INTERVENTION SPOTLIGHT

State of Aadhaar provided an empirical underpinning to the debate around exclusion from Aadhaar and led to a broad consensus on certain key issues among stakeholders.

Since Aadhaar was launched in 2009, some experts have highlighted the risk of exclusion from welfare services. There were multiple anecdotal reports of exclusion raised by individuals and civil society organisations.

The State of Aadhaar reports by IDinsight and Dalberg were the first to quantify exclusion issues at an all-India level using credible representative data. The reports took the discussion from small surveys in specific locations, and anecdotes from journalists, to large pulse surveys of 147, 868 households across 28 Indian states and union territories. It also included an in-depth survey with 19,209 households in 16 states, and one union territory which helped identify specific exclusion concerns from Aadhaar and tangible opportunities to address them.

Post the State of Aadhaar 2019 report, UIDAI included transgender and homeless people as ‘priority populations’ for enrolment drives. The report encouraged UIDAI to further increase its focus on improving the Aadhaar updation processes and also emphasised the need for enrollment support in deep rural areas. The effectiveness of food rations’ provisions highlighted in the survey also impacted the doling out of COVID relief packages. Learnings from the report contributed to the shift in the government’s focus from provision of relief packages to food rations during the pandemic.

Creating feedback loops with credible pan-India datasets proved to be an effective pathway in advancing the discourse on exclusion due to digital IDs.