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Some months ago, I ran into UIDAI at the local post office. UIDAI occupies a ramshackle desk, in a passageway. It is surprisingly free of any papers and files that one normally expects in a government office in India. It is also free of any electronic hardware.
In person it is a lady equipped with a school notebook and a pen. She is reading a magazine. I enquire about enrolling. She reluctantly puts away her reading, pulls out a form and tells me that if I want more than one I should get photocopies made as she is running out of supplies.
I ask her if I can download the form from the UIDAI website. She says I can but it won't work in Karnataka as the state government has tagged on some questions of local interest. So I should get copies made, fill up the form, attach supporting documents confirming my identity and come for enrolment.
I suggest the following Saturday. "No Sir, you can't pick and choose", she says, "I will allot a date and time as per the running schedule in this diary. It would be better if you can come once before that and show me the papers to make sure that you have everything right. On the specified day you will go to the designated place where they will record your fingerprints and iris image."
I leave knowing I will never go back. If they want it badly enough they will come to me.
Sure enough a few weeks later they set up camp at my club. I go through the process. The fingerprint device is acting funny. It takes ten minutes and a lot of high pressure supplemented by the officer-in-charge pressing with all his might on my hands to complete recording the ten digits.
This was six months ago. I am still waiting for my card.
Tripta Sen enrols
Tripta*, who lives in Delhi, has been luckier.
She was among the early birds to turn up to be counted. She got her card within two weeks. Not satisfied, she went to another centre and filed another set of papers with the same information. Soon she got her second card. "This time the photo is good", she says.
And now that she is going in for a new hairstyle, what should I say to Tripta?
* name changed. maybe.
I meet UIDAI
Aadhaar enrolment started in 2010. There seemed to be no urgency to enlist.Some months ago, I ran into UIDAI at the local post office. UIDAI occupies a ramshackle desk, in a passageway. It is surprisingly free of any papers and files that one normally expects in a government office in India. It is also free of any electronic hardware.
In person it is a lady equipped with a school notebook and a pen. She is reading a magazine. I enquire about enrolling. She reluctantly puts away her reading, pulls out a form and tells me that if I want more than one I should get photocopies made as she is running out of supplies.
I ask her if I can download the form from the UIDAI website. She says I can but it won't work in Karnataka as the state government has tagged on some questions of local interest. So I should get copies made, fill up the form, attach supporting documents confirming my identity and come for enrolment.
I suggest the following Saturday. "No Sir, you can't pick and choose", she says, "I will allot a date and time as per the running schedule in this diary. It would be better if you can come once before that and show me the papers to make sure that you have everything right. On the specified day you will go to the designated place where they will record your fingerprints and iris image."
I leave knowing I will never go back. If they want it badly enough they will come to me.
Sure enough a few weeks later they set up camp at my club. I go through the process. The fingerprint device is acting funny. It takes ten minutes and a lot of high pressure supplemented by the officer-in-charge pressing with all his might on my hands to complete recording the ten digits.
This was six months ago. I am still waiting for my card.
Tripta Sen enrols
Tripta*, who lives in Delhi, has been luckier.
She was among the early birds to turn up to be counted. She got her card within two weeks. Not satisfied, she went to another centre and filed another set of papers with the same information. Soon she got her second card. "This time the photo is good", she says.
And now that she is going in for a new hairstyle, what should I say to Tripta?
* name changed. maybe.
