No identity for the poor
4 May 2012 3:47 AM GMT
Mano Devi of Bunkheta village in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district is distraught. A woman in the late 30s, who is dependent on the manual work given by the government to keep her going, she has missed work allotted under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for the fourth day in three weeks. That’s because she has had to come to the Pragya Kendra or Common Service Centre panchayat headquarters at Dohakatu village every day hoping to get her back wages through the machine.
The machine, as she calls it, is the hand-held device/micro-ATM that scans her fingerprints to authenticate her unique identity, or the 12-digit Aadhaar number, for bank transactions. For four days now, the micro-ATM has refused to recognise her unique identity, making it impossible for her to collect her wages of the past three weeks. That is a total of 12 days’ wages at the rate of Rs 120 per day.
‘They have tried every finger and thumb, but I don’t know why that machine does not accept any of them. I have done everything that the officers and the machine babu have told me to: scrubbed my hands with soap and water, even applied mustard oil,’ says a tearful Devi. The machine babu is the banking correspondent (BC) Rajesh Kumar, appointed by the Bank of India. So, every day she has returned empty handed to her home about two kilometres away, let down by the sophisticated technology.
The three banks that have joined the pilot are ICICI Bank, which is using the services of Fino, a business and banking technology company that specialises in services delivery; the Bank of India that has outsourced it to United Telecoms Limited (UTL) and Union Bank. Interestingly, MGNREGA payments are already being routed through banks and post offices following a policy decision in 2008. In addition, old age pensions and school stipends are also part of the pilot.
Across the three districts of Jharkhand – Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Ramgarh – where the pilots are being conducted to test the ease and efficacy of the UID platform for disbursing wages and other welfare payments directly to the beneficiaries, the story repeats itself with minor variations. The attempt by UIDAI, headed by the software entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani, is to prove the practical application of its project which has run into criticism on account of its huge costs (estimated at Rs 9,000 crore for collecting the biometrics of 600 million residents) and questions about its utility.
But in the well-appointed offices of UIDAI in Delhi’s Connaught Place where the modalities of the pilots were worked out, deputy director general Ashok Pal Singh is reassuring: ‘In any new process it is quite possible the system is not working. It happened with banks when they went in for online transactions.’
That does not seem to be the case in Dohakatu and elsewhere where large numbers of old-age pensioners and wage workers have not been authenticated. There is a big problem out here: the UIDAI guidelines say nothing about re-enrollments. Officials, too, are not sure how those who have been issued Aadhaar numbers can be re-enrolled. It appears that the enrollment agencies just clicked a photograph and did not ensure that the fingerprints were scanned. A local UID official confirms this: ‘Enrollment agencies had given targets to the operators and were putting pressure on them.’
At least 200 such cases have come to light in Jharkhand, where an agency had provided only the iris details to generate Aadhaar numbers by misusing a provision in the UID guidelines that says one biometric detail, either fingerprints or iris, is allowed if one is of poor quality or not available. It is called forced capturing.
UIDAI director general R S Sharma explains the process of UID enrollment. This is a recurring theme with UIDAI. In an interview given earlier to Down To Earth, Ram Sevak Sharma, director general of UIDAI, said that nowhere in the world was there such a large database of biometrics and as such it was ‘not proven technology at this scale’.
In the field though, the experience is not as good as the report claims. In Tigara, just 45 kilometres from Ranchi, Mahmud Alam, the BC employed by UTL, discloses that since the pilots started on 23 December 2011, just 20 people with Aadhaar have been mapped for MGNREGA payments although Ratu block has about 800 MGNREGA card holders. Of the 20 mapped, five have been debarred since their biometrics could not be authenticated by his device despite repeated attempts. In addition, 60 to 80 people have been drawing pension. According to Jharkhand officials, the state has around four million MGNREGA cardholders. The scaling up could reveal much larger authentication errors.
Followed patiently by the MGNREGA workers who trail him from point to point as he tries for connectivity, Alam is aware of the growing anxiety of his flock. One of them finally proves lucky. Arjun Goap, an 18-year-old farm lad who has done some land levelling work in Barsai Tola (hamlet), some 4 km away, is finally through on the fourth try and after a wait of an hour. But, sometimes, if connectivity is good a transaction can be completed in 20 seconds, explains Alam.
