CHAINS OF PAPER: HOW FREE ARE WE IN THIS AGE OF DOCUMENTS?

CHAINS OF PAPER: HOW FREE ARE WE IN THIS AGE OF DOCUMENTS?

15-JULY-ENG 10

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

ARA---------------------------Once a person was identified by his words, his face, and his village, his family, his dialect. But today? Today, if you do not have an Aadhaar card, then you do not exist for any system! You have a name, but no documents? Then sorry, you are invisible. In Bihar, the situation has become so bizarre that the Election Commission itself refuses to accept the voter card issued by it as an identity card – and the limit is crossed when the Aadhaar card, which the Government of India had declared as a universal proof of identity, is also rejected! That is, the government which issued the documents, the same government is now bent on declaring them illegal. This is not only a terrible bureaucratic irony, but also a direct attack on the dignity of the citizen – now being a citizen has also become a state of doubt, unless you prove yourself ten times!

Think, there was a time when people used to go on pilgrimage on foot, without asking any officer. People used to do business, build houses, till fields – without any paper formalities. Relationships were based on trust, lands were based on verbal agreements, and identity? That was done through the eyes.

Then came papers. And gradually they took the whole life under their seal. Today, if a child wants admission in school, then a birth certificate is required. If you want to go to college, then other certificates are required. If you want a job, then a character certificate is required. If you fall ill, then everything from income certificate to insurance documents is required. Even after death – a death certificate is required.

These documents connected a person to the system, but at the same time they also made him a slave of the system. Now the truth is only what is written in the document, even if life says something else. Someone may have land, but if he does not have Khasra-Khatiyan, then that land is not his. If someone's name is left out in the voter list, then his relationship with democracy is also broken.

Look at the biggest paradox – now we have to prove ourselves for identity. Earlier, an elderly person would say, yes, this is a boy from our village, and that would be enough to identify him. Now, due to the failure of the system, the same boy is unable to cast his vote, withdraw money from the bank, or get treatment in the hospital.

This entire process of making documents is a puzzle in itself. For one certificate, another is needed, for the second, a third is needed, and for the third, the first. This is a roundabout affair in which the common citizen is entangled – form in hand, photo in pocket, and dizziness in the eyes.

In this shine of modernity, we have perhaps lost that simple life, where a man's words were his documents. Now documents have become man's words. We are living in such a world, where from birth to death, and sometimes even after death, we have no existence without documents.

I wish someday a revolution comes, which says – man comes first, papers come later. That day perhaps we will again be called truly free.