Besides why should this new ID card work when so many others have failed because of running aground on the broken machinery of government? In my own case, I had a voter’s card at this election but it was ten years ago that the process of giving it to me began. I have a passport that I dread renewing because of the pages and pages of useless forms that I am forced to fill. I have had a passport for more than thirty years so renewing it should not need a police check and endless paperwork, but it does. And, I have strings as thick as ropes that I can pull to ease the process. It frightens me to think of those who need to get a passport without access to high officials.

For the ‘aam aadmi’, life is very, very hard in every way. Indians who live below the poverty line are entitled to a BPL card that supposedly gives them a plethora of government benefits. But go to any village anywhere in India and you will find that BPL cards are usually in the hands of those who are not below the poverty line. When I bring this up with political leaders and big bureaucrats, they say it is because the poor are selling them. But when I meet ordinary BPL people, they point to the complex web of caste, criminality and political power that they battle daily for even those things that are their right.

The BPL folks that I know in Mumbai and Delhi do not have birth certificates, identity cards or any proof of nationality. Even if they did, they have no means of knowing how to access the benefits that accrue to them. Will a national identity card make their lives less difficult? I think not. What would make a difference is a nutrition programme like the one that Infosys supports through Akshaye Patra in Bangalore. It is my humble opinion, expressed ad nauseum in this column, that the most important and most achievable goal that we should set is to ensure that not a single Indian child is malnourished by the year 2014. India is shamed in the forums of the world because nearly half of our children are malnourished. What is the point of being the second fastest growing economy in the world if we rank below countries like Sudan, Cameroon and Nigeria when it comes to feeding our children?

... contd.