Aadhar card: A digital revolution or an Environmental nightmare

Aadhar Card: So, this morning, I was in the process of opening a bank account. The great thing about India is the bank associates come to your home and collect all the documents. Having a printer/scanner/copier comes in very handy as you can just get a copy and give it to the associate. While opening an account, the banks still want a copy of PAN Card. I wonder then why they made more than a billion people get an Aadhar card. One BILLION Aadhar Card. While thinking deep, I realized that what an environmental hazard an Aadhar Card is. When you apply for aadhar card, they give you a printed receipt. That is one sheet of paper. One billion paper right of the back wasted (I say wasted because there is already a PAN Card in place and I believe we don’t need to have an Aadhar card as everyone still asks for PAN Card anyway for any transaction).

After few weeks, you get your Aadhar card in mail. What do we do right after we get such an “IMPORTANT” card? We make a photo copy, just in case we loose it. So, there another billion sheets of paper. That makes it 2 BILLION sheets of paper. (Government of India is campaigning on Digital India to reduce paper, what a joke). Now, if you want to to open an account, or get an LPG connection or your child’s admission or apply for a driver’s license etc…, they ask you to submit a copy of your Aadhar card. If everyone just went for one of these items, they will make another copy of it. That makes another billion sheets of paper. Three billion sheets of paper.

A typical tree, 45-ft tall and 8-inch in diameter, can produce about 10000 sheets of paper. If you do the math 300000 trees are wasted for this meaningless/mindless card. (3 billion sheets of paper/10000 sheets per tree = 300000 trees). Isn’t that outrageous. With country that is rapidly investing in infrastructure, and hence deforesting in the process, this is a huge number. Having said that, I believe Aadhar card is an environmental nightmare.