Jharkhand child's death is more proof that Aadhaar is becoming a project to deny India's poor their rights
The government has empowered the ration shop dealer to deny food to those without one identity card.
At a time when our government is planning to spend Rs 1 lakh crore on a bullet train and wants to transform India into a digital economy, an 11-year-old child has starved to death in Jharkhand.
Under the present regime, all mega capital investments are announced amid much fanfare. The public is being taught that this is what is meant by “development”, and that private investment is to be unquestioningly welcomed.
Every big capitalist investment is being promoted as “national pride”. The crises of rural and informal sectors are becoming less and less visible in the public domain.
In Maharashtra, 17,000 children died of malnutrition in 2015-16. It has been reported that in Jharkhand’s Simdega, an 11-year-old girl died because she was denied food as her family was removed from the state’s public distribution system. The reason: their Aadhaar cards were not linked to the government’s updated list. Government officials later claimed she died of malaria even as her family claims it was starvation that killed her.
This is not just a mistake of the officials who dealt in ration distribution at Simdega. Instead, it is an organised project of exclusion, and the ration shop dealer is empowered to deny food to those without an identity card.
According to the amendment of National Food Security Act on August 21, 2015: “The state government shall prepare the digitised beneficiary database of the identified area, seeded with bank account details and Aadhaar number, if available, keeping in view the total coverage for the state or Union territory determined under the Act for receiving subsidized food grain."
This has made the poor dependent on this card for the very basic necessity of food, and empowered the government and the bureaucracy to deny them basic rights. This is in violation of Supreme Court orders, which make it clear that Aadhaar is not to be made mandatory for welfare schemes.
As outrage over the Jharkhand incident grew, even the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said that the poor cannot be denied food if their Aadhaar is not linked to their ration cards. However, one life has already been lost.
Linking food distribution to Aadhaar essentially means linking lakhs of lives to a private corporate project. The rich woke up to Aadhaar much later. It is the poor and deprived sections who are made to stand in queues for hours to get identity cards. Interestingly, we forget the fact that Aadhaar is a number, rather than a card itself.
The poor were told that not taking Aadhaar card was a risk – that is, no card, no subsidy. Aadhaar has been praised as a means to streamline the public distribution system. However, the state put the subsidy upfront to get people to make the cards, and then tried to sell the initiative as one that would improve subsidy distribution.
Earlier, a private corporate company was in charge of UID. But later, it was replaced by an Act. The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 passed by Lok Sabha on March 3, 2016, basically removes all hurdles in the path of the government should it choose to bring in a zero subsidy regime.
The preamble of The Aadhaar Bill, 2016 explains that it is “to provide for, as a good governance, efficient, transparent, and targeted delivery of subsidies, benefits and services, the expenditure for which is incurred from the Consolidated Fund of India, to individuals residing in India through assigning of unique identity numbers to such individuals and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto".
The UPA government had not prepared a detailed plan on Aadhaar's implementation. This was brought in by the Modi government.
The Centre was looking for an instrument to make Aadhaar compulsory for millions of India's poor, and connecting Aadhaar with the National Food Security Act did just that.
The National Food Security Act states that “every person belonging to a priority household, identified under sub-section (1) of section 15, shall be entitled to receive five kilograms of food grains per person per month at subsidised prices specified in scheduled I from the state government under the Targeted Public Distribution system”.
The Act categorically makes it clear who are its beneficiaries, and how much they are entitled to: “The households covered under Antyodaya Anna Yojana shall, to such extent as may be specified by the central government for each state in the said scheme, be entitled to thirty-five kilograms of food grains per household per month at the prices specified in Schedule I.”
The operation of this project depends on direct cash transfer, which is within the control and charge of the Centre.
The manner in which the right to food is defined is also problematic: "The priority households (46 per cent in rural areas and 28 per cent in urban areas) to have a monthly entitlement of 35kg (equivalent to 7kg per person) at a subsidized price of Re 1 per kg for millets, Rs 2 per kg for wheat and Rs 3 per kg for rice. The general households (39 per cent rural and 12 per cent urban in phase 1 and 44 per cent rural and 22 per cent urban in final phase) to have a monthly entitlement of 20kg (equivalent to 4kg per person) at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the current Minimum Support Price for millets, wheat and rice."
The figures show that a significant number of people need the entitlements, but what the government proposes is a limited quantity of food to survive. Even this bare minimum food for survival is linked to a national identity document.
The logic of connecting the minimum food right with an identity number is far removed from the idea of development or good governance. More importantly, it is violation of basic human rights. No government should make its citizens wait for the bare minimum foodgrains they are entitled to. Even if all ration cards are linked with Aadhaar, it is not going to resolve the issue of food insecurity and deprivation.
What the government is seeking to do is to regulate consumption through an organised digital system, without taking into consideration the very system's limitations, and ground realities. Just forcing technology on the poor will not save them.