2 million people in 3 states denied ration due to Aadhaar issues: Report

The independent 'State of Aadhaar 2017-18' report, which UIDAI has cited to reassert the popularity of the unique identity project among people, also shows four other worrisome facts. Details here

Recently, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) cited the ‘State of Aadhaar 2017-18’ report to reassert the widespread use of and support for Aadhaar. The study was carried out by Idinsight for Omidyar Network, a multinational research organisation. 

UIDAI issued a statement on May 16 in response to the report commending the Aadhaar project for its efficiency in the public distribution system (PDS), as well as the acceptance of Aadhaar as the “foundational” identity proof for India’s 1.21 billion citizens.

UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey said: “IDinsight’s latest report highlights that Aadhaar has wide-scale support and acceptance on the ground.” The authority’s press release said the report showed Aadhaar was being accepted by “we the people” as the foundational identity document with near universality. 

True, the report did have some glowing commendations for the unique identity project. But it also presented some troubling data. These data sets are significant because the study is the first such sample survey-based independent one since the Supreme Court began dealing with a clutch of petitions challenging the efficacy of Aadhaar. 

Here are some of the issues highlighted by the report:

2 million people in 3 states denied ration due to Aadhaar

Due to problems with authentication of identity through Aadhaar, more than 2 million people in just the three surveyed states of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal were unable to access their legally guaranteed subsidised food grains under the National Food Security Act. Rajasthan seems to be faring the worst.

UIDAI’s Pandey has defended the use of Aadhaar for PDS saying: “PDS exclusion due to failure of local administration, though small, should be taken very seriously by the agencies concerned. They should ensure that not a single beneficiary should be denied benefits or services.”
 

However, Ronald Abraham, partner at Idinsight, the agency that carried out the study, told Business Standard: “The actual number is quite significant and authorities should think about fixing their delivery even as more people are excluded due to reasons other than Aadhaar.”
 

Pandey stressed that there also were other modes of identification that could be used in case biometrics failed. “The Aadhaar Act and government instructions provide for alternative means of identification for genuine beneficiaries in authentication,” he said. 

158,400 duplicate Aadhaars in just three states

The report estimated that 0.1 per cent of the studied sample had duplicate Aadhaar numbers with the same name and address but different identity numbers. This would translate into roughly 158,400 duplicate cards if one went by the UIDAI population estimates of the rural population in just three states. 

The study had sampled only those holding voter IDs. Based on that it extrapolated to say 71,000 people with election voter IDs cards could have duplicate Aadhaar numbers in the three states.

However, the study is based on a sample survey. So the authors said that the actual number could vary highly due to a wide error range. But, they warned that the reported numbers were conservative estimates as people who got duplicate Aadhaars for nefarious purposes were unlikely to reveal it to surveyors. 

Millions of Aadhaars in three states likely to have erroneous data 

The report casts serious aspersions on the quality of data in the Aadhaar database. In Rajasthan, 4.8 per cent of Aadhaar cards had errors. In West Bengal, that ratio went up to 12.2 per cent. The levels of errors were found higher in the Aadhaar database as compared to the voter ID data. Voter ID card errors are present in just 2.4 per cent cases in Andhra Pradesh and 10.4 per cent cases in West Bengal.
 

Moreover, the errors do not get rectified in nearly half the cases. Only 53 per cent of people with error-ridden Aadhaars reported to have tried getting those corrected. Of those who did go for correction in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, 69.1 per cent and 67.0 per cent people, respectively, stated they found the process of correction “easy”. However, this ease of correction was derived from a rather small sample of a mere 50 people. Abraham said that the actual number could be different, the lack of enough respondents did not indicate a lot of variance in ground realities and the reported perception in the report. 

Multiple authentication attempts required

In Rajasthan, more than 60 per cent of people said they had to go through repeated attempts to authenticate their identity through the Aadhaar-linked biometric system to access PDS grains through the Aadhaar system. The corresponding figure was close to 37.6 per cent in Andhra Pradesh.

Not the first identity document for 99 per cent 

The report found that more than 99 per cent of the respondents across the surveyed states of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal already had at least one more identity document at the time they enrolled for Aadhaar. The promoters of Aadhaar have often claimed that Aadhaar gave an identity proof to many who never had one – migrant labourers and the homeless, for example.
 

The report also mentioned a 2015 RTI (Right to Information) response which stated that only 0.02 per cent of Aadhaar enrolments happened through the introducer system, which allows those without any identity proof to enroll for Aadhaar.

UIDAI CEO Pandey, however, claimed that Aadhaar had become the most common ID proof for accessing a variety of services. It was the most “common proof-of-ID for bank account opening. IDinsight’s latest report highlights that Aadhaar has wide-scale support and acceptance on the ground,” he said. Pandey added that it was being accepted by “we the people” as the foundational identity document with near universality.