Skip to main content

Aadhaar: Is India's biometric ID scheme hurting the poor? - BBC News

xxx

"Three months ago Muniya Devi travelled some 35km to the nearest town to submit the forms and papers necessary to get her family's ration cards linked to Aadhaar. People at the office demanded a bribe to get the job done, so she paid them 400 rupees, nearly four days of family earnings. 'They say the network is down, the computer is not working. And I keep borrowing food to feed my family,' she told me."

From "Aadhaar: Is India's biometric ID scheme hurting the poor? - BBC News".

xxx

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

There is no excuse for not taking cards

So we went to the pub. For lunch. Seven of us. Say £20 per head. £100+ quid. Say £50 quid gross for the pub. Colleague goes to order food and drinks and pay at the bar. Apologetic barmaid comes over to explain that their “card machine” is down, so she can only accept cash. Under normal circumstances I would have simply walked out, feeling it wholly inappropriate to reward such a poorly managed establishment and, as a functioning actor in a capitalist economy, done my duty to depress their lunchtime takings. Here’s what we wanted to say: This is absurd. This is 2016 not 1916. Your card machine is down? Well, so what! Are you seriously telling me that mein host has no mobile phone number capable of registering for PingIt or PayM? That none of the staff or the pub itself have a PayPal account that I can send the money to? That neither the owners nor managers not contingency planners thought to tuck an iZettle behind the bar to use when the clunky and expensive GPRS terminal fails for o...