Twenty five-year-old Jibit Nayak and his younger brother Jiban of Lankagada village in Tumudibandh block of Kandhamal district work in Ernakulam district in faraway Kerala. The siblings had submitted their biometrics and completed Aadhaar seeding at the local fair price shop (FPS) for eKYC update in the southern state. When the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare department of Odisha government issued a notice in August, directing all ration cardholders to mandatorily verify eKYC, the siblings found out to their utter surprise that their validation was not showing at the PDS dealer point back in their village.
The Nayak brothers had to travel all the way back from Ernakulam to Kandhamal, not only losing their wages for more than 10 days but also incurring additional travel expenses to complete eKYC verification. The same was the case with their younger sister Shyamla who studies in Secundarabad. Their woes did not end there. The Lankagada FPS is an offline PDS centre and the three siblings had to go to Hatimunda, five km away from their village, to complete the verification which took them a couple of days due to internet issues, recalls Jiban.
The plight of the Nayak family is not just theirs alone. Countless people working in different states had to rush to their villages to save their ration cards after the Odisha government announced a September 25 deadline for eKYC update with an additional caution coming from Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare minister Krushna Chandra Patra.
Pushing the button
The Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare department had pushed the panic button issuing the notice for authentication, failure of which Patra cautioned may result in cancellation of ration card and stoppage of ration.
The eKYC verification exercise, according to the minister, was to remove unwanted beneficiaries (dead and bogus) from the food security coverage list. However, it turned out to be a real pain for the most genuine ration cardholders, particularly the migrant workers.
“There are nearly 200 of us from Tumudibandh block who work in Kerala. Some of them had done their eKYC authentication by paying Rs 1,000 each to FPS to save their travel expenditure. But it was in vain as they had to come back to their villages to validate their eKYC again,” Jiban added.
According to latest official information, there are 3.38 crore (3,38,49,671 to be exact) beneficiaries of the food security schemes in Odisha. These beneficiaries are tagged to 11,920 FPSs across the 30 districts. When the eKYC update authentication process was announced, the window for Aadhaar seeding with the ration card was opened from August 22 to September 25, a little more than a month.
With the state government rolling out around the same time its flagship Subhadra Yojana, a cash assistance scheme to empower women, the Aadhaar update and eKYC sent hundreds of people back into the queues, heaping miseries, thanks to a lack of clear communication, absence of understanding of the enormous problem, poor technology support for FPS and integration with database of similar national schemes.
In the absence of clear guidelines (in public domain) and with no or little clarity about the place and mode of authentication, there was anxiety and distress among ration cardholders leading to a mad rush to FPS, Jana Seva Kendras and Aadhaar centres for seeding. Chaos reigned supreme with long queues before fair price shops to prove their authenticity.
This, coupled with news stories that foodgrains disbursement will be discontinued if eKYC is not completed within the specified time, led to a situation where people especially migrant workers had to dig into their meagre savings to rush back to their villages for the eKYC validation where each member mentioned on the family ration card has to be physically present at the ration shops to authenticate their identity through their Aadhaar card.
However, the FS&CW notification was contrary to the Orissa High Court order which warned the Union and state governments that they cannot deny benefits of welfare schemes to citizens belonging to vulnerable sections just because they do not have an identity proof like Aadhaar card or a mobile phone number.
“The unleashing of the eKYC is against the poor, mostly migrant workers. They had to sacrifice their earnings to save their ration card as the process took longer than expected due to a host of problems which were mostly technical. Their schoolgoing children had to abandon classes for days for the authentication, hitting the most marginalised section,” alleges Samit Panda, food security activist and state convenor of Campaign for Food.
Technical issues
The common problems associated with verification was that electronic point of sale (e-PoS) machine fails to recognise thumbprints in case of workers engaged in hard labour and children within five years of age. Poor internet connectivity and software glitches led to delay in data integration from e-PoS to ration card database to Aadhaar database for validation, Panda added.
Most of the FPS are run by women SHG groups. “We deal with around 900 ration card households and it took more than two and half months to complete Aadhaar seeding due to internet issues and server failure. In some cases, biometrics captured in PoS machine failed to recognise thumbprints,” a member of one such group said.
A senior officer of the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare department agrees because fair price shops operating in offline centres (with no internet connectivity) are required to mobilise all members of villages tagged to them to a nearby online centre for capturing biometrics and Aadhaar seeding which is a humongous task.
There are 58 offline FPS in Kandhamal district which was in news for the death of two women due to mango kernel gruel consumption. Moving the entire population of such villages is a tedious task, particularly for the kids, elderly and physically challenged, not knowing how long the process will take, the officer explained.
Interestingly, the PDS shopkeepers are mandated with carrying out the massive exercise of eKYC for more than 3 crore beneficiaries though they have absolutely no role either in issuance or cancellation of ration cards which is the prerogative of the government.
The shopkeepers’ role is limited to distribution of foodgrains to cardholders and they can do precious little if biometric authentication or Aadhaar seeding fails due to technical reasons but they can exploit the situation.
“The large number of ghost ration cards in circulation - Food Suppliers and Consumer Welfare minister claimed the number was 50 lakh before scaling it down to 16 lakh - was not creation of the ration shopkeepers. Ration card verification is definitely not in the interest of the dealers whose only earning is from the left-out foodgrains of ghost or dead beneficiaries. They will certainly try their best to save such cards,” said human rights activist Biswapriya Kanungo.
Stepping it up
By August 31, eKYC verification of 25.75 lakh beneficiaries was completed. Last month, the minister told the Assembly that the Aadhaar-based eKYC verification which started from August 22 to bring transparency to beneficiary list under the food security scheme was still in progress. Of the 3.38 crore beneficiaries (3,38,49,671 to be exact), 84 per cent translating to 2.84 crore beneficiaries have completed their eKYC verification. This leaves about 54 lakh beneficiaries to complete their authentication. There are 94,664 beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) who did their eKYC in other states with Tamil Nadu accounting for 34,697 of them. System and database integration issues plague their reflection of authentication back in the state.
Former union minister Srikant Jena says this authentication exercise is an attempt to harass the poor who are completely ignorant about the process. “It is the responsibility of the government to reach out to every household for verification of the beneficiaries of the free ration under NFSA,” he adds.
Need for transparency
Panda says the need of the hour is a transparent portal to verify eKYC status and claims Odisha government’s is the most opaque. Even after Aadhaar seeding with ration cards, the cardholders have no option to know the status of their eKYC verification. “There should be a dedicated portal where people can visit and find out if the ration cardholders are eligible for free ration or not,” he suggests.
As the sole objective of ration card-based welfare schemes was to bring transparency which, sadly, has been a major casualty, says Kanungo adding, gram sabha or gram panchayat should ideally be the oversight body for eKYC verification.
Minister Patra, who had earlier claimed that over 16 lakh ghost ration cards have been detected, told the Assembly recently that during the ongoing eKYC drive ration was found to have been distributed to 1.07 lakh dead beneficiaries.
He, however, was evasive when asked when the eKYC verification will be completed and if the state has submitted report to the Supreme Court about identification and distribution of ration cards to migrant workers. The government has, meanwhile, received 6,19,836 applications for new ration cards under the food security scheme. After elimination of dead and ineligible beneficiaries from the food security list, new ration cards will be issued in January, Patra claimed.