A starvation death in Jharkhand arising from pedantic insistence on Aadhaar linked to the family ration card shows how insensitive the system can be while meeting targets. Aadhaar seeding for benefits may be against Supreme Court orders on how lack of identity should not lead to denial of benefits, but so committed are officials in some states to get Aadhaar linkages done that they go to the inhuman extent of seeing a girl starve to death. The fault may be in the in the digital system not being up to scratch in rural India due to connectivity and technical issues, and the government may have saved billions in filtering out non-genuine cases, but if it can’t see glitches faced by a few, it is still a gross failure.
No system is empathetic of human considerations if it can’t gauge the direness of the situation the poor and the disadvantaged are placed in. Their being denied rations for not having a particular document overzealously pushed by the Centre shouldn’t have arisen at all as the same people have got the barest necessities for years on the basis of other identity criteria. The heartless way in which the issue was brushed off – such as claiming the death was due to malaria — by seeking a routine inquiry is risible as it holds no one responsible for the starvation death. Any probe will probably be directed to prove what the system wishes, depending on how powerful the votebank of the victim’s community is. The death of 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari will forever remain a blot on India’s bureaucracy and government.
