13571 - These many people denied ration due to Aadhaar-related factors - Financial Express

These many people denied ration due to Aadhaar-related factors

Aadhaar-related exclusion is low in percentage terms but affects many in absolute numbers -- as many as 2 million in just three states of the country, a report has said.

By: Pragya Srivastava | Published: May 19, 2018 12:03 PM

In Rajasthan, 1.2% of all Public Distribution System (PDS) beneficiaries face exclusion due to Aadhaar authentication failures.

Aadhaar-related exclusion is low in percentage terms but affects many in absolute numbers — as many as 2 million in just three states of the country, a report has said. The 12-digit biometric ID, which aims for efficient, transparent and targeted delivery of subsidies, has led to exclusion of 2 million individuals from their PDS entitlements every month from the rural regions in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, a report by global research firm IDinsight said.

Biometric authentication failures are often cited as a reason for exclusion. In Rajasthan, 1.2% of all Public Distribution System (PDS) beneficiaries face exclusion due to Aadhaar authentication failures. The reported also noted that the incidence of biometric authentication failure is much higher as revealed by UIDAI’s own data. Using Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act 2016, central and state governments have asked beneficiaries of 252 schemes to authenticate themselves using Aadhaar.

Even as there are exclusions, Aadhaar verified PDS system is gaining popularity in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. “About 55.3% Andhra and 67.4% Rajasthan PDS beneficiaries say that the new system of PDS delivery using Aadhaar is better than the previous one without Aadhaar,” the report said.

What’s worrying is that non-Aadhaar reasons for exclusion tend to be significantly higher in general than Aadhaar. The report also conducted a household survey, in which 97% people said that privacy is important to them. In August last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, it opened doors for a slew of petitions challenging Aadhaar for infringement of privacy.

The respondents said in the survey said that it is important for them to know how their Aadhaar information is used by the government. Despite the privacy concern, 87% respondents approved mandatory linking of Aadhaar with various services. A total of 2,947 households were surveyed by IDinsight.

Earlier this year, a report by Chandigarh-based Tribune said that some of the Aadhaar details were up for sale for just Rs 500. Even as the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) rejected the claims of the data breach, a lot of questions were raised on data protection by government authorities and private players involved in it, including during Aadhaar hearing in the apex court.

12995 - Testimonies Reveal How Aadhaar Has Brought Pain, Exclusion to Poor - The Wire

Testimonies Reveal How Aadhaar Has Brought Pain, Exclusion to Poor

From the inability to get ration cards made to starvation deaths because of denial of rations because of Aadhaar linkage, testimonies reveal problems across the country.

Credit: PTI

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
GOVERNMENT

3 DAYS AGO

New Delhi: From Vishwanath of Jharkhand recalling the circumstances leading to the death due to hunger of a poor tribal woman, Budhi Soren in Giridih in January this year, to Debashish, a village headmen from Koraput in Odisha, speaking about how 175 households in his village do not have a ration card despite applying for it over a year ago; and activists pointing out how poor households were excluded from the purview of the National Food Security Act, 2013, a public hearing organised by the Right to Food Campaign at the Gandhi Peace Foundation today highlighted the many shortcomings in the implementation of the Act four years after its enactment.

The hearing witnessed the participation of people from 14 states as well as a number of civil rights activists and some politicians. It noted that the while the implementation of the Act was crucial in reducing India’s high levels of hunger and undernutrition, it has not been implemented in totality.

Mandatory integration of social programmes with Aadhaar

Moreover, the meet also highlighted how “the mandatory integration of social programmes with Aadhaar has excluded many people from their legal entitlements’’ including the right to food. The organisers said the country’s agrarian crisis and situation of critical under-employment have only exacerbated the situation of hunger and the Union Budget 2018-19 has betrayed the Narendra Modi government’s lack of commitment to address the structural causes of hunger or ensure adequate coverage of social programmes.

At the very outset, people who had been denied a ration card spoke about their efforts and sufferings. Many of them like Balakram, an Adivasi from Chhattisgarh; Sharda Ben, a Dalit from Gujarat; and Pratap Singh from Madhya Pradesh spoke about how they could not procure a ration card despite fulfilling their state’s criteria for inclusion in the public distribution system under the National Food Security Act.

Number of starvation deaths across India

The public hearing also saw activists speak about how exclusion from the public distribution system (PDS) had driven many to starvation and death. While Vishwanath spoke about the circumstances leading to the death of Budhi Soren in Giridih in January, other activists spoke about similar deaths reported from other parts of the state. Taramani Sahu from Simdega talked about Santoshi’s hunger death due to the cancellation of her family’s ration card in the absence of Aadhaar seeding. Another activist, Narsimha, spoke about how three brothers Gokarna in Karnataka died following discontinuation of their ration as they did not possess Aadhaar.

