We are grateful to the busy Minister and his associates for taking the trouble of reading our article and responding to it. But we are concerned that in spite of all the wise talk, the bottom line remains an article of faith — “Aadhaar is a must.”
The purpose of our article was to point out, first, that ground realities loom large in this matter, and second, that the role of Unique Identity (UID) in NREGA must be submitted to rigorous experimentation. What we saw in Ratu was just a public relations exercise.
The perils of ignoring ground realities are evident from the authors’ claim that Aadhaar-enabled payment of old-age pensions is a “low-hanging fruit.”
In fact, this UID application is also problematic, for three reasons. First, fingerprint recognition is particularly difficult with the elderly. Second, the formalities of switching to a new system can also be very forbidding for them. Third, many old people are too frail to collect their pension in person, and normally send a relative — the Aadhaar system makes that impossible. In Ratu, we saw an old man literally crawling for several kilometres to collect his pension from the Aadhaar system, instead of sending his son as he used to do.
Our assessment remains that making UID compulsory for NREGA workers is a recipe for chaos. Making it available to them as an optional facility is another matter, but that would require a very different approach from what is happening today under pressure from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the biometrics industry, and other vested interests.
Finally we are not clear as to what “giant leap” we are supposed to have taken with this article. We stand by our earlier writings on the general dangers of UID. This does not prevent us from taking interest in the experiment and being open to persuasion.
I think those shrill voices supporting the scheme should understand that
fingerprints simply do not work when the populations are large and
particularly for poor manual labourers and elderly. Roughly 20 crore
people will be excluded from the scheme if fingerprints are used for
authentication. You want that exclusion?
According to authors, main objection seems to be inability of
beneficiaries to collect payment of work in MGNREGA. I am wondering if
how can a person work in MGNREGA if he/ she is not physically sound to
go to collect the payment.
Once Aadhar becomes a norm, the govt can actually authorise 3rd party
agents to distribute the pension to the old people, delivered at their
homes.
They can use handheld, mobile-operated fingerprint-recognition machines.
Another ordinary citizen like all of you, I wish some smart card
system is introduced to bring the population of a billion and more
under easy,quick,and flawless scrutiny. Hurdles are many but our
people in slums and villages (belonging to economically lower
categories)understand how the Govt is giving the wages and other
benefits. They are no longer at the mercy of middlemen,contractors,
corrupt politicians or unethical govt officials. The people adapt
themselves to technology -slowly but surely- because there is
transparency. Please go on minimizing the technical glitches, hiccups,
and problems.
Dear Mr Bhatti and Party,
Your comment about an elderly person having trouble in collection of
his pension due to implementation of UID is well received. We surely
need to address this aspect.
However, your comment about under pressure from UID, Biometric
Industry, and other vested interests is found to be unacceptable.
Trust me that there are million times more vested interests in failing
this projects than those keen to implement it for whatsoever reason. I
only hope that your group is not one of the fronts for those
interests.
I also hope that you will appreciate that a project of this massive
proportion is bound to have many hickups right from beginning to the
end. As they say that you dont throw the baby with the bathtub.
Similarly, hickups will continue to appear, shortcomings will continue
to get exposed through some well meaning critics like you, and they
will continue to be addressed in due course.
By the way, I am an ordinary citizen like you and have no vested
interest.
Dear friends,it is easy to criticse on every development activities.
Can you people provide suggestions for those problems???AADHAAR for transparency and for accountability.It will take time to sort out blocks thats lies in the path of AADHAAR, considering huge population under MGNREGA.AADHAAR should me implemented,then bugs should be fixed,then it must be enhanced. We built AGNI V by travelling a journey of AGNI I ,II ,III and IV likewise AADHAAR also emerge. AADHHAR will reach its goal soon.Criticise but provide suggesstions..
Open to persuasion! Thank you for the concession. I wonder what other
majestic solutions the authors have in store that the country has not
adopted thus far.
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