For over 50 years government in India has been collecting data on its citizens.

For over 50 years government in India has been collecting data on its citizens. This data is available in the form of driving licenses, ration cards, voter lists. Unfortunately, no effort has ever been made to clean up this data. Which is why there used to be so much leakage in social welfare activities in India. So much so that at one stage, Rajiv Gandhi who was then prime minister, even remarked that only 15 paise out of every rupee ever got to the beneficiary. This meant that there was an 85% loss in every scheme according to the government. Narendra Modi, after becoming prime minister, made a concerted effort to link every beneficiary with AADHAR numbers. This resulted in a saving of over Rs. 5 lakh crores, money which was being paid to non-existing beneficiaries. The AADHAR card was merely to establish the identity of the holder. But it was necessary that benefits be given only to genuine cases. This meant physically verifying every individual. The matter came to a head while cleaning up the electoral rolls. The cleaning up process was called SIR, which stands for Special Intensive Revision. In states like West Bengal it turned out that over a million people registered as voters in West Bengal were not even Indians. They had recently entered India from neighbouring Bangladesh. Once the benefits of SIR became evident, other governments have begun to use SIR verification to ensure that only genuine cases get the benefit of government welfare schemes. Karnataka, ruled by the Congress, is the latest government to link SIR verification to access to government social welfare schemes.