The problem, the activists said, was not confined to rural areas alone but even the national capital of Delhi. In the capital city, they said while there are 19.5 lakh ration cards, almost a quarter of all the households were unable to access rations in January this year due to Aadhaar-based biometric authentication failure.

Some homeless persons from Delhi also testified how they were unable to get an Aadhaar card. Others spoke about denial of several entitlements in the absence of identification documents.

Denial of social security pension

Several people at the hearing also testified about how they had been denied social security pension despite suffering from disability. Gulshan Khatoun of Noida said she had three sons with disability but none off them was getting any pension. Ranjeet Kaur from Amritsar, who also has a disability in her leg, spoke about how despite several visits to the office of the District Collector she had only been dished out hollow promises but no pension. Some widows also spoke about not being given pension by their governments. Maida Khatoon from Noida in Uttar Pradesh complained that she was a widow but was not getting any pension to support herself.

Rights activist Dipa Sinha, who had visited Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, as part of a fact finding team to enquire into the starvation death of Amir Jahan, said the woman died in the absence of access to food as her family did not even know how to apply for a ration card. “Her husband had to leave the work of rickshaw pulling due to tuberculosis and migrate to Pune in search of work,” she added.

Economist and social scientist Reetika Khera was of the view that while many poor households are excluded from the ambit of food security, the Right to Food Campaign should draw strengths from its victories. She said despite its limited reach the National Food Security Act has been one such success since it significantly expanded the coverage of the PDS.

Politicians lament absence of discussion on right to food in Parliament
The meet also witnessed the participation of people from the political field. Senior Communist Party of India leader and member of Rajya Sabha D. Raja spoke about the need for Parliament to discuss the all important issue of food security and right to food but lamented that its priorities lay elsewhere. important issues, but the legislative body does not function the way it should. Shelha Rashid said that government is squeezing funding on public services but is also not providing details of its expenditure on areas such as defence deals.

Spokesperson of the Congress and member of Rajya Sabha from Karnataka, Rajeev Gowda, said through his party had brought Aadhaar it was not its intention to use the Unique Identification system as a tool for exclusion.

The gathering was also informed that the Right to Food Campaign was “deeply disappointed” by the Supreme Court order of March 13 which had extended the deadline for Aadhaar linking of facilities such as bank accounts and SIM cards, but had permitted the continued imposition of Aadhaar on social services and entitlements such as the PDS, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and social security pensions.

The Campaign said this order “perpetuates a long-standing double standard, whereby the hardships experienced by privileged classes due to Aadhaar being made mandatory are being addressed while much greater hardships endured by poor people are ignored.”

The damage caused by Aadhaar, it said, was not limited to the PDS as recipients of social security payments, such as NREGA workers, social security pensioners and scholarship holders, were also suffering due to this application.

The Campaign would now be approaching Members of Parliament to seek legislative action on India’s alarming levels of hunger and undernutrition by requesting discussion and action on these issues.

It noted that among the 119 countries included in the 2017 Global Hunger Index, India stood at number 100 and that the country’s nutrition indicators were no better with 41 infants below the age of one dying every year out of every 1,000 live births in 2015-16. It said malnutrition was also a major cause of stunted growth as in 2015-16 as many as 38.4% of the children below five years were stunted and this was even worse than the 34% recorded in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Campaign would also be suggesting strict implementation of the National Food Security Act to the lawmakers as also expansion of the entitlements under it.


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10457 - Aadhaar e-PoS leaving out beneficiaries, say activists; Rajasthan government disagrees - Indian Express

Aadhaar e-PoS leaving out beneficiaries, say activists; Rajasthan government disagrees

The Rajasthan government has said the state’s record has been exemplary in making the transition from the older ration card-based system to using Aadhaar.

Written by Mahim Pratap Singh | Jaipur | Updated: September 17, 2016 6:15 am

Villagers of Belatikri under Lalgargh PS queue at a ration shop for rice at Rs 2 per kg on Sunday. (Source: Express photo by Partha Paul.Jhargram)

Food security activists and economists have expressed concern at the exclusion of thousands of PDS beneficiaries in Rajasthan owing to glitches in the Aadhaar enabled electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) device.

The Aadhaar enabled ePoS is dealing a double blow to the state’s public distribution system, leaving out beneficiaries owing to glitches in the ePoS machine, and not being able to check “quantity fraud”, activists maintain.

The Rajasthan government, however, has said the state’s record has been exemplary in making the transition from the older ration card-based system to the one based on biometric identification using Aadhaar.

Interestingly, Subodh Agarwal, Principal Secretary (Food and Civil Supplies) cited Rajasthan’s Aadhaar ePoS experiment as a “best practice” at a meeting in New Delhi on Friday. 

