led to the shut down of the centre for a few days and only after politicians of the area intervened a compromise was reached.
Work Culture of SOS: In Raj Nagar we got also got a glimpse into the organizational structure and culture of SOS. Most of the senior level managers that we came across were ex-army male officers. However there seems to be higher female to male ratio from the designation of supervisor downwards. For instance, most of the supervisors we met were women and we noticed a lot more female operators than male staff. At Raj Nagar the Senior Manager-Operations conducted a sort of spot appraisal activity by reading out the enrolments completed by each operator in the previous week. The top few were profusely congratulated while the average performers were prodded. We sensed a work culture that did not seem very different from a BPO work floor with its spot rewards and incentive plans.
· Micro Politics: In our conversations with residents at the enrolment site in Chotiyal we were introduced to issues relating to factionalism and what seemed like caste politics. About 16Km from Palam village is a Harijan Colony (locally referred to as just Colony) in Sultanpuri from where certain people may have trickled into the Aadhaar enrolment centers in Palam (Chotiyal, Badiyal and Raj Nagar). We spoke to one such possible resident who complained of having his forms being torn up by either the SOS staff or the local resident’s part of the management. On further questioning people around him accused him of being from the ‘Colony’ and therefore should not have come there for enrolments. On viewing his documents it was determined that he had got a letter of introduction from a local MLA which stated that he belonged to Raj Nagar. In either case, whether he belonged to the Harijan Colony or Rajnagar he was clearly not welcome in Chotiyal by both residents and staff. There seems to be two issues here. Firstly, as per UIDAI norms, a resident can enroll in any enrolment centre in the country provided he/she fulfills the required criteria for usual residents and has the necessary documents. This incident was clearly an aberration to that norm. Secondly, if the person in question was genuinely from the Harijan Colony in Sultanpuri, as claimed by some Chotiyal residents, how did he get a letter from a gazetted officer that stated his place of residence as Raj Nagar? This speaks to an issue that a Congress party worker explicitly stated in another enrolment centre we visited; that of existence of rampant fraud in providing proof of residence certificates. This also stands in contradiction to the statement made by the supervisor of Chotiyal that an MLA will provide a letter of introduction only after verification of proper documents.
Process of data transfer and problems encountered: At the Chotiyal enrolment centre we were briefed by the system administrator from SOS on the manner in which data is captured, stored and exported to the CIDR. Demographic and biographic data captured for each resident is initially stored on the internal hard disc of the laptop and at the end of the day data from each laptop is put into a common folder and copy pasted onto an external hard disk. This external hard disk does not reside at the enrolment site but is brought everyday by a person from the central office. The exported data which is now on an external hard disk is sent to the SOS’s central office in South Extension. The system admin also apprised us on certain problems faced with the technology on a day to day basis. A recurrent problem is that of break in connectivity between the biometric and image capturing cameras and the laptop. Each enrolment centre has only local connectivity with no access to outside network either through WAN or internet. Internet access is only provided to the district coordinator who is provided with a data card for email the head office, etc. Another problem is that the CIDR follows a Last In First Out (LIFO) process for de-duplication leading to a huge backlog.
Key observations/issues
What drives demand?: The RWA president in Badiyal had a different, a seemingly more realistic take on why the centre was experiencing so much demand. She was of the opinion that the idea of a free card was attracting people and she ascribed that to the dominant village mentality. Lack of any clear goal or knowledge about what the card/number would entail did not seem to particularly bother her. Here again as in Chotiyal the objective behind the huge demand was for a card that was perceived to guarantee a sort of legality to resident transactions and no reference was being made to the online authentication aspects of the number.
Micro Politics: In our conversations with the RWA president and local residents at the enrolment site in Badiyal we were privy to an incident that categorically suggests factionalism in the guise of an endeavor for better management. A resident who had been repeatedly seeking clarifications on the nature of documents that she needed to provide for herself and her family was questioned by the RWA president as to her place of residence. On determining that her place of residence was the Harijan basti (not sure if the reference was to Sultanpuri as in the case of Chotiyal), the RWA president summarily avowed that the card was not being made for people from Harijan Basti. The president later told us that another centre would open in that area and the Badiyal centre could cater only to people from its own area, but she did not specify anything about it to the resident. On the UIDIA website, it is stated that “residents need to go to the nearest Enrolment Camp to register for an Aadhaar”. This does not seem to suggest a restriction on the enrolment centre that a resident approaches for Aadhaar. Both the Chotiyal and Badiyal cases of turning down residents seem therefore motivated by a different reason, one that prima facie could be attributed to caste politics.
Rag Nagar, Palam Colony
Very little information exists on the demographic and social aspects of Raj Nagar. However it has featured in the media as recently as April 2011 in relation to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Sajjan Kumar, a Congress leader was accused of instigating mobs against Sikhs in 1984. In 2011 he and a few others were accused of making efforts to influence key witnesses to not name him in the riot cases. (A lot of literature exists on the 1984 Anti Sikh riots with specific references to Raj Nagar. My attempt will be the glean political facts from this material and create a fact sheet of Raj Nagar)
Given this torrid political landscape, it was not surprising to find extensive political interference in the workings of the Raj Nagar Aadhaar enrolment centre. The centre is housed in a Manav Kalyan Sadan in a congested by-lane with houses on either side. When we arrived there was a power outage (this centre did not have a generator like in Palam village) and so all the stations were idle. There were hoards of people standing outside, some of whom had arrived at the centre as early as 3 AM in order to get themselves enrolled. Inside the centre a Congress Pradhesh Vice president and his BJP counterpart rallied against SOS for the poor infrastructure provided, inadequate machines and resources, poor crowd management techniques, etc. The Congress VP claimed that the population of Raj Nagar was 1.5 lakhs but the area had only 4 enrolment centers with 6 stations in each centre managing to enroll about 300 residents per day per centre whereas resident turnout on any given day was close to 5K. In addition, residents were being assisted in filling their forms by representatives of political parties instead of the SOS staff which was another point of contention.
