Hunger in times of Aadhaar

Let a thousand "fake" beneficiaries steal from the system, than have a single Santoshi die, crying for bhat in her final moments - simply because her Aadhaar and ration card weren't linked

This week, both the government and Opposition claimed that the Supreme Court verdict on Aadhaar vindicated their opposing standpoints on it. Few, if any, were aware that this week also marked the first death anniversary of a little girl whose family couldn’t get their food entitlements as their Aadhaar number hadn’t yet been seeded with the household ration card. Eleven-year-old Santoshi died on September 28 in Jharkhand, her final request for rice going unheeded by her desperate family. “Her last words were bhat, bhat,” her mother Koyli Devi had told us, months after her daughter’s death. “My daughter was not