“Rajasthan’s experience has been exemplary due to the speed at which we have done Aadhaar seeding, National Food Security Act sanitisation as well as ePoS installations,” he told The Indian Express.

In a letter to Union Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, activists and economists, including Jean Drèze, Reetika Khera, Nikhil Dey and Anjali Bharadwaj, have sought to draw the government’s attention to the “danger of inappropriate technologies” for PDS in states like Rajasthan and Jharkhand.

According to data obtained from Rajasthan government’s official portal, only 64 per cent beneficiaries were getting their ration through the Aadhaar enabled ePoS system in August.

The remaining 36 per cent are vulnerable to exclusion owing to glitches in the machines, allege activists.

While the number of beneficiaries has seen an increase — from 44.6 per cent in May to 64 per cent in August — activists say the numbers still present a bleak picture.

“A 62 per cent ‘success’ rate (July) is disastrous. In rural areas at least, hardly anyone foregoes their rations. We don’t know what is happening to the remaining 38 per cent. There is no clarity about a ‘manual override’ facility, that is if the machine fails you, the dealer can revert to old-style register-based sales. In any case, dealers have no incentive to tell people about. Are the 38 per cent aware of the manual override facility, or are they being cheated?” said economist Reetika Khera.

“The new technology has possibly dealt a double blow – quantity theft continues as before; plus for 38 per cent, they may get it if they know about the possibility of register based sales, or not at all if they are unaware of this option,” she said.

However, the state government says the system cannot result in exclusion. “We are not saying that ePoS machines cover 100 per cent beneficiaries. But those who can’t get their ration from ePoS due to some technical glitches, can always get it from the manual system,” Subodh Agarwal, Principal Secretary (Food and Civil Supplies), told The Indian Express. “And the system is slowly picking up. If we have reached over 62 per cent from 44 per cent in May, then that is an achievement,” he said.

Aas Mohammad, a Fair Price Shop operator in Tijara, Alwar, said all sales at his shop were being made using ePoS machines. “If the machine fails to identify them, they have to come again. We have stopped selling through registers,” he said.

9802 - AADHAR CARD BLUES - Why poor people in Delhi are desperate to get their babies uniquely identified - Scroll.In

Sunday, April 10th 2016

AADHAR CARD BLUES

Why poor people in Delhi are desperate to get their babies uniquely identified

Delhi government continues to deny food rations to people without Aadhar cards, even though a Supreme Court order expressly prohibits this.

Image credit:  Mayank Jain

Feb 26, 2015 · 08:30 am  

Aarefa Johari and Mayank Jain

On the 15th of every month, thousands of slum residents in Sheikh Sarai in Delhi pour out of their tenements and head to the ration shops to pick up their share of subsidised grain. But in recent months, many have been coming back home without their full share.

This isn’t because the supplies in the shop are running thin. Rather, this has to do with the Delhi government’s insistence that people get themselves Aadhar cards, which assign a 12-digit unique identification number to each individual.

Although the Supreme Court in an order in March 2014 ruled that an Aadhar card or number cannot be made mandatory for citizens to avail of any social security service, the state government in Delhi continues to ask for it. Those who do not have Aadhar cards are being denied food rations.

Apart from being a violation of the court order, this has led to a curious trend in the slum at Sheikh Sarai. Families are lining up children, and in some cases, infants, outside Aadhar registration centres. “Even our youngest, five-month old baby has an Aadhar card now,” said Sheela, a matriarch heading a 17-member household of sons, daughter-in-laws and grandchildren.

A temporary fix

Since the Aadhar card is based on biometric data, children younger than five years are technically not ready for the procedure. Their iris and fingerprints aren’t fully formed. They would inevitably need new cards after the age of five.

So why are families desperate to get Aadhar cards for their children?

Until recently, food rations were given collectively to a family. But the National Food Security Act of 2013, popularly known as the Right to Food Act, has replaced family quotas with individual quotas. Under the new law, every member of a family that earns less than Rs 1 lakh a year is entitled to five kilos of rice and wheat a month at Rs 1 or Rs 2 a kilo.

Since Delhi government has linked Aadhar to food rations, it means every member of the family – including the children – need to get unique identification cards before they can qualify for the rations.

Geeta, a housewife from the Sheikh Sarai slum colony, has to feed her four children on the erratic income of her husband, a daily wage labourer who brings in Rs 100 or Rs 150 on a good day. Three of her children were not on the family ration card when the Right to Food Act was passed, so Geeta is unable to get subsidised rations for half the family.

“There is no hope for people like us. They ask us to get an Aadhar card first or get out,” said Geeta, who has been trying to get her three youngest children on the ration card for a year.