In India’s capital, Delhiites reduced to documents

Aadhaar number. PAN card. Voter ID. Ration card. Sanichari Devi, 63, has packed all of these documents into a polythene bag for the special intensive revision (SIR) hearing at the Government Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, a government school near Mori Gate in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk Assembly constituency on September 15.

These were the papers by which the State had recognised her, again and again, as a citizen all these years, she claims. But that afternoon they were not enough.

“First, the official at the hearing asked me to bring a bank passbook for which I had to return home,” she says. Home is about two kilometres away in an overcrowded Chandni Chowk locality. “When I came back panting, I was again sent another kilometre to get a photocopy of the documents,” she says on this errand alone.