Dear Resident::
We heard that you now have an Aadhar number and would like to obtain a Ration Card (or Driving License or Old-age Pension or...).
The last time we checked, you enrolled for Aadhar, through some other registrar. Not with us. That poses a few problems for us. You see, though we don't expect you to understand all this (especially the words in bold), we'll tell you anyway.
When you enrolled, you gave your biometrics to the UIDAI. They have sworn to never reveal any of that to anyone else - even if there are a dozen good reasons to. Yup, they take their promises seriously.
However, our Ration Card (or Driving License or Old-age Pension or...) needs to record your biometrics (yup, that bad word again... almost sorry!) on the Smart Card (okay, please don't ask what's so smart about it, especially in this scenario) we want to give you.
What? You want to skip the smarty-pants card and go directly to the gimme-those-rations (or Driving License or Pension money or ...) part? Too bad, we can't do that. That's because our Home Minister gave a bhashan (god bless the soul who advised him on this) in some-big-place (okay, if you know where's the parliament, that's the place) that he will replace your paper ration cards with those thingamajigs (right, those smarty-pants cards, you go it!). Our senior bureaucrats (um... those saab log) would rather follow his speech faithfully than point out the obvious improvements and make him look bad.
Now, we know of a way or two to have our NIC team (okay, the guys who do complicated things on those comPOOters) fix this problem, but they won't do it either. They give us some explanation that even we can't understand (but we can't admit it because we want to look smart).
So you now have a choice.
1. Come fill our forms (yea ours, not the other registrar's), stand in those queues, and give us your biometrics once again. But wait, our current contract with the EA (who?) does not pay them for duplicate enrollments - so they don't want to do it. May be this time, you should not mention it to them that you already have an Aadhar number so that they will take your biometrics? Umm.. we hit a snag there... 'cuz those smart UIDAI folks have made it a punishable offense (it means they can lock you up or do bad things to you or summat like that) if you try that trick..... so let us see, we need to come up with another way.
2. Forget about the ration card (or whatever), go home and curse all of us roundly. It is not healthy to bottle up your feelings, so go right ahead!
Under normal circumstances, we would be sorry; but hey, we are the government - so we are only almost sorry. Don't worry though. We think that Aadhar is such a good idea, so we are planning to make it mandatory!! That won't solve your problems, but that's okay! Coming to think of it, we are not like the ministers and MLAs whom you can hold accountable at least once in 5 years!! As public servants, our jobs are guaranteed irrespective of how we treat you; our promotions and increments don't have much to do with how hard we don't work. Life is good.
Cheers,
Your friendly public servant.
Note:
Okay, the humor is only to make the problem and the discussion interesting. I am working with various teams to find a way to fix this. Meanwhile, there is still some time to figure out alternatives... hence this. You have an idea? Do let me know. UIDAI's otherwise good multi-registrar idea resulted in this mess which they honestly seem to think is a state's own mess to clean up (it would all be fine if the registrar's all access the CIDR and don't maintain their own databases).
Not much humor in that last para ("Life is good") though. It is an interesting point though entirely unrelated to the main body of the post.
We heard that you now have an Aadhar number and would like to obtain a Ration Card (or Driving License or Old-age Pension or...).
The last time we checked, you enrolled for Aadhar, through some other registrar. Not with us. That poses a few problems for us. You see, though we don't expect you to understand all this (especially the words in bold), we'll tell you anyway.
When you enrolled, you gave your biometrics to the UIDAI. They have sworn to never reveal any of that to anyone else - even if there are a dozen good reasons to. Yup, they take their promises seriously.
However, our Ration Card (or Driving License or Old-age Pension or...) needs to record your biometrics (yup, that bad word again... almost sorry!) on the Smart Card (okay, please don't ask what's so smart about it, especially in this scenario) we want to give you.
What? You want to skip the smarty-pants card and go directly to the gimme-those-rations (or Driving License or Pension money or ...) part? Too bad, we can't do that. That's because our Home Minister gave a bhashan (god bless the soul who advised him on this) in some-big-place (okay, if you know where's the parliament, that's the place) that he will replace your paper ration cards with those thingamajigs (right, those smarty-pants cards, you go it!). Our senior bureaucrats (um... those saab log) would rather follow his speech faithfully than point out the obvious improvements and make him look bad.
Now, we know of a way or two to have our NIC team (okay, the guys who do complicated things on those comPOOters) fix this problem, but they won't do it either. They give us some explanation that even we can't understand (but we can't admit it because we want to look smart).
So you now have a choice.
1. Come fill our forms (yea ours, not the other registrar's), stand in those queues, and give us your biometrics once again. But wait, our current contract with the EA (who?) does not pay them for duplicate enrollments - so they don't want to do it. May be this time, you should not mention it to them that you already have an Aadhar number so that they will take your biometrics? Umm.. we hit a snag there... 'cuz those smart UIDAI folks have made it a punishable offense (it means they can lock you up or do bad things to you or summat like that) if you try that trick..... so let us see, we need to come up with another way.
2. Forget about the ration card (or whatever), go home and curse all of us roundly. It is not healthy to bottle up your feelings, so go right ahead!
Under normal circumstances, we would be sorry; but hey, we are the government - so we are only almost sorry. Don't worry though. We think that Aadhar is such a good idea, so we are planning to make it mandatory!! That won't solve your problems, but that's okay! Coming to think of it, we are not like the ministers and MLAs whom you can hold accountable at least once in 5 years!! As public servants, our jobs are guaranteed irrespective of how we treat you; our promotions and increments don't have much to do with how hard we don't work. Life is good.
Cheers,
Your friendly public servant.
Note:
Okay, the humor is only to make the problem and the discussion interesting. I am working with various teams to find a way to fix this. Meanwhile, there is still some time to figure out alternatives... hence this. You have an idea? Do let me know. UIDAI's otherwise good multi-registrar idea resulted in this mess which they honestly seem to think is a state's own mess to clean up (it would all be fine if the registrar's all access the CIDR and don't maintain their own databases).
Not much humor in that last para ("Life is good") though. It is an interesting point though entirely unrelated to the main body of the post.
I gone through your comments/feelings. I feel that you are a bit worried that how the resident will get Ration Card/Driving License, etc. in case the resident has given the bio-metric to other EAs. The issue is important and needs to be looked into it. The issue will definitely crop up when actual issuance of ration cards/driving licenses will take place. Today's scenario is that UIDAI is not allowing for sharing of bio-metrics due to their policy. This must have been noticed by UIDAI as Adhaar number is going to be shared between various departments and they cannot force the resident to give their bio-metrics again and again.
ReplyDeleteWe should not feel sorry to the resident for this. Adhaar will definitely bring a change in a big way. I am positive and feels that UIDAI will definitely work on this.
In case some concrete is done by UIDAI, everything will be OK and then you will not feel sorry to the resident.
Till the final decisions by UIDAI, the proposed solutions for the issuance of ration card/driving license, etc. may be the following:
1. UIDAI may sign agreement with each Registrar other than State Registrar that they will share the bio-metrics of each resident enrolled by them with State Registrar. A mechanism is to be worked out for this.
2. Every Registrar (other than State Registrar) will direct the EAs to send the bio-metrics alongwith demographic detail to State Registrar.
3. State Registrar will post the data in State Data Centre of all the residents enrolled by either State Registrar or other Registrars.
4. The departments of the State may download the bio-metrics for their own purpose.
The main key in the whole process is that UIDAI direct all Registrars/EAs to share the data with State Registrar and State is capable enough to take the data (bio-metrics and demographic) from other Registrars & host them at respective Data Centres.
Hope for the best....
AKS