The Big Story: An Aadhaar tragedy

On September 28, 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari died asking for rice. The child, who lived in Jharkhand’s Simdega district, had barely eaten in eight days because, months before, her family’s ration card had been cancelled. The block development officer admitted the family’s name had been struck off the list of beneficiaries because their ration card could not be linked to an Aadhaar number. Activists say this was due to technical glitches. The administration suggests that the child died of malaria and the state government has ordered an investigation. It cannot change the fact that, for months, the state denied essential food rations to a family that depended on them for sustenance. Even if she had been ill, the starving child would not have had the strength to fight the disease.

Folded in the tragedy of her death is the story of a deeper systemic failure: how some of the most vulnerable families have been deprived of their legal entitlements by the government’s insistence on linking food rations to the Aadhaar programme to give every Indian a biometricially linked identity number. The local authorities had been made aware of the family’s situation in August but it took them a month-and-a-half to finally get the ration card seeded. By then, Santoshi Kumari had died.

The system’s dependence on technology has proved to be a severe problem in rural India, where even electricity is erratic, never mind internet connectivity. There have been numerous reports of how eligible citizens have been denied food rations due to authentication errors stemming from lack of connectivity, worn fingerprints or faulty machinery. But Santoshi’s case suggests the glitches start even before the authentication stage. Hundreds of families have been struck off the list of beneficiaries because they could not get Aadhaar in the first place or because the ration card could not be seeded with Aadhaar. Even when the technology is in place, citizens must navigate opaque administrative systems to get their ration cards linked, which some of the most needy are unable to do.

Yet spectacular figures are bandied about as savings due to Aadhaar. Most recently, the architect of Aadhaar, Nandan Nilekani, claimed that the project had saved the exchequer $9 billion by eliminating “fakes and duplicates” from beneficiary and employee lists. Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah had said that the Aadhaar-linked direct benefit transfer scheme had saved the government Rs 50,000 crore in three years. Jharkhand officials have boasted that 11.6 lakh ration cards have been deleted from the public distribution system lists because they were found to be fake or duplicate. Yet these claims of having trimmed wastage by weeding out “ghosts” and “duplicates” are suspect. In Rajasthan, for instance, thousands of pensioners were struck off lists because they did not have Aadhaar cards or bank accounts. In Jharkhand, which became the third state to make Aadhaar-based authentication compulsory in all ration shops, beneficiaries got only 49% of their entitlements under the National Food Security Act.

Aadhaar has created a system where technology apparently replaces the need for government to talk to people. Yet this technology is not yet smart enough to account for complexities on the ground, neither has it been able to eliminate all kinds of corruption in the system. Interim findings of field studies reportedly suggest that quantity fraud, high transaction costs and outright exclusion of the most vulnerable have continued after Aadhaar-based authentication systems were introduced.

The death of an 11-year-old child occurs at a time when most of the debates around Aadhaar have shifted to questions of privacy and security, as the government proposes to link it to bank accounts, PAN cards and phone numbers. In hearings before the Supreme Court, the Centre argued the “welfare of masses trumps privacy of elite”. But schemes like Aadhaar are vital to the fundamental rights of people who did not have access to basic amenities like food and shelter. Santoshi’s death suggests that Aadhaar has failed the government’s own test.

The Big Scroll

Aarefa Johar reports on the death of 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari.

In Scroll.in’s Identity Project series, read reports of how ration shops in Rajasthan and Jharkhand have denied food to eligible citizens by insisting on Aadhaar authentication and other issues with the system.

Punditry

  1. In the Indian Express, Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd questions the left-liberal silence on caste oppression.
  2. In the Hindu, RK Raghavan draws lessons from the Aarushi murder case.
  3. In the Economic Times, Neeraj Kaushal suggests once famine-stricken Ethiopia has lessons for a country like India.

Giggles

Don’t miss...

Gond artists Jangarh Singh Shyam painted forests full of creatures never meant to be seen, finds Zinnia Ray Choudhuri:

  “I found that fascinating,” said Crites. “The images of gods and goddesses were not committed to paper till then and he would say to me that he would get scared that as he drew them, they would get power and come after him. He was born and raised in the village, so he was very connected to his roots, his enchanted forests and gods.”