Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Empowerment | Aadhaar and Brazil soothe French heartache -KM Rakesh

Aadhaar and Brazil soothe French heartache -KM Rakesh

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Apr 22, 2015   modified Modified on Apr 22, 2015
-The Telegraph

Bangalore: Six years ago, a 16-year-old Revanna M had missed a chance to travel to France for football training because, as an orphan, he didn't have the documents to obtain a passport.

Memories of that heartbreak returned to haunt him last summer when he was chosen by an NGO as one of six underprivileged youths to visit Brazil during the football World Cup. Again, a passport seemed elusive for Revanna, now a young man.

But the story had a happy ending. Just months earlier, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had begun a drive to enrol street children and orphans in the Aadhaar programme, allowing NGOs and government child welfare committees to "introduce" them.

Bosco, the orphanage where Revanna grew up and which he now serves as football and rugby trainer, decided to enrol him for an Aadhaar card, paving the way for a passport.

Revanna made it to Rio de Janeiro with five other Karnataka youths, three of them women, as part of the Football for Hope Festival project by the NGO Dream a Dream.

"I missed a chance to go to France when I was a minor with no documents," Revanna, who had been selected by a group of NGOs for football training in France in 2009, told The Telegraph.

"Without the documents our Father (Bosco executive director Fr George PS) managed to get for me this time, I would have missed the Brazil trip too," the 22-year-old added.

"It was so fulfilling for us too," Fr George said. "It was always difficult to get any kind of government identity for orphans. Then we started signing for them as guardians."

Most of Bosco's orphans now have Aadhaar cards.

Orphans, lacking proof of age, identity and address, have often found it harder to enrol in government schemes than, say, street children living with their migrant-labourer parents in roadside camps or runaways whose families could be traced.

But in late January last year, an effort began to issue Aadhaar cards to all distressed children to allow them, in principle, to obtain school admission, open bank accounts and secure government welfare.

Now the drive has been extended to even one-year-old babies in orphanages to check illegal adoptions and help the government monitor the children, prone to abuse at the shelters or to delinquency later.

"They took my picture last year," said a 14-year-old at a state-run orphanage in Bangalore who had been rescued from a bus terminus. "Now the card is with my master (the orphanage administrator)."

Like his "brother" - an older inmate - he too plans to get a driver's licence in future because "a master told us drivers get jobs in foreign countries".

After years of slack, the Karnataka government has over the past few years provided government IDs to inmates at all its 56 rescue homes, called Children's Homes.

"We have covered more than 75 per cent of the children," said Narmada Ananda, programme manager for the Integrated Child Protection Scheme, which comes under the department of women and child development.

"Once out of our watch, they tend to take to drugs and dangerous social behaviour. It's important to get them gainfully employed, for which they need ID."

Minors rescued from the streets are sheltered in these homes and given vocational training before they leave at 18.

"Lack of any kind of identification had been the biggest problem all these years," Ananda said. "We usually gave them letters of release with their personal details, but now we are enrolling them in Aadhaar."

The homes' wardens hold on to the cards till the inmates are discharged.

"Our field workers used to report that these children found it difficult to get jobs. But now that they have an ID, life is better," Ananda said.

Just yesterday, the government announced that an Aadhaar or voter I-card would be enough to obtain a PAN card.

Anjali Ellis Shankar, assistant director-general of UIDAI in Bangalore, said nearly 4,000 children at 129 homes - including those run by NGOs - had been enrolled in the state. Only about 400 are awaiting enrolment.

"An ID like this later helps them secure jobs even under the national rural employment guarantee scheme," Shankar said.
 

The Telegraph, 22 April, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150422/jsp/nation/story_15969.jsp#.VTcu3JNr9v0


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close