Aadhaar: the system wins, the people lose

For months, Mula’s wages for her MGNREGA work in Dadeora village of Uttar Pradesh were lost in a maze of online accounts and direct benefit transfers, which often add to the distress of the rural poor

Does having an Aadhaar card make access to all government schemes a lot easier? A hunger death in a village in UP’s Allahabad district shows that the process of getting any card can overwhelm the poor

Parwati Devi's fingers are damaged due to leprosy. So this waste worker in Lucknow – and possibly thousands similarly afflicted – cannot get an Aadhaar card, and without it cannot get her disability pension or rations

Mismatched numbers, wrong photos, disappearing names, fingerprinting errors – Aadhaar is in full flow in AP's Anantapur district. At the receiving end are BPL card holders who have been denied rations for months

Unable to access hard earned-wages, MGNREGA workers in AP's Visakhapatnam district are learning that even bearing the name of the Goddess of Wealth doesn't save you from Aadhaar's many mess-ups

With the high cost of commuting to Aadhaar centres in hilly Uttarakhand, misspelt names and other glitches, many widows, the disabled and the elderly in Champawat district have not received their pension for months

The elderly, migrants, daily wage workers, even children in Bengaluru’s slums are among those being denied their monthly rations due to fingerprint mismatches – and in their battles with Aadhaar, Aadhaar always wins

PARI’s story on how Aadhaar glitches disrupted the lives of young Dalit and Muslim schoolkids in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, has had a welcome initial fallout