For those unfamiliar, Aadhaar is a universal identity card (or not). It is a biometric-based 12-digit unique number, more or less covers the entire Indian population.
Aadhaar translates to foundation or root. The Aadhaar number is essential for maintaining access to a bank account or a Demat account, mobile connection, and more. The number follows you like a shadow till death. Heck, the number won’t even leave you after death. You would need it at cremation center, then for the death certificate and for transferring your estate as well.
The Process
Applying it for adults seems not so simple. But applying an Aadhaar for a newborn is very simple and straightforward.
When your pregnancy is confirmed you should register with Primary Health Center, by sharing the parents’ Aadhaar. This will result in reference number.
During childbirth the reference number and the newborn’s details are forwarded to the local birth and death registration office.
The parents should obtain the birth certificate (BC) after verifying the details. This BC will be used to apply for new Aadhaar number.
While applying for the new number, parents details are cross verified with the Aadhaar mentioned during the childbirth. If all goes well, you’ll get a new Aadhaar number for your kid.
Theoretically, theory works in practice, but in practice it almost never does - Peter Thiel
The process is solid. It has the double entry, from parents & hospital, and point to verify the details. It is very well designed to avoid bad/wrong details.
The weakest link in a chain is responsible for the chain to break. Every chain has a weakest link. And in most process human is the weakest link.
Running from pillar to post
At Aadhaar Center
All was going good. I got my kid’s birth certificate. While enrolling into school I applied for new Aadhaar card. It was rejected at step 4.
Error: Father's aadhaar is invalid
Problem: In my kid’s birth certificate, my Aadhaar number is having 11 digit instead of 12.
I was advised to check the birth certificate issuing office. Promptly, I went to the step 2. Redirection 1.
At Birth & Death Registrar
After listening to the whole story the guy in-charge of birth & death certificate states he never faced such a problem until now. He asked for photocopy of the relevant originals. A letter detailing the issue. The guy was confident the issue can be fixed by him and a weeks time will be sufficient for him.
One week later…
The in-charge with a frowning face said this is not in his power to change the Aadhaar numbers but asked me to check with hospital.Thus we came to the Redirection 2.
At the Hospital
Why I went to hospital?
According the Birth & Death Registrar office, the parent’s Aadhaar details came from the hospital. So, if could be happened at their hand, and to check whether it is the case or how to fix.
After listening to the story, the in-charge who adds the details into the system promised me to get a solution after consulting his peers at the corporation office. Corporation office is the convergence of the city’s data. The assumption is someone might have gone through this scenario and found a solution. ETA was 4 days.
After 5 days…
The guy said this is peculiar case. He can’t help me out. Instead I can get some help from the corporation office. This is the time for the Redirection 3.
At the Corporation office
The ordeal quickly ended here, for a change no more redirection!
The incharge simply said she can’t help as the Aadhaar details of 2021 is available as of now. I need to wait few more years just to fix. And whether she can fix the issue then is questionable as this was never done before.
As I said there is no redirection now, that’s not a good news. She doesn’t know who can make the amends. My hope dwindled and it is at its lowest level.
The Collectorate Office
At my Father-in-law’s insistence we went to the Collectorate. Here, the daily camp for Aadhaar enrollment takes place. I went with half hope. Wondering where I will be redirected next. But to my surprise, the issue was fixed. The person simply updated the details. And just like that 6 months of agony was resolved with a 3 hours of waiting.
Manual Entries - the Root Cause
I previously mentioned that an error is the start of this whole sob story. But what went wrong? Strange it may sound, the birt certificate’s backed was missing one of the digit in the aadhaar.
Actual aadhaar number: 1234 5678 9012 Birth Cert’s number : 1234 5679 012
How could this possibly happen? Manual update might be the probable cause.
But even then shouldn’t the system has a validation step to catch an entry with a digit short?
Or, similar to how the person in Collectorate office overwritten the entry, the system warning might well be overridden by the manual entry?
So, if the manual entry is the problem who could have made it?
a. the nurse in PHC who collected parent’s aadhaar during the preganancy
b. the person in-charge for digitizing details in the hospital after the childbirth
We never get to know?
Lack of data validation
This is the ideal situation to show how much the data validation and ensuring data quality is important in a data project.
We never know how many more such cases roaming around in the wild. The problem here is not only the lack of data validation but transparency too.
Teh typical birth certificate has a box as parent aadhaar number. But the number never gets filled. By default its left blank. If by chance it was filled we could have catch hold of it at the earlier stages.
Learnings
The issue is resolved now. But not sure what is the entry point of the bad data.
In the society, no one will own up their mistake. Either they don’t have a mechanism (like logs) to trace back the origin or too confident about their ability.
- I’m not blaming others, I could have missed the digit while filling the paper forms.
- As long as human is involved the bugs will get injected in one way or another. The process should be robust enough to handle the bugs.
- To build a better process the past mistakes should be collated and considered while upgrade. I’m not sure where and how the government bodies do these. Are they even aware of this? Don’t know.
Data validation is key for the Data Engineering work (Should be applied to my projects).
Data transparency and ability to apply corrections too is a necessary to have feedback loop to avoid grievances.
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Page last updated on: 2025-12-15 23:24:15 +0530 +0530Git commit: 2c11165