Citizens or Beneficiaries? | Report Card Series | Ep09

It is common for politicians across the board to refer to rights and entitlement holders as ‘beneficiaries’ instead of calling them ‘rights-holders’ or citizens. Such a term makes the government appear to be like a feudal lord doling out charity to people instead of an elected body meant to honor rights of people. The Narendra Modi led NDA government has taken this a few notches higher and has derogatorily referred to many rights as ‘freebies’ and has either diluted social security measures or has made inflated claims about its welfare programmes. The union government’s contribution to old age pensions, for instance, has been stagnant at Rs 200 per person per month for a decade. In this video, we demonstrate the exaggerated claims made by Narendra Modi regarding its flagship programmes of Swacch Bharat Abhiyan and Digital India. We show how alive people have been declared dead and denied pensions by the use of untested technologies. We then show the number of civilian deaths that have happened due to unplanned policies implemented by Narendra Modi without any consultation even with state governments. Taking cognisance of such autocratic and even cruel decisions by Narendra Modi, we end with a call that India needs a ‘serving’ Prime Minister and not a ‘ruling’ Prime Minister. Directed by: Rajendran Narayanan Inputs on Digital India from Laavanya Tamang Links • Multiple Indicator survey on open defecation in India: By Vignesh Radhakrishnan https://www.thehindu.com/data/data-another-government-survey-debunks-swachh-bharats-100-odf-claim-count-increases-to-four/article66618468.ece • Condition of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyan in UP : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUjIP3saRMA • Boy’s mother threatened by officials for exposing condition of toilets in schools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7No-ZCb35mw • Graph on the stagnant allocations for pensions was presented at a press conference in Ranchi on April 20, 2024 by the economists Jean Drèzeand Reetika Khera. The slides of the presentation with the graph used in this video can be found here: https://twitter.com/roadscholarz/status/1781884255452242116 • The Reporters’ Collective report on an algorithm deciding that an alive person is declared dead: By Kumar Sambhav, Tapasya & Divij Joshi https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/1/25/in-india-an-algorithm-declares-them-dead-they-have-to-prove-theyre • “I am alive” https://www.ndtv.com/cities/haryana-man-102-presumed-dead-protests-after-government-stops-pension-3327116 • Denial of rations due to fingerprints using Aadhaar: By HardWork, No Pay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS2MShPqmpo • Starvation deaths and deaths due to Aadhaar documented by the Right to Food Campaign: By Aarefa Johari https://scroll.in/article/895667/a-year-after-jharkhand-girl-died-of-starvation-aadhaar-tragedies-are-on-the-rise • The Aadhaar Linked Game, can you survive by EPW: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/aadhaar-linked-game-can-you-survive-maze-reach-food-ration • Aadhaar cannot stop quantity fraud and how Aadhaar authentication is helping dealers siphon off food rations: By Siraj Dutta https://scroll.in/article/1027232/the-inefficiency-of-aadhaar-authentication-and-others-lessons-from-the-mess-in-the-jharkhand-pds • Aadhaar made compulsory: By Sakina Dhorajiwala and Niklas Wagner https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/governance/consent-to-nothing-aadhaar-based-payment-systems-in-welfare.html • Paper by JPAL: By Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhantar https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26744/w26744.pdf • Almost 90% of ration cards got deleted: By scroll staff https://scroll.in/latest/953768/jharkhand-almost-90-of-deleted-ration-cards-belonged-to-real-households-finds-study • Death of a 11 year old: Reported by Manish Kumar & Edited by Deepshikha Ghosh https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/no-aadhaar-no-food-11-year-old-girl-died-begging-for-rice-says-jharkhand-family-1763863 • Inflated savings claims due to Aadhaar: By Anjor Bhaskar, Arpita Sarkar and Preeti Singh https://www.epw.in/journal/2024/1/special-articles/link-or-not-link.html • Aadhaar scams: By Divya Aslesha and Zafar Aafaq https://scroll.in/article/1059347/stolen-fingerprints-empty-bank-accounts-how-customers-are-paying-for-gaps-in-aadhaar • CAG report on UIDAI https://cag.gov.in/uploads/PressRelease/PR-UIDAI-report-no-24-of-2021-in-English-0624d89a0e200e2-55589718.pdf • Death by hasty policy: By Anjor Bhaskar and Rajendran Narayanan https://scroll.in/article/1048364/lockdown-demonetisation-to-caa-farm-laws-how-hasty-policies-have-killed-indians