These multiple identities repose in different data banks capturing the same basic information: Date of birth, address, and immediate antecedents (not to forget official mug shots of unvarying and depressing hideousness). Functionally, none of these identification documents can double for the other. You cannot show your voter ID card or passport, for instance, if a policeman hauls you up for a traffic violation or if you want to conduct a real estate transaction (a legal one, that is). The card bearing your Permanent Account Number or PAN cannot fetch you the cooking gas subsidy.
Confusingly, however, you need one or the other of these documents to get any one of them. Applying for a driving licence? A PAN card or passport or voter ID is needed for "proof of address". Need a passport? Depending on the passport officer's requirements, you could present a voter ID, PAN card or driving licence.
More From This Section
If you have all the identity documents mentioned above, an Aadhaar identity should be redundant. Someone who possesses a driving licence, passport, voter ID or PAN card has a verified identity as an Indian who is unlikely to demand subsidised food or medicine from the state. But on this point, there is considerable confusion. The Supreme Court had made Aadhaar mandatory only for the public distribution system and the cooking gas subsidy (which, honestly, middle class people should opt out of). When the Aadhaar Bill was passed by the legislative legerdemain of a money Bill to circumvent Rajya Sabha objections, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley confirmed that Aadhaar was not mandatory for all citizens and - note this - those who did not have Aadhaar would be given an alternative identification.
The trouble is that the broader universe of government-related service providers does not appear to have perfectly understood this. Already, the web is rife with complaints of sudden demands for Aadhaar from senior citizens accessing their pension and provident funds, students on government scholarships and many others. In other words, even if you own all or any documents listed above, Aadhaar could well be necessary. The term "government service" appears to have acquired a definition wider than the Pacific Ocean.
So possessing an Aadhaar number is increasingly considered a safe bet even if you have no immediate need for it. Getting one entails taking time off from work to queue up in yet another grotty office of a small-time IT firm mandated under the Aadhaar authority to submit a form that requires a PAN card or driving licences etc etc to prove you are who you claim to be. Then another long wait on another day while the enrolment officer - splendidly efficient, in my case - reproduces the information from the physical form to an electronic one, and records fingerprints and iris scans.
So now, I am the recipient of six different government-mandated identities. At least three of them could do duty for the other. The question of privacy that has built up around the Aadhaar is laughable when identification details are floating around on some database or the other and a joint secretary can decide when data can be shared.
Acquiring each one of these documents from the government demands time - which could vary from four hours to a whole working day - and sometimes a nominal fee. To be sure, technology has shrunk harassment and corruption. This being India, however, vestiges of the rentier habit remain where human intervention is required in processing documents. So the police verification and postal services invariably demand a service charge for rendering services for which they are paid by the state. All in all, it's hard work being a bona fide Indian citizen.