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Saturday, 27 October 2018

Girl denied disability certificate at Delhi's government hospital for not having Aadhaar card

Cheena Kapoor

27 Oct 2018

Photo of student Aarti Kumari
Aarti Kumar

DELHI : A 13-year-old class ninth student has been denied a disability certificate at a Delhi-government hospital because her parents Aadhaar card mentions Bihar's address, where the family originally hails from. This is likely to affect the girl's promotion to the next class as a special student requires a certificate stating the same.

Aarti Kumari lives with 100 per cent blindness in one eye and partial blindness in the other. As Aarti does not possess an Aadhaar card, she is now stressed about her academic future.

"I was sent back from the Delhi government-run Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital saying that they require her Aadhaar card and that of her parents' too. I have submitted Aarti's Aadhaar card, but mine and my husband's card had Bihar address and thus they are refusing disability certificate. They have asked us to get Aadhaar cards with Delhi address. This is now causing a problem in her school as she might get suspended," said Savita Devi, Aarti's mother.

Despite several intimations from the Delhi Health Department that Aadhaar Card is not mandatory at the hospitals, many state-run hospitals are sending patients back on the grounds that they do not have the document.

"There are no such directions from the Delhi Health Services and thus it is wrong if the hospital is making Aadhaar Card mandatory for the disability certificate. We only need a valid address proof for the certificate, it can be an identity card," said Dr Kirti Bhushan, Directorate General of Health Services.

Even as the Supreme Court verdict stated that no person should be denied any kind of benefit in absence of Aadhaar, several cases have come to light where hospitals are asking for Aadhaar cards.

The issue was highlighted days after a nine-year-old girl from Noida was denied treatment at the Delhi government's Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital for not having an Aadhaar and had to be admitted to the Safdarjung Hospital after intervention from Union Minister of Health, JP Nadda.

A statement from the Safdarjung hospital said the girl was admitted to the hospital on October 10 and diagnosed by pediatric neurologist Dr Rachna Sehgal on the directions of the Union health minister.

https://www.dnaindia.com/delhi/report-girl-denied-disability-certificate-at-delhi-s-government-hospital-for-not-having-aadhar-card-2679685


Saturday, 22 September 2018

Tuesday, 16 January 2018

Fixing Aadhaar bugs: Putting a finger on the biometric problem

Ensure that Aadhaar enrolment centres are accessible to the elderly and wheelchair users; train the staff to be more sensitive to differently-abled people

16 Jan 2018 

Geetanjali Krishna

Govt to sort out Aadhaar glitches

Fingers pressed against screen for biometric scanner

New Delhi : As the Supreme Court gears up to rule on the constitutionality of Aadhaar this week, a two-part series examines the nagging bugs the UIDAI hasn’t yet fixed

The child suckles futilely at Koyli Devi’s breast as she struggles to describe her 11-year-old sister’s last words before she died of starvation in September last year in Jharkhand. “Santoshi asked for bhaat, rice…” says she. “My daughter was not sick, she simply died of hunger.” The family had applied to have their Aadhaar number seeded with the household ration card, but had been unable to draw rations since July last year. “When she died, still asking for rice, we had not lit a fire in the hearth for eight days,” says she.

The tragedy of Aadhaar-linked exclusions in Jharkhand has not ended with Santoshi’s death. A month later, Ruplal Marandi died in Deoghar district after being denied grains as his family members’ Aadhaar-based biometric authentication failed.

In December, 64-year-old widow Premani Kunwar died in Garhwa district after the state’s Aadhaar-based payment system accidentally redirected her pension money to a different account.

These tragedies exemplify the exclusions that have resulted from the government’s insistence on seeding social security benefits with Aadhaar, based on biometric identification. There is, however, an even more tragic set of exclusions, of people who, for varying reasons, are incapable of furnishing their biometrics — and so, under the present set of rules, will never be able to get an Aadhaar card, and, consequently, never vote, claim social security, or get a phone connection.

The mechanism of exclusion 

India’s 2.2 per cent disabled population is unfortunately high on the list of exclusions. Here are the findings of Chennai-based NGO Vidya Sagar, which held a month-long Aadhaar enrolment camp for children with mental and intellectual disabilities between July and August last year.

