Its a novel effort for a good cause. But, as usual, not funded well, not implemented well.
I went to the Sahakaranagar BBMP centre which was one of the locations to get Aadhar. First and foremost, there are generic information boards about Aadhar and one prominent sign outside which says "Applications have been stopped, Sorry for inconvenience!" - Just proves my point about implementation.
Since the other board said "Only 250 applicants a day", it was good enough sign for 250 aam aadmis to stand without a clue when the officials would come, when the process would get started.
As expected, there was chaos There were plenty of queues to start with. No one to inform which queue stands for what. Each enlightened citizen had a different explanation for every queue!
I had prior information that there will be one queue for verification and one for photos. With that intelligence input, I tried to stand in one of queues which I believed had equally confused people like me (Hence, must be first timers!).
After waiting for an hour, amidst the commotion, two people (verifying officers) came and sat on a table. After lots of fight among the crowd, and after an hour, I finally submitted my Aadhar form, and then was prompty issued tokens for me, wife and kid so that we could come for verification and photo next day.
Having "Successfully" achieved a part of my objective (A token is a kind of appreciation for our hard work), next day I set off with my family in the hope that things will be less maddening. But, as it happens, everyone wants to jump queue and soon, there was chaos again. After an hour and half of struggle, we finally got the application verified. There was police presence, but neither did the police, nor the Central government Verfication officers, nor the BBMP staff, or the contractors had any clue of how to control the crowd. So, might was right. Plenty of abuses and a few times came close to physical fights. But, being Gandhi Jayanti, I guess the crowd was by and large non violent.
I asked the officer, if We can come fully charged the next day for the photo queue fight? But, he insisted that all formalities have to get over same day. So, we had a small bakery lunch and again, waited infinitely in the next queue for photo and acknowledgement for Aadhar registration. After an hour and half and listening to all the abuses thrown by the crowd at each other, we entered the office, where 4 counters were present. As soon as we sat and started dreaming about the end of this ordeal, came lunch time . Hearing that, the crowd again vented their frustration but to no avail. Half an hour more, and then the person came back and it took 15 minutes to complete the registration.
Surprisingly, the final 15 minutes showed some professionalism which I didnt expect . The instruments were in order, the operator was able to type fast, use the language translation software, to get details both in English and Kannada. He corrected any mistakes that were present, took the photo, finger printing, retina scanning, original document scanning in a professional way and finally gave the receipt which again contained all the information you could hope. So, there is light, but only at the end of a dark and frustrating tunnel .
Hope, the PM, and Nandan listen, allocate more funds, understand that crowd control is as important as the rest of the implementation if they have to successfully implement this project.
Yet another weekend in yet another government ID!
UPDATE on 28/06/2012: After 9 months, I am still waiting for Aadhar ID!!!!
Nandan Nilekani, Manmohan Singh - Are you hearing??????????
Finally, after 10 months of wait, Aadhar card for the 5 family members arrived by July 2012. It arrived for my son first, then my parents, and then for me and my wife!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