It is believed that Jharkhand was chosen for the pilots because of Sharma’s influence in his home state although the official version is that Chief Minister Arjun Munda is ‘greatly interested in technology’ and opted for UID to cut down subsidy leaks. But UIDAI officials admit that they have approached several state governments to push for projects. In Alwar, Rajasthan has decided to link subsidised kerosene supplies to Aadhaar and is reported to have weeded out a number of ghost cards. But it is a small experiment where just a 100 people have been mapped.
In Mysore, the Indian Oil Corporation has decided to use the UID platform to weed out those who are ineligible for subsidised cooking gas cylinders but so far the pilot has made only limited headway. The plan was to have such pilots in Pune and Hyderabad, too, but this appears to have been put on hold.
Micro-ATM does not accept the fingerprints of Dhaneswar Rajak of Chutiyaro village in Hazaribagh for the second day. As more instances come to light of slipshod enrolment through indiscriminate outsourcing to agencies, ministries are becoming wary of using the UID platform for direct transfer of welfare benefits to the beneficiaries. One, most tellingly, is said to be the Union Ministry of Rural Development whose boss Jairam Ramesh was witness to a 30-minute delay in getting connectivity during the launch of the pilot in Jharkhand. Another is the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment which is riding high on the success of its smart card used in the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the health insurance scheme for those on the BPL list. In the four years since the scheme was launched by Sudha Pillai, the then secretary of the ministry, against much opposition, RSBY cards have now reached 29 million beneficiaries and proved to be a secure way of disbursing cash-free hospital care for beneficiaries.
Curiously, the finance ministry which allocated a generous Rs 1,758 crore to UIDAI in the current budget against Rs 1,200 crore for 2011-12 appears to be plumping for the smart card for various welfare benefits instead of using the Aadhaar platform.
In fact, the RSBY card which has been upgraded from 32 kilobyte to 64 kb, is envisaged to serve as a multipurpose card providing different social security benefits. In fact, the UIDAI appears to have split the bureaucrats into two camps: those who view the project as ‘grossly wasteful expenditure and duplication’ and others who believe it might yet work if the enrollments are streamlined and connectivity is not a stumbling block.
By arrangement with Down to Earth.
The machine, as she calls it, is the hand-held device/micro-ATM that scans her fingerprints to authenticate her unique identity, or the 12-digit Aadhaar number, for bank transactions. For four days now, the micro-ATM has refused to recognise her unique identity, making it impossible for her to collect her wages of the past three weeks. That is a total of 12 days’ wages at the rate of Rs 120 per day.
‘They have tried every finger and thumb, but I don’t know why that machine does not accept any of them. I have done everything that the officers and the machine babu have told me to: scrubbed my hands with soap and water, even applied mustard oil,’ says a tearful Devi. The machine babu is the banking correspondent (BC) Rajesh Kumar, appointed by the Bank of India. So, every day she has returned empty handed to her home about two kilometres away, let down by the sophisticated technology.
The three banks that have joined the pilot are ICICI Bank, which is using the services of Fino, a business and banking technology company that specialises in services delivery; the Bank of India that has outsourced it to United Telecoms Limited (UTL) and Union Bank. Interestingly, MGNREGA payments are already being routed through banks and post offices following a policy decision in 2008. In addition, old age pensions and school stipends are also part of the pilot.
Across the three districts of Jharkhand – Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Ramgarh – where the pilots are being conducted to test the ease and efficacy of the UID platform for disbursing wages and other welfare payments directly to the beneficiaries, the story repeats itself with minor variations. The attempt by UIDAI, headed by the software entrepreneur Nandan Nilekani, is to prove the practical application of its project which has run into criticism on account of its huge costs (estimated at Rs 9,000 crore for collecting the biometrics of 600 million residents) and questions about its utility.
But in the well-appointed offices of UIDAI in Delhi’s Connaught Place where the modalities of the pilots were worked out, deputy director general Ashok Pal Singh is reassuring: ‘In any new process it is quite possible the system is not working. It happened with banks when they went in for online transactions.’
