Getting Aadhaar: Enrolment And Updates Getting Aadhaar: Enrolment And Updates 2.2 Getting Aadhaar: Enrolment and Updates Figure 4: Largest groups of people who do not have Aadhaar % of respondents and estimated number of people who do not have Aadhaar Aadhaar is India’s most ubiquitous form of ID today, used by over 90% of residents nationwide. Some states have achieved enrolment levels higher than 99%. Assam and Meghalaya are exceptions with enrolment levels under 50%. In most states, rural and urban areas have similar enrolment levels, suggesting that efforts to reach beyond large population centres are succeeding. However, a sizable minority of adults and children still do not have Aadhaar. Within this group, most adults want the ID and are unable to obtain it. People who do not have Aadhaar are not a random cross-section of the population—rather, highly marginalised people (e.g., third-gender and homeless populations) have much lower enrolment levels. Some of those enrolled in Aadhaar have errors in their ID; they often face difficulties in attempting to update their Aadhaar, or else they do not try to correct their ID because they perceive the process to be too hard. Aadhaar is now India’s most ubiquitous ID with high enrolment levels across most states By and large, lack of Aadhaar did not appear to be a matter of personal Figure 3: Share of residents enrolled in Aadhaar, by state preference. Almost all adults (95%) without Aadhaar said that they want the % of primary respondents and their household members ID. The majority of these people had not tried to apply—mostly because there were no local enrolment centres or the centre was closed (37%), More than 90% of residents in India (or an estimated 1.2 billion people did not know where to enrol (21%), or they lacked the necessary people) had Aadhaar, including almost all adults (95%) and most documents (9%).17 Many people (one-third of people who wanted Aadhaar) children (75%).9 Enrolment levels were higher for Aadhaar than for tried but failed to enrol, often despite making multiple trips to enrolment voter ID, which was the second-most common ID.10 Aadhaar was 90% National average ubiquitous in nearly every state—15 out of 28 states and union centres.18 Few people (5% of those without Aadhaar) said that they did not enrol in Aadhaar by choice (see Figure 5). territories we studied had achieved enrolment levels greater than 95%, and six states had near-complete enrolment (greater Figure 5: Reasons given for not having Aadhaar than 99%; see Figure 3).11 A few Northeastern states—Assam and % and estimated total of adult respondents who do not have Aadhaar Meghalaya, with enrolment levels of 10% and 39% respectively— served as exceptions.12 Still, a sizable minority does not yet have Aadhaar; most adults who do not have Aadhaar want to enrol Some people (8% of the population, or an estimated 103 million people), still did not have Aadhaar.13 The majority of these (73% or an estimated 75 million) were children, of which one-third were under the age of five.14 However, this number also included 3% of all adults (an estimated 28 million).15 Around three-quarters of adults without Aadhaar lived in Assam and Meghalaya; the remaining one-quarter lived in other states (see Figure 4).16 9. 10. 11. 9 SoA pulse survey 2019. State-level enrolment levels were consistent with UIDAI saturation data (August 2019): we see differences of less than ten percentage points in 25 out of 28 states. Outliers were Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Uttarakhand. The state-level correlation between UIDAI saturation data and enrolment levels in our surveys was 0.93 for the SoA pulse survey and 0.94 for the SoA in-depth survey. This and all further findings without a data citation are from the SoA in-depth survey 2019. Children do not have voter IDs. More people had Aadhaar than voter ID in 16 out of 17 states studied. SoA pulse survey 2019. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. SoA pulse survey 2019. In these states, concerns about legal residency superseded the push to roll out Aadhaar (Press Trust of India. 2019). Our survey did not establish legal residency status of respondents. SoA pulse survey 2019. For 1.9% of respondents and their household members, we received either no response or a response of “don’t know”. SoA pulse survey 2019. Unless otherwise specified, data in this report refers to adult residents; all data on children are based on responses given by a household member and are reported separately. SoA pulse survey 2019. SoA pulse survey 2019. 17. 18. Respondents also cited other reasons but we report only those cited by 5% or more of respondents. Respondents who tried but failed to obtain Aadhaar made an average of 2.3 round trips to reach an enrolment centre. 10