Government – Schools – Students – The Aadhar connection

When i got the circular from my daughter's school seeking her Aadhar number, the immediate thought that came to my mind was , why couldn't they adopt a similar method which was adopted by the Election commission, PAHAL the LPG subsidy site.

Apparently there is a huge gap between the above two programs and the schools info. First two are more or less Central govt projects and there is some primary data available, where as the schools coming under state subject education, we have to go through a long process of making this info connected.

However, if it was done the way the central issues were linked with Aadhar, there could have been lot more transparency for the parents. Not that they are providing some confidential information. What i have in mind is simply the following.

Government will first list out all the recognised schools in a designated website, listing out the permissions granted up to which class they can operate, category (Aided, Unaided, partly aided etc), which board (State board/CBSE/ICSE etc) they are authorised to offer, medium of education permitted and location where the school is situated in, The organisation which runs the school (usually trusts if the school is private) etc. After this the school would be provided access to the website to upload their student data.

Schools, on obtaining the access to the govt website, will start uploading the data of their pupils, class, section wise. Since the data will be based on school records it will be more or less accurate. Once this exercise is done, the schools will ask the parents to link the child's Aadhar number in this website. Parents can authenticate the input through a OTP (One Time Password) that will be sent from this site while updating the child's Aadhar number.

Parents will visit the site and select the school, class, section and identify their ward name and input the Aadhar number after getting a OTP. After doing this, it would be easier for the parents to verify the permissions the school has got and whether they got the permissions where their child is studying in specific. There are instances in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana, where schools have been operating branches with one single license, a status which can put the child's education in danger if the authorities decide to disallow students of the branches which are not permitted.

This Govt. website can also capture the info and Aadhar number of the teaching staff. It is possible many a Govt. Teacher is teaching in a private school drawing double wages and depriving the Govt. school students of a proper teaching. Particularly it is more likely to happen in rural areas. Even parents can verify this info, if photographs and education qualifications are also listed.

This whole exercise will help bring in transparency in the education system, where parents can verify the schools permissions, staff qualifications. Govt will have total input on the schools admission process, RTE admissions (they could ask the schools to categorise the admissions) even fee structure prescribed to that particular school could be displayed, helping the parents to know whether they are being over charged by the school.

When a student is leaving the school, both transfer certificate (TC) and Marks list can carry the child’s Aadhar number, so that next institute can record the same while admitting the children be it at school level or higher studies. Even for a Banker while disbursing education loans this school record would be handy to know, whether the loan seeker has the required qualifications to pursue the next level of studies.

What i am writing about may not be too far from implementation and could be easily done under Digital India as visualised by the PM.

Aadhar - the card that will change our lives

Aadhar the UID project, the baby of Dr Nilakneni, is now becoming all pervasive. I, as a votary for this could not visualise how this is going to make our lives so much more difficult to hide from the Govt.

I just got a circular from my child’s school asking us to provide her Aadhar number', because government wants it. I am liking this, simply because, it is going to be much easier for the Govt. to connect all this info and know, how many unique children are studying in which school, in case they need to deliver any benefits, they can do so by looking at the linking done by the social welfare department, who again are seeking the same info from those enjoying reservations, scholarships etc.

Similarly all land owners are being asked to provide their Aadhar number in the land records like Patta/Adangal/RR etc, this will help government to know how much land is held in an individuals name, they can then see if the individual is holding land beyond the Land ceiling Act norms. Not only this they are going to connect the fertiliser subsidy to your Aadhar card, so that they know how much subsidy to be provided to each individual based on the land holding.

While enrolling ourselves in PAHAL, we have been asked to connect out LPG connection to the Aadhar card and also then connect our Bank account through the same Aadhar card. There is one more info to the Govt., whether we are also drawing Kerosene (Ration card holders have already been asked to provide their Aadhar numbers) by any chance, then they can ask us to give up one of them for getting subsidy. Look at how much money the Govt. is going to save on subsidies, since there are many people who draw both. Wherever Aadhar linked ration delivery has happened they have noticed substantial drop in off take of heavily subsidised goods like Kerosene. After PAHAL introduction Chennai city has witnessed a surge in the usage of commercial cylinders by 50000 cylinders, about 1.34 crore on subsidy saved per month by OMC.

I am sure most of us have been getting SMS alerts from our bankers asking us to link our Bank account with the Aadhar number. Once done government knows how many bank accounts we hold solely or jointly or in the capacity of a signatory. This info then would be used by the IT department to check if we use any account for hiding incomes. This in particular is going to be used in the case of Fixed Deposit's (FD), where many people put their unaccounted income in FD's to either please their banker or for their own reasons like avoiding TDS deduction. All this welath will now be tagged to the Aadhar number holder and naturally he will be expected to start being more truthful to the Income tax department.

We have already started linking our Voter ID with Aadhar number, this will eliminate number of duplicate votes, sometimes within the same city or elsewhere including another state.

IRCTC is asking us to link our passenger list with Aadhar numbers, this would help the Govt. to know how often we travel, which class we normally travel and if required to even check if all this travel is reflected in our income and expenditure statement. This might become a necessity for those who are going to the counter to book the tickets over the days.

I had even written an article about linking Aadhar numbers with the place of living, this will then tell the Govt., how many properties each individual is holding, at some point of time the old circulated joke about a guy trying to place an order for a Pizza and his whole life is read out to him by the order receiving agent.

There were many sceptics who criticised the idea of the UID and went hammer and tongs by writing many an article, i had seen this as a very powerful tool and now it is proving to be more than what i imagined. If you ask me it is for the good of this nation where we by habit try to hide lot of things other than income.