That does not seem to be the case in Dohakatu and elsewhere where large numbers of old-age pensioners and wage workers have not been authenticated. There is a big problem out here: the UIDAI guidelines say nothing about re-enrollments. Officials, too, are not sure how those who have been issued Aadhaar numbers can be re-enrolled. It appears that the enrollment agencies just clicked a photograph and did not ensure that the fingerprints were scanned. A local UID official confirms this: ‘Enrollment agencies had given targets to the operators and were putting pressure on them.’
At least 200 such cases have come to light in Jharkhand, where an agency had provided only the iris details to generate Aadhaar numbers by misusing a provision in the UID guidelines that says one biometric detail, either fingerprints or iris, is allowed if one is of poor quality or not available. It is called forced capturing.
UIDAI director general R S Sharma explains the process of UID enrollment. This is a recurring theme with UIDAI. In an interview given earlier to Down To Earth, Ram Sevak Sharma, director general of UIDAI, said that nowhere in the world was there such a large database of biometrics and as such it was ‘not proven technology at this scale’.
In the field though, the experience is not as good as the report claims. In Tigara, just 45 kilometres from Ranchi, Mahmud Alam, the BC employed by UTL, discloses that since the pilots started on 23 December 2011, just 20 people with Aadhaar have been mapped for MGNREGA payments although Ratu block has about 800 MGNREGA card holders. Of the 20 mapped, five have been debarred since their biometrics could not be authenticated by his device despite repeated attempts. In addition, 60 to 80 people have been drawing pension. According to Jharkhand officials, the state has around four million MGNREGA cardholders. The scaling up could reveal much larger authentication errors.
Followed patiently by the MGNREGA workers who trail him from point to point as he tries for connectivity, Alam is aware of the growing anxiety of his flock. One of them finally proves lucky. Arjun Goap, an 18-year-old farm lad who has done some land levelling work in Barsai Tola (hamlet), some 4 km away, is finally through on the fourth try and after a wait of an hour. But, sometimes, if connectivity is good a transaction can be completed in 20 seconds, explains Alam.
It is believed that Jharkhand was chosen for the pilots because of Sharma’s influence in his home state although the official version is that Chief Minister Arjun Munda is ‘greatly interested in technology’ and opted for UID to cut down subsidy leaks. But UIDAI officials admit that they have approached several state governments to push for projects. In Alwar, Rajasthan has decided to link subsidised kerosene supplies to Aadhaar and is reported to have weeded out a number of ghost cards. But it is a small experiment where just a 100 people have been mapped.
In Mysore, the Indian Oil Corporation has decided to use the UID platform to weed out those who are ineligible for subsidised cooking gas cylinders but so far the pilot has made only limited headway. The plan was to have such pilots in Pune and Hyderabad, too, but this appears to have been put on hold.
Micro-ATM does not accept the fingerprints of Dhaneswar Rajak of Chutiyaro village in Hazaribagh for the second day. As more instances come to light of slipshod enrolment through indiscriminate outsourcing to agencies, ministries are becoming wary of using the UID platform for direct transfer of welfare benefits to the beneficiaries. One, most tellingly, is said to be the Union Ministry of Rural Development whose boss Jairam Ramesh was witness to a 30-minute delay in getting connectivity during the launch of the pilot in Jharkhand. Another is the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment which is riding high on the success of its smart card used in the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the health insurance scheme for those on the BPL list. In the four years since the scheme was launched by Sudha Pillai, the then secretary of the ministry, against much opposition, RSBY cards have now reached 29 million beneficiaries and proved to be a secure way of disbursing cash-free hospital care for beneficiaries.
Curiously, the finance ministry which allocated a generous Rs 1,758 crore to UIDAI in the current budget against Rs 1,200 crore for 2011-12 appears to be plumping for the smart card for various welfare benefits instead of using the Aadhaar platform.
In fact, the RSBY card which has been upgraded from 32 kilobyte to 64 kb, is envisaged to serve as a multipurpose card providing different social security benefits. In fact, the UIDAI appears to have split the bureaucrats into two camps: those who view the project as ‘grossly wasteful expenditure and duplication’ and others who believe it might yet work if the enrollments are streamlined and connectivity is not a stumbling block.
By arrangement with Down to Earth.
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