95% of adults and 75% of children have Aadhaar: Report

Dalberg, a leading social impact advisory group released the State of Aadhaar: A People’s Perspective report (the study has been funded by Omidyar network), showing insights that can help drive a data-driven discourse on Aadhaar.

Key highlights of the Aadhaar report:

Aadhaar is becoming ubiquitous in India.
95% of adults and 75% of children have Aadhaar.

A notable minority still does not have Aadhaar.
An estimated 28 million adults do not have Aadhaar, mostly in Assam and Meghalaya where enrolment has been slow due to questions about legal residency amongst others.

Updating is the hardest part of the Aadhaar process.

• 3% of people who tried to update found the process difficult;  one in five did not succeed
• 4% of people currently have errors in the information on their Aadhaar card
• 15% of people have an error in their linked mobile phone number;
  an additional 39% have not linked a number at all

Aadhaar has supported inclusion.
49% of people used Aadhaar to access one or more services like food rations, bank accounts, and social pensions for the first time. For 8% of people, Aadhaar was their first ever ID.

Problems with Aadhaar sometimes led to denial of welfare services.
0.8% of people experienced exclusion due to Aadhaar-related reasons from a key welfare service (PDS rations, MGNREGS, social pensions) that they had earlier received (versus 3.3% due to non-Aadhaar factors).

Aadhaar has improved service delivery.
80% feel that Aadhaar has made PDS rations, MGNREGS, or social pensions more reliable. Using Aadhaar, residents were 40% more likely to obtain a new SIM card within one day, compared to using other forms of ID.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling, many people find that Aadhaar is de facto
mandatory for bank accounts, SIM cards, and school enrolment
More than half of all people who produced Aadhaar to get a SIM card or bank account, said their provider accepted only Aadhaar, even after the Supreme Court ruling