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The Union Government hastily passed a Bill to link voter IDs with Aadhaar cards.

Aadhaar Efficiency

• Aadhaar was, among other things, purportedly meant to improve efficiency in welfare programmes.
• Cash transfers in many welfare programmes, such as payment of MGNREGA wages, are done using the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (APBS).
• Government claims on savings in welfare programmes due to Aadhaar have been methodically debunked by Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera, among others.

Concerns associated with Aadhaar

• Wage payment delays in MGNREGA have been persistent. An analysis of more than 18 lakh wage invoices for the first half of 2021-22 by LibTech India demonstrated that 71% of the payments were delayed (called stage 2 delays) beyond the mandated period by the Union Government.
• Between 2015 and 2019, there was intense pressure on field-level bureaucrats to increase Aadhaar linking.
• A recently completed study of nearly 3,000 MGNREGA workers by Anjor Bhaskar and Preeti Singh shows that 57% of job cards of genuine workers were deleted in a quest to show 100% linking of Aadhaar with job cards.
• Cash transfers through both the payment methods can fail. The most common reason for payment failures in account-based payments is when the account number of the worker in the system is incorrect.
• This can be rectified at the block. However, the most common reason for payment failures through the APBS is enigmatically called “Inactive Aadhaar.”
• This happens due to software mapping failure. Workers and officials alike are clueless on resolving these payment failures.
• Several cases of misdirected payments in APBS when the Aadhaar number of one person gets linked to somebody else’s bank account so her money gets credited to somebody else’s account.

Way Forward 

• When Aadhaar’s use in welfare — for which it was purportedly intended — is itself shrouded in opacity, unreliability, and exclusions, we must be very worried if it is linked to voter IDs as it will further hollow out government accountability.
• It will fundamentally alter the citizen-State relationship.
• This must concern everyone as thousands of crores of taxpayers’ money have been spent on it.