Welfare pay can't be voter ID-linked

As if to invite controversy and more bureaucratic mayhem in an already SIR-riven landscape, on Tuesday, Union panchayati raj minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh stated that Aadhaar would no longer be the basis for identifying beneficiaries and processing payments for welfare schemes under his ministry's ambit. It would apparently be replaced with voter ID (EPIC) numbers and biometric authentication. If true, this would be disastrous.

This isn't the first time Singh has talked about this switch. But he has offered no reason why the existing system needs to be abandoned. His argument that Aadhaar cards can be obtained in '5 minutes' and are, therefore, 'unreliable' is hardly a case for replacing it. If fraudulent enrolment is the concern, the answer is tighter verification. The JAM trinity was projected by GoI as the backbone of efficient subsidy delivery. Aadhaar-linked DBT was meant to plug leakages and eliminate duplicate beneficiaries. Biometric authentication raises further concerns. Aadhaar-based payments have exposed the limits of tech as a gatekeeper to welfare. Manual labourers with worn fingerprints, senior citizens whose iris scans fail, and beneficiaries in areas with poor connectivity face authentication hurdles. Replacing Aadhaar with another biometric-dependent system will only compound these problems instead of fixing them.

A voter ID is not a universal identity document. It is linked to electoral registration, subject to revision and deletion. Making welfare conditional on one's identity as a voter conflates the right to vote (or not) with the right to social security. A person missing from an electoral roll does not cease to be entitled to a pension, housing subsidy or employment guarantee. Linking the two is borderline blackmail with whiffs of 'political cajoling'. Welfare delivery must be based on eligibility, not possession of a particular identity document. In a country like India, with its wide disparities, welfare delivery must be expanded, not curtailed on political grounds dressed up as bureaucratic logic.