A new directive by the Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies mandates that all 81 crore (810 million) ration card holders who are eligible to receive food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) must undergo an E-KYC verification, which would be carried out by Fair Price Shop (FPS) dealers nationwide. Every member of the household must be present at the ration store to verify their identification using their AadhAar card as part of the E-KYC verification process. All of the ration cardholders on the FPS dealers' list have been notified.
This is one of several images that marked one side of the COVID-19 Pandemic, as several thousand of India's migrant workers found themselves trapped in other cities across the country, with workplaces shut in the lockdown, wages frozen, and access to basic rations lost. As the lockdown stretched on, some workers managed to get on trains home, while others walked.
At this time, partially in response to the crisis, the Prime Minister of India had also announced a scheme that should have enabled workers and families to access their ration anywhere.
However, an article in The Wire points to something else: In this highlighted case, the Electronic Know Your Customer (E-KYC) verification procedure was postponed because one child's E-KYC failed, costing Sumaira, a domestic worker in Uttar Pradesh, ₹8,000 to travel to her village. Poor digital infrastructure and insensitive procedures pose obstacles for many ration cards in India, including this one. Although it was launched in 2020, the One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) program is not well-executed in every region.
E-KYC
Now, a new directive by the Ministry of Food and Civil Supplies mandates that all 81 crore (810 million) ration card holders who are eligible to receive food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) must undergo an E-KYC verification, which would be carried out by Fair Price Shop (FPS) dealers nationwide. Every member of the household must be present at the ration store to verify their identification using their Aadhaar card as part of the E-KYC verification process. All of the ration cardholders on the FPS dealers' list have been notified.
But this has led to several issues.
Most legitimate ration cardholders, especially migratory populations, are at risk from the E-KYC verification effort. Since the government is not responsible for issuing or revoking ration cards, empowering ration cardholders to conduct the exercise has diminished its responsibilities towards them.
Now the problem is that the burden of proving one's authenticity to a machine falls on the beneficiary, and not the State. Problems with biometrics and slow internet connections are only two of the many obstacles that the E-KYC verification encounters on a regular basis. There have been several instances where KYC/biometric issues have resulted in people being excluded from the PDS (public distribution system) altogether, even resulting in deaths by starvation.
During the COVID-19 national lockdown, technology was utilised to exclude individuals; from 2013 to 2020, a total of 4.39 crore (~44 million) ration cards were discarded by states and union territories. No legitimate rationale was offered even after the termination, and beneficiaries were not given prior warning when these cards were terminated. The Central Government asserts that these revoked cards were counterfeit because of issues with biometric record matching and non-ownership of Aadhaar.
This process now involves physically showing up to the FPS, with the entire family, including children and aged senior citizens. Compounded with issues of biometric authentication, including fingerprints that go unrecognised due to the nature of some forms of labour, the new mandate is leading to even more exclusions. This new system puts into question the efficacy of the much advertised One Nation One Ration Card Scheme (ONORC).
Migrant beneficiaries who do not reside in the area serviced by the Fair Price Shop (FPS) encounter difficulties in gaining access to the services provided by the ONORC. Displaced workers experience prejudice and are powerless to advocate for themselves on the job. The people most at risk of being unable to find or get to a ration store are those who engage in circular migration and spend months working in cities or other faraway places for pay. The government, since 2020 and the pandemic has been more keen on trying to promote the ONORC scheme rather than expanding the PDS system in general.
All this is while India remains worse off at the world rankings on Hunger. We are now ranked at the bottom of the tier, 111 out of 125 in the Global Hunger Index.
Again adding to the issue is the lack of latest data, mostly relying on census data as old as 2011.
The increased dependence on Aadhaar and biometric data as a marker of authenticity for the most basic of welfare schemes such as food grains for a country ranking 111 on the Global Hunger Index seems a bit excessive, given the diminishing budget allocation for most welfare schemes. Are a few people getting unwarrantedly included in a welfare scheme more troubling than the starvation and malnourishment of a much larger number of people?
The following is a statement from the Right to Food Campaign:
“Rolling out an authentication exercise in this manner, without providing clear and official information to people about the framework within which the E-KYC is being done, the need for E-KYC, the timeline and consequences is creating intense distress and anxiety among people. The requirement for the whole family to be present at the ration shop has resulted in the most marginalised sections including migrant workers, elderly and those with disabilities being the most affected and likely to be left out of the EKYC,”
We end this week with their detailed statement in the press conference.
E-KYC is a methodological part of digitalisation. Online authentication is nothing but digitisation which is supposed to provide efficiency. Ideally, if 810 million ration card holders go through the authentication, it should be a matter of efficiency for delivering food to the ration card holders. Ideally an efficient system should provide ease of use for the masses. An efficient system is not efficient enough if it only collects data for the sake of efficiently managing the system and supply chain. The actual and full hardy digitally efficient system must be primarily efficient, economical, and cost effective to the citizens.
If 81 crore or 810 million people would be required to go through the E-KYC, some questions need to be answered:
How many of them can understand ‘e’ of E-KYC?
How many of them are digitally literate?
How many of them will be provided with public digital service center support at a walking distance to facilitate E-KYC?
Who will bear the cost of getting the E-KYC done?
Why should the burden of digital authentication and e-KYC be on the ration card holders?
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