Interviews with Jitender Singh and other Enrolment Operators in Amb, Himachal Pradesh

Duration: 00:33:22; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 113.315; Saturation: 0.016; Lightness: 0.462; Volume: 0.393; Cuts per Minute: 15.764; Words per Minute: 15.045

The Identity project emerged as a result of our dissatisfaction at the nature of the debate that was emerging on the area of digital governance in India.
Over the past three years we have conducted numerous field visits in seven Indian states.These visits include numerous video-conversations, some short and others very long, with a diverse number of those who were involved with this entire process of participating in the emergence of a digital ecosystem of governance. These are interviews with people being enrolled into the Aadhaar programme, with district-level Panchayat and other officials, with numerous State government bureaucrats, with private enrollment representatives, representatives of various governmental services, with operators and other members of this digital workforce. Conversations are often long, spontaneous and deliberately unstructured: and the focus is mainly on a vérité style using amateur video.
Some key issues that we shortlisted for detailed inquiry were issues of migrants, both domestic and across international borders, homelessness in cities, and the financially excluded. Each of these areas was discussed in considerable detail at major public consultations held in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore, in partnership with the CSDS, the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, and the Urban Research and Policy Programme Initiative of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. All videos of all presentations made at these events are also available here.
CSCS also has an extensive text archives of material on the field as a whole, available on http://eprints.cscsarchives.org.

Clip Summary: Jitender Singh and other representatives of the IL&FS talk about the uses of the UID once the numbers are issued. They also speak about the number of districts they cover with details such as number of centres, number of booths in each centre. Procedures of enrolment, including managing crowds, and the routines of operators are discussed.

Interviewer: We come from Bangalore. We are doing some research on UID. Can you tell us what is happening over here ?
Operator: We are registering the people from the village for Aadhaar Card. We are capturing the finger prints, the iris scans, photos and collecting both the demographic and biometric data.

Interviewer: How many machines do you have in this location ?
Operator: Sir, there are four machines operating here.
Interviewer: Are they all working:
Operator: Yes, they are working.

Interviewer: How many enrolments did you have till today ?
Lady: Total, from the day we started ?
Interviewer: Only in this station
Lady: We have completed around 1400 Registrations under this panchyat.

Interviewer: In this panchayat. You have done 1,.400 with your four machines in this panahayat.
Operator: Yes.

Interviewer: How many registrations do you complete in a day ?
Lady: We complete around 250 to 300 registrations a day.

Interviewer: So you complete around 50 to 60 per machine.
Operator: We complete around 60 to 70 a day.

Interviewer: Where do you travel from daily ? Do you live somewhere here ?
Operator: No i come from a place 30KM away from here. I come in the morning and leave in the evening.

Interviewer: So you have a lot of work here since there is a big crowd of people here.
Lady: Yes sir, there is a very big crowd.

Interviewer: We have heard that in Himachal Pradesh the demand is less compared to the other states.
Operator 2: No Sir, it depends upon how the campaigning was done. In Una, in the starting the Government made the volunteers go door to door before starting the enrolment in Una. They were asked to inform every panchyat and every house about the Adhar enrollments and how they have to be done. Before we go somewhere , we inform them three or four days in advance. The sarpanch and the ward panch send people ward wise. The Security Guard informs the residents daily to come and register.

Interviewer: So you have a lot of support from the panchyat
Operator 2: Yes sir they have provided a lot of support hence we do not face any problems.

Interviewer:If there is a huge crowd, do you keep the center open till late hours?
Operator 2: We have to close it by 6:00 PM or sometimes at 7:00 as buseswe have organized have to leave at that time.

Interviewer: Are the people here generally literate or not ?
Operator 1: They are a mix of both.
Operator 2: The literacy rate is good in Himachal. Most of the people here are 10 +2 .

Interviewer: Who helps the illiterate people with there registrations?
Operator 1: We help them with their registration , the pradhan ji and the uppradhanji are also helping us with with the registration.

Interviewer: Do the anganvadi workers support you in the process ?
Operator 2: The people from the panchyat are working here. The time slot of an hour and half for the children so there look at there centers. but when we want to spread the information that time even they help us.

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