Who am I? I am not asking a profound spiritual or philosophical question. If you leave out immediate friends and relatives, to the rest of the world, I am a bundle of papers. Those establish my identity. I checked into a hotel in Mumbai recently and was warmly greeted by the receptionist. “Mr Debroy, good to have you back.” She then asked for my PAN card. I asked “Why? You know who I am.” The PAN card was of course not a hotel requirement. It was a government requirement. But she asked for my credit card too, for “extras”, the actual hotel costs were being borne by someone else. This was a hotel requirement. Therefore, irrespective of whether the hotel knew me or not, I was reduced to a PAN card and a credit card. My yoga teacher has a problem in admitting his child to a school. There is a stipulation that admissions can only be within a certain radius of the school. He hails from Bihar and search for economic opportunities have driven him to Delhi. Rents in Delhi are prohibitively expensive. Therefore, a government servant has sub-tenanted his official quarters to him and because this is illegal, there is no rental or any other kind of utility receipt.
The problems that relatively poor migrants face are known. At one point, we thought UID would solve them. We now know UID isn’t going to do anything of the kind. Even if you have a UID number, government ministries/departments will impose their own requirements. And I have a double problem in establishing who I am. First, I don’t like the government and the public sector. Therefore, my utility bills (mobile phone, land-line, bank accounts) are all privatized. Check out any standard identity proof requirement for any government ministry/department, say passports. Only public utilities are accepted. (I have tried using proof of income tax return submission. Surely, nothing can be more official than that. That’s not acceptable.) There is a bias in favour of public sector banks and telephone providers. With all these KYC norms, I don’t see why that should be the case. But no one seems to object. Second, there is this business of permanent address versus present (temporary) address. Like my yoga teacher, all of us move around. Unlike rural India, this is a standard urban cum semi-urban problem. It may even be migration within the city, as in my case. I have a permanent residence (which is in Delhi) and I also have a present residence (which is also in Delhi). Logically, all utility bills should be addressed to the present address, as they are.
Which of these is a correct address? Both are. Indeed, in filling out government forms, there is always provision for a permanent addressed and a present one. But try it out (passports, driving licenses) and your application will not be processed. Only one address will be accepted. In that event, why have provision for two separate addresses? And doesn’t acceptance of a single address ignore the reality? I complained to a friend who is fairly senior in the civil services, thinking that he would suggest a solution. Instead, he endorsed my complaint. He has been nominated as a government-appointed independent director in an organization and has the same problem about permanent address versus present one. That made me feel a bit better, but it didn’t solve the problem. What do you do in situations like this? You do what you have always done. You speak to someone sufficiently higher up to solve both my problems. But that’s not really the solution, is it? My yoga teacher is still hunting around for a gazetted officer. (Whether I help him out or not is beside the point.)
People who frame such rules don’t typically confront the problem. That’s the real reason why rules are so unrealistic. UID and e-governance only help marginally. They don’t address the problem until we completely redo forms, requirements and guidelines. There are indeed success stories in rural India, where this is being done. In urban and semi-urban India, where anonymity is greater, it is more difficult and is not being done. The two time-tested routes are still the only option – bribe or use someone high up to exercise clout. Without doing either of these, I cannot prove who I am.
