In India’s capital, Delhiites reduced to documents
An elderly woman in Delhi faces significant bureaucratic hurdles while attempting to verify her citizenship status during a government electoral roll revision. The process highlights the difficulties faced by unlettered, low-income citizens in navigating complex documentation requirements.
Why it matters
It underscores the social and economic impact of administrative state processes on vulnerable populations in India.
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.
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