The political interference was being referred to as counseling or monitoring by the SOS staff, however it was quite evident from informal conversations with the staff that counseling was only a guise for larger political agenda.
Key observations/issues
Micro Politics: Going by the manner in which both the Congress and BJP VP’s were calling the shots at the centre, it suggested a clear upper hand of political objectives over corporate practices. Even the district coordinator of SOS, toeing the political line, suggested implicitly that enrolments could not have been possible without help from local politicians and Resident Welfare Association members. The Manav Kalyan Sadan seems to be run by the local political party and hence infrastructure costs (rent, electricity, etc.) continue to be incurred by the state. The Congress VP drew attention to this while pointing out that SOS is receiving Rs 25 per successful enrolment from the UIDAI but infrastructure costs continue to be incurred by them. The suggestion made from this as well as the criticism against low number of centers available for enrolment points to a framing of SOS as basically motivated by its own profit margins as opposed to the welfare stance of political parties. In the Congress VP’s rant against private agencies one sees a clear distinction being made between private interests and general public good. The president went as far as pointing out that letters of introduction from local MLA and MP’s were not verified by the SOS staff which led to a huge probability of fraud. Further, both the BJP and Congress party members were drumming down their party affiliations and constantly referring to their roles as welfare workers for the betterment of society.
Violence: The level of aggression in Raj Nagar was quite palpable. We were also informed of some recent incidents, one of which involving the supervisor of the centre himself. The Congress VP referred to an incident in which a residents hand was cut as a result of a stampede and in another case a resident’s fingers were cut when a fight broke out at the centre. The supervisor related an incident in which a person from the police department in civil dress had come to get himself enrolled. On seeing a huge crowd he got agitated and beat up the supervisor who had tried to prevent him from breaking the line. This led to the shut down of the centre for a few days and only after politicians of the area intervened a compromise was reached.
Work Culture of SOS: In Raj Nagar we got also got a glimpse into the organizational structure and culture of SOS. Most of the senior level managers that we came across were ex-army male officers. However there seems to be higher female to male ratio from the designation of supervisor downwards. For instance, most of the supervisors we met were women and we noticed a lot more female operators than male staff. At Raj Nagar the Senior Manager-Operations conducted a sort of spot appraisal activity by reading out the enrolments completed by each operator in the previous week. The top few were profusely congratulated while the average performers were prodded. We sensed a work culture that did not seem very different from a BPO work floor with its spot rewards and incentive plans.
· Micro Politics: In our conversations with residents at the enrolment site in Chotiyal we were introduced to issues relating to factionalism and what seemed like caste politics. About 16Km from Palam village is a Harijan Colony (locally referred to as just Colony) in Sultanpuri from where certain people may have trickled into the Aadhaar enrolment centers in Palam (Chotiyal, Badiyal and Raj Nagar). We spoke to one such possible resident who complained of having his forms being torn up by either the SOS staff or the local resident’s part of the management. On further questioning people around him accused him of being from the ‘Colony’ and therefore should not have come there for enrolments. On viewing his documents it was determined that he had got a letter of introduction from a local MLA which stated that he belonged to Raj Nagar. In either case, whether he belonged to the Harijan Colony or Rajnagar he was clearly not welcome in Chotiyal by both residents and staff. There seems to be two issues here. Firstly, as per UIDAI norms, a resident can enroll in any enrolment centre in the country provided he/she fulfills the required criteria for usual residents and has the necessary documents. This incident was clearly an aberration to that norm. Secondly, if the person in question was genuinely from the Harijan Colony in Sultanpuri, as claimed by some Chotiyal residents, how did he get a letter from a gazetted officer that stated his place of residence as Raj Nagar? This speaks to an issue that a Congress party worker explicitly stated in another enrolment centre we visited; that of existence of rampant fraud in providing proof of residence certificates. This also stands in contradiction to the statement made by the supervisor of Chotiyal that an MLA will provide a letter of introduction only after verification of proper documents.
Process of data transfer and problems encountered: At the Chotiyal enrolment centre we were briefed by the system administrator from SOS on the manner in which data is captured, stored and exported to the CIDR. Demographic and biographic data captured for each resident is initially stored on the internal hard disc of the laptop and at the end of the day data from each laptop is put into a common folder and copy pasted onto an external hard disk. This external hard disk does not reside at the enrolment site but is brought everyday by a person from the central office. The exported data which is now on an external hard disk is sent to the SOS’s central office in South Extension. The system admin also apprised us on certain problems faced with the technology on a day to day basis. A recurrent problem is that of break in connectivity between the biometric and image capturing cameras and the laptop. Each enrolment centre has only local connectivity with no access to outside network either through WAN or internet. Internet access is only provided to the district coordinator who is provided with a data card for email the head office, etc. Another problem is that the CIDR follows a Last In First Out (LIFO) process for de-duplication leading to a huge backlog.