“Biometric scanning was impossible for people with involuntary movements and a whole spectrum of people who simply can’t cope or cooperate with any of these procedures,” says Smitha Sadasivan, who’s with the NGO as well as part of Disability Rights Alliance India.

“Many of our children found the iris scan very frightening as they could see the image of their own eyes in the camera. For children who lacked eye coordination, iris scanning wasn’t possible at all.” Fingerprinting, especially for people with locomotor disability, proved difficult, and traumatic as well. “Even more vexing,” says Satendra Singh, Delhi-based disability rights activist, “is the issue of taking biometric measurements of people with psychiatric disorders, cerebral palsy, and leprosy.”

Sadasivan recalls how a young girl became so agitated by the intrusiveness of biometric measurement that she suffered a seizure. Nipun Malhotra, a Delhi-based disability rights activist with a severe locomotor disability, recounts his own experience. “Arthrogryposis has made it painful for me to open out my fingers,” says he. “The first time I went to the Aadhaar enrolment centre, the agent pried my fingers open, causing me pain and trauma.” The second time round, Malhotra managed to get his Aadhaar card made on the basis of an iris scan and photograph of his hands as proof that in his case, fingerprinting was impossible. However, given that most activities that require Aadhaar seeding have only fingerprint scans, not iris scans, Malhotra’s card is probably not going to help him access his entitlements.

The elderly (103.9 million, according to a 2016 government report) are an even larger section of the population that runs the risk of being excluded, as their biometrics are often hard to calibrate. “Also, those who are bedridden or wheelchair-users are finding it impossible to go to the Aadhaar enrolment centres,” says Singh. Among this demographic, many who possess Aadhaar cards say that since their fingerprints do not match anymore, the cards have become virtually useless for them. “Indeed, most banks and mobile providers have only fingerprint scanners, not iris scanners,” says Sadasivan. “This excessive reliance on fingerprint matching is not only insensitive, but is denying several categories of citizens, the social security they desperately need!”

The litany of Aadhaar-caused exclusions continues with the country’s homeless (1.77 million according to the 2011 Census, though activists estimate the numbers to be three times higher), who, as even the Supreme Court has noted with concern, have no address proof. “Initially, the Unique Identification Authority of India allowed people without valid proof of address to be introduced by citizens with valid Aadhaar cards,” says activist Harsh Mander of the Centre of Equity Studies, which works with the urban homeless.

In 2013, the ‘Introducer’ scheme enabled them to get about 5,000 Aadhaar enrolments for homeless citizens, as anyone with a valid Aadhaar card could vouch for an individual without address proof. “Over the years, this scheme has tightened considerably,” says he, adding that for the last two years, his colleagues and he have to approach gazetted government officers to act as Introducers. “After the change of rules,” says Mander, we have been able to get Aadhaar cards for barely 200 to 250 individuals.”

“Such exclusions are unconscionable,” says Subhashis Banerjee of IIT Delhi, who has co-authored the paper Privacy and Security of Aadhaar: A Computer Science Perspective. He advocates that the government delinks the Aadhaar card’s biometric identification with welfare schemes until it sorts these issues out. “Instead, there should be a scientific study of exclusions, and an analysis of where and why biometrics have failed.” Biometric passwords, he says, are conceptually flawed. Since they don’t require the individual’s volition, they can easily be duplicated or faked. Perhaps instead, as these stories of exclusions illustrate so tragically, the need of the hour is to bolster biometrics and ‘smart’ technologies with something more old-fashioned – the good old fashioned, compassionate human touch.

Making Aadhaar more inclusive

* Ensure that Aadhaar enrolment centres are accessible to the elderly and wheelchair users

* Train the enrolment centre staff to be more sensitive to differently-abled people

* Have a set of rules and procedures (available to citizens and enrolment centre staff) for enrolment of people for whom biometric identification is not an option

* Enable bedside enrolment for people who are unable to come to the enrolment centre

* Make it simpler for the homeless to get Aadhaar cards without furnishing address proof

* Have a robust grievance redress system for citizens unable to claim their social security benefits