Treating demographic details on Aadhaar cards as the final word is a recipe for trouble
Aadhaar project was launched, you might think the 'teething problems' are over. Alas, not. Every so often, a new problem arises, such as the difficulty of retrieving a lost Aadhaar number, or exclusion of children from school for lack of Aadhaar. Today, many people are facing a new problem that may last for quite a while: Perpetual Aadhaar Alignment Problem (PAAP).
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To understand this problem, we must remember that most people in India have many identity documents: Aadhaar card, ration card, job card, voter card, PAN card, bank passbook… In addition, they may have various 'numbers', such as an APAAR (Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry) number for students, or CKYCR (Central KYC Registry) number for account holders. All these cards and numbers are linked with various demographic details such as name, age, gender and address. Except for voter cards, most of them are also expected to be linked with Aadhaar, in practice, if not by law.
Further, concerned departments are increasingly insisting on consistency of demographic details between 'their' database and Aadhaar's. For instance, KYC norms in the banking system often require an exact match between the spellings of a person's name in their Aadhaar card and bank passbook. I have met many people in Jharkhand who were locked out of their bank account because of a discrepancy of a single letter between the two. Similarly, the food ministry and rural development ministry are keen on Aadhaar being 'aligned' with ration cards and job cards.
