Six years after the first Aadhaar card was issued, a billion people in India have a unique number allotted to them.
For many of Jharkhand's poor, who depend on the Centre's rural jobs scheme or NREGA for 100 days of work every year, an Aadhaar card has been the ticket to hassle free wage payments.
Six years after the first Aadhaar card was issued, a billion people in India have a unique number allotted to them. Over 93 per cent adults have a smart card, which not only provides them with an identity, but is also used to ensure that government subsidies go directly to the correct beneficiary.
45-year-old Rajkumar Lohara, from Soso village in Khunti district, about 45 kilometres from state capital Ranchi, says the government's unique identity number, now linked to his NREGA job card, has meant doorstep payments from his bank, using his fingerprint on the Aadhaar card as identification.
"I managed to open a bank account using Aadhaar. Now my job card has been linked to Aadhaar too. I can take out money when I want. Earlier the payments were less and not on time. Also I had to go all the way to my bank," says Mr Lohara.
In 2011, Jharkhand was the first state to experiment with linking Aadhaar to payments for the rural jobs scheme. The government says that on the ground, Aadhaar's biometric identification means payments reach the intended person. But activists in Jharkhand point to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling, saying that Aadhaar based payments would be voluntary, alleging that Aadhaar is being imposed on the poor by the government in the state, brushing aside serious privacy concerns.
"If you don't have an Aadhaar card, you don't get work here. The Supreme Court has said it is not mandatory but here in Jharkhand it has been made so. People are pressurised that an Aadhaar card is a must," says Shivnandan Vishwakarma, a social worker in Khunti.
"When we did not have an Aadhaar card, we never got work. When we used to go ask for work, we were never given any," says 35-year-old Shila Devi, also from Soso, corroborating the allegations by activists.
The Jharkhand government says it hasn't made Aadhaar compulsory for wages, but hopes that more and more people will opt to receive payments the Aadhaar way.