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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Chronicle of a starvation death foretold: Why it is time to abandon Aadhaar in the ration shop -Jean Dreze

Chronicle of a starvation death foretold: Why it is time to abandon Aadhaar in the ration shop -Jean Dreze

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published Published on Oct 22, 2017   modified Modified on Oct 22, 2017
-Scroll.in

The recent starvation death in Simdega epitomises a much larger problem of Aadhaar-related exclusion from the public distribution system in Jharkhand.

The recent death of 11-year old Santoshi Kumari in Simdega district of Jharkhand has rightly stirred the country’s conscience. The context of this tragedy, however, is poorly understood, not least because of the Jharkhand government’s obfuscation.

According to the family’s video testimonies, Santoshi died after starving for eight days. Even as she was dying, she kept asking her mother Koyli Devi for rice, but there was none in the house. Other family members were also starving when Santoshi died.

Koyli Devi, who lives in dire poverty, had not received any rice from the public distribution system for several months before her daughter’s death. As Jharkhand’s food minister Saryu Rai candidly admitted, the family’s ration card had been cancelled on July 22, 2017. Their food rations, however, had been discontinued much before that. The reason, in both cases, is that the family’s ration card had not been “seeded”, or electronically linked, with any Aadhaar number – the 12-digit identification number that the Indian government wants every resident to have.

Common failure, widespread distress

Except for its tragic culmination, there is nothing unusual about this story. Many people in Jharkhand have been victims of similar deprivation of food entitlements during the last few months. The main reason is that Aadhaar-based biometric authentication is now compulsory in about 80% of ration shops in the state. It requires at least one member of the family to have an Aadhaar number correctly seeded into the system, which is not a trivial matter by any means. In addition, it requires internet connectivity, a working point of sales machine, and successful fingerprint recognition. Despite various safeguards, such as the “one-time password” option, whereby those who are unable to authenticate themselves using fingerprints can get a password on their mobile phones, the system often fails.

In Ranchi district, Aadhaar-based biometric authentication has been compulsory in ration shops since August 2016. When it was introduced, rice distribution levels declined sharply, but the government ignored our warnings (reiterated after an eye-opening social audit) and pressed on with imposing biometric authentication in other districts. It took about four months for the system to stabilise in Ranchi district. From January onwards, according to a careful analysis of official records by Nazar Khalid, a research student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the proportion of cardholders who were unable to buy their food rations hovered around 20% month after month. Assuming a similar failure rate elsewhere, this suggests that about one million families in Jharkhand are deprived of their food rations each month.

Official records are consistent with a survey of the public distribution system conducted in eight districts of Jharkhand in June 2017 with student volunteers. In a random sample of 18 villages where biometric authentication is compulsory, the exclusion rate, defined as the proportion of cardholders unable to buy their food rations in the previous month, was 37% according to official records, and 36% according to the household survey. The survey also brings out that the victims of exclusion tend to come from the most vulnerable groups – for instance, widows living alone or elderly couples. In areas that are still “offline”, where biometric authentication is yet to be introduced, the exclusion rate was only 14%.

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Scroll.in, 21 October, 2017, https://scroll.in/article/854847/chronicle-of-a-starvation-death-foretold-why-it-is-time-to-abandon-aadhaar-in-the-ration-shop


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