Our identity in a catch-22 cycle

How do you prove who you are? This is a question that can be troubling most times, but is becoming more and more bothersome now. As India marries new systems with hardened and calcified bureaucratic mindsets, trying to prove one’s identity is not merely an abstract, philosophical idea but a daily, inconvenient reality that thousands, even hundreds of thousands face all the time.
An illustration will explain this clearly. I know of someone who got transferred to Mumbai from another place. The move was a career-helping one but as it happens, the hardships associated with it became apparent right away. How to get the child admitted to a good school was the immediate problem that had to be confronted. This exhausts most parents who have lived in the same city; for an outsider, coming in the middle of the school-term, it can be nerve racking. Still it must be done, so most of the energy and effort went into that.
Then came the more mundane but important tasks: a new phone connection, transferring a bank account, etc. This is where the problems began. At each step, he was asked about “proof of address”. He explained that he had just moved, and hence did not have an address on his name yet (for various reasons, they had decided to rent an apartment in the wife’s name, so he was not on the lease.) He showed them the statement from the same bank’s Delhi branch but the polite “relationship managers” shrugged; the rule was he had to prove his identity all over again and this involved showing proof of address. Ditto for the mobile phone. He is now dreading getting his passport details changed.
In the end, he worked it all out, not the least because his company bosses pulled string at the (foreign, private) bank where they banked, but it was all a needless hassle. Of course, he hasn’t yet managed to get his driver’s licence and voter card since government babus are not so easily convinced (and he is not ready to slip a few rupees here and there.)
This, as we know, is the story of many other lives. For the well-off, all this is an irritant, because it just slows things down; for the poor, it can have devastating consequences. They can do without a bank account or a cellphone, but they do need a ration card and a voter’s card; the former gets them grain at subsidised rates and the latter establishes their identity and place of residence, both crucial if they don’t want to be thrown out of their humble homes. Now, with rural schemes offering cash for work, an identity document also becomes a passport to livelihood and thus even more critical.
Which is why, with all the attendant problems and concerns about privacy, the ambitious Unique Identity scheme promised a tenable solution to this problem. One card, with all the details filled in, including biometric details, would then become the single transferable document which would be used for all purposes, from opening bank accounts to getting National Rural Employment Guarantee Act payments to getting other government documents. It would help to break the vicious catch-22 cycle that the citizen gets sucked into in trying to get crucial identity papers.
But trust the bureaucracy to meddle with and screw up something that promises to make life simpler. No sooner than reports began appearing that the UID project was proceeding rapidly to meet its target than the home ministry got into the act. The home ministry has these brainwaves now and then. Some time ago telcos were asked to do a due diligence of their customers in a massive exercise that was so shoddily handled as to be a farce. Forms had to be filled, photos had to be procured and yes, proof of address had to be given. Telecom companies, being from the private sector and with profit maximisation the only objective, showed flexibility and the whole thing came and went without much of an upheaval; if miscreants were found using bogus cellphones we were not told and presumably those people managed to get those phones anyway. There is a similar KYC (Know Your Customer) form one has to fill to make investments; each financial institution asks for it, no matter if you have got it done elsewhere, since that is the rule; the paper work just continues to expand.
The conflict between the UID and the home ministry about who will collect data has been settled with the kind of compromise only India’s civil servants can come up with. The UID, which had to reach a target of 200 million people, will be allowed to register 600 million people, but the rest will be registered by the Registrar General of India. The National Population Register, which was chafing at the UID project, will issue identity cards to the latter.
A host of questions arise. Whose cards will be more accepted? Will both ask the same questions on the form? Which card will prove citizenship? What about duplication, inadvertent or by design? Don’t security concerns increase with two agencies holding on to this crucial information about the billion-plus people of this country? According to the compromise, UID is voluntary while the National Population Register card will be mandatory — in which case it is almost certain that people will want both.
Undoubtedly there are huge challenges in a huge country like ours, with populations scattered in remote places. And some sort of documentation is necessary to help the poorest of the poor to ensure delivery of services. But this can be made easier by coordinating better and reducing some of the inane requirements that have been put into place and which, through a combination of jugaad and jugglery (and a bit of grease), are subverted all the time. Instead of fighting turf battles our finest minds should be devoted to finding ways to make the citizen’s already complicated life a little easier.