“What is this Aadhar card?” someone asked in the staff room.
“The central government started a wonderful scheme of giving a unique identification number to each person in the country” a knowledgeable person replied.
“But why?” the less knowledgeable one asked.
“They must have it in US or in the greatest dictatorship in the world – I don’t know which because I don’t know the political inclination of the person who brought the idea up. He sold the idea to the democratic government anyway, so that now it an idea in the greatest democracy in the world.” I marveled at the depth of understanding of this person. Apparently there was more to come.
“What is the need? We had ration card, then PAN card, passport, driving license, and identity cards at the job. Why one more? Were they all not unique in their own turn?”
ut up a lot of money for this ambitious project – it is always about money, is it not?”
“Umm …” I did not know the reason for the ‘umm …’ After all everything is about money, is it not?
“They roped in a great software wizard from industry and gave him a position equivalent to that of a cabinet minister” a third person said.
“So there must be more money in it than in software industry!” said the less knowledgeable one. “But is it working?”
“The money is spent – so it has worked for those who ran the program” the answerer said.
“No. I mean has it worked for the common man?”
“Not really. It has a photograph that has been taken by webcam. So it looks like hell. The iris scan and fingerprint data is not embedded in the card. They are just developing a database for criminal investigations, looks like. Many people have not received the card, even if other members in their families have got theirs months ago, all having registered at the same time and place. The centers have closed, so people do not know where to ask for their cards. They don’t know how many people have not registered, probably more than those who have registered. They have not replaced all other cards with these cards for all transactions – so the apparent purpose does not seem to be served. They have not said if every citizen is expected to carry the cards around, as in a police state, or for foreign nationals in US.”
I started feeling dizzy after hearing all this.
“Why does the civic body want our card details? They have threatened to freeze our salaries if we are not registered” another person said. This I knew about – there was a circular to this effect.”
“We get salary for the work we do. The civic body has given is identity cards itself with unique employee code numbers, so it knows us. Why does it want our national unique numbers?”
“Probably because the civic chief was entrusted the responsibility of getting the registration of all people in the city done” the knowledgeable one said.
“Employees of the civic body are just a fraction of the total number residents of the city. Registering the latter cannot get the whole work done. Can the civic chief freeze salaries of all people, in government service, private sector too? Can he stop businessmen and entrepreneurs earnings too? And what about those masses who have no income at all?”
This was sounding like mutiny. So I stepped in.
“It is better to submit proof of your Aadhar card rather than hold lengthy discussions on it” I said. “A photocopy will cost just one rupee. All the time spent on the discussion is worth a lot of money, if used productively.”
“We are discussing this issue because the constitution has given us freedom of expression and we enjoy using that freedom. No amount of money can equal the happiness we get out of our gift of gab” said the department’s cynic and grinned.
