PARI Contributors 

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<h2><b><a id="6349" linktype="page">When Mula was felled by &#39;financial inclusion&#39;</a></b></h2><p></p><p>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</p><h5>March 18, 2019 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/puja-awasthi">Puja Awasthi</a></h5><p></p><h2><b></b></h2>

When Mula was felled by 'financial inclusion'

<h2><a id="5077" linktype="page">Pick a card, any card, in Dharauta…</a></h2><p></p><p>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</p><h5>July 9, 2018 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/puja-awasthi">Puja Awasthi</a></h5><p></p>

Pick a card, any card, in Dharauta…

<a id="4559" linktype="page">Good enough to vote, not enough for Aadhaar</a><p>Parwati Devi&#39;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</p><h5>March 30, 2018 |  <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/puja-awasthi">Puja Awasthi</a></h5>

Good enough to vote, not enough for Aadhaar

<h2><a id="4411" linktype="page">Fake ration cards or faulty Aadhaar data?</a><br/></h2><p>Mismatched numbers, wrong photos, disappearing names, fingerprinting errors – Aadhaar is in full flow in AP&#39;s Anantapur district. At the receiving end are BPL card holders who have been denied rations for months</p><h5>February 26, 2018 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/rahul-m">Rahul M.</a></h5>

Fake ration cards or faulty Aadhaar data?

<h2><a id="4356" linktype="page">Aadhaar robs Lakshmi of wealth</a><br/></h2><p>Unable to access hard earned-wages, MGNREGA workers in AP&#39;s Visakhapatnam district are learning that even bearing the name of the Goddess of Wealth doesn&#39;t save you from Aadhaar&#39;s many mess-ups</p><h5>February 14, 2018 |  <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/rahul-maganti">Rahul Maganti</a> </h5>

Aadhaar robs Lakshmi of wealth

<h2><a id="4318" linktype="page">&#39;Aadhaar took away whatever we were getting&#39;</a><br/></h2><p>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</p><h5>February 2, 2018 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/arpita-chakrabarty">Arpita Chakrabarty</a></h5>

'Aadhaar took away whatever we were getting'

<h2><a id="4284" linktype="page">When the man knows you, the machine doesn’t</a><br/></h2><p>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</p><h5>January 24, 2018 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/vishaka-george">Vishaka George</a> </h5>

When the man knows you, the machine doesn’t

<h2><a id="4307" linktype="page">Indu and Aadhaar – Act II, Scene 2</a><br/></h2><p>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</p><h5>January 30, 2018 |  <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/rahul-m">Rahul M.</a></h5>

Indu and Aadhaar – Act II, Scene 2

<h2><a id="4237" linktype="page">What’s in a name? The agonies of Aadhaar</a><br/></h2><p></p><p>“My name is Indu, but my first Aadhaar card made it ‘Hindu’. So I applied for a new card [seeking a correction], but they made it ‘Hindu’ again.”  So J. Indu, a 10-year-old Dalit girl, and four other students in the fifth standard of the government primary school at Amadagur, won’t get their scholarships this year</p><h5>January 16, 2018 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/authors/rahul-m">Rahul M.</a></h5><p></p>

What’s in a name? The agonies of Aadhaar

<h2><br/></h2><h2><a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/resources/justice-ks-puttaswamy-retd-and-another-versus-union-of-india-and-others/">Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd.) and another versus Union of India and others</a></h2><p>On September 26, 2018, a five-judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court of India (a bench of not less than five judges that deliberates  substantive questions of law in relation to the Constitutional text) gave this judgement on a string of writ petitions that questioned the constitutional validity of Aadhaar. While the majority judgement upheld Aadhaar’s constitutionality and struck down some provisions of the <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/resources/the-aadhaar-targeted-delivery-of-financial-and-other-subsidies-benefits-and-services-act-2016/">Aadhaar Act</a>, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s dissenting judgement found the entire Act unconstitutional </p><h5>September 26, 2018 | Chief Justice Dipak Misra, and Justices A.K. Sikri, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan</h5>

<h2><br/></h2><h2><a id="4321" linktype="page">The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016</a><p></p></h2><p>The Aadhaar Act aims to provide “efficient and transparent” delivery of subsidies, benefits and services to Indian residents by assigning them unique identity numbers. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), set up under this Act, is responsible for helping people ‘enrol’ or sign up for Aadhaar numbers, verifying their identity information, issuing Aadhaar numbers, and authenticating information provided by individuals on the request of public or private entities</p><h5>March 26, 2016 | <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/search/?q=ministry+of+law+and+justice+government+of+india&amp;type=resource&amp;sort-by=relevance">Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India</a></h5>

Aadhaar: the system wins, the people lose

আধার: ব্যবস্থার জয়, মানুষের হার

आधारः व्यवस्थेची जीत, जनतेची हार

ଆଧାର: ବ୍ୟବସ୍ଥାର ବିଜୟ, ଲୋକଙ୍କ ପରାଜୟ

आधारः व्यवस्था की जीत, जनता की हार

آدھار: نظام کی جیت، عوام کی شکست

<p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">At present, we can only accept donations in Indian rupees by Indian citizens. All donations made to the CounterMedia Trust are eligible for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Here is a copy of our exemption certificate.</span></span></p>


India is bigger than New Delhi. And people need to know more about the rest of this vast nation.


<p style="line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Younger, media-saturated generations are growing up knowing little about their country, but a lot about the elites of a few metros and towns. For a narrowly-owned, commercially-driven media, the dumbing down of a nation is part of standard operating procedure. The last available data of the Centre for Media Studies (CMS, Delhi) show us that reports from New Delhi account for 66 per cent of news on the front pages of major dailies. The CMS data also found that just about 0.24 per cent of front page news came out of rural India. The TV channels are not much better.</span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">PARI exists to change that.</span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">We are a non-profit organisation. We publish under creative commons, and do not charge readers a subscription fee or put-up advertisements. Nothing is behind a paywall and we are completely free-to-access by anyone. We guard our independence and receive no direct grants from governments and corporations, nor any funding that could dictate our content. So, we are dependent on volunteer labour, donations from individuals, foundations and institutions that see value in independent and free media.</span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:0pt;" dir="ltr"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">PARI is changing the way Indian journalism reports and documents the rural.India is more than the elite of a few metros and towns. We report on rural lives and livelihoods, languages, communities, migrants and more. We need your help to pull off this most ambitious of Indian journalistic endeavours. The scale of this effort costs money. Donate generously - and spread the word about PARI.</span></span></p><p style="line-height:1.2;margin-bottom:0pt;margin-top:0pt;" dir="ltr">&nbsp;</p>

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Aadhaar: the system wins, the people lose

A series of stories on PARI about people denied rations, disability pensions, MGNREGA wages, scholarships and more because the UIDAI misspelt their names, their biometrics were botched, and other such glitches

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