Last month, during an auspicious moment , I discovered that my annuity payment ( as part of my first company's superannuation scheme) is due on 1st July . I had opted for ECS payment of annuity , but never bothered to check whether it got credited to my account every year. But this time, I wanted to check it without fail. As the amount was not credited till 3 PM , I called up the Insurance company to know the status of it. After making some 10 calls and speaking to 5 different people, one person was kind enough to give me the mobile number of the person who takes care of annuity. A second attempt to that mobile number got me connected to the right person.
"Sir, I am Sindhu Marath . I have a query regarding my annuity"
"Who gave you my mobile number ? "
It was a moment of truth. The person who gave me the mobile number was kind to me , but not to his colleague :-)
"Sir, I got it from your colleague. My annuity , which is due today, is not yet credited to my account. "
"If it is due today, you need to wait till evening or tomorrow. "
"Fine Sir. But I am not sure whether it got credited to my account in previous years. Could you please check and confirm ? "
A bit reluctantly, he checked the status and revealed that shocking truth to me !
Annuity is not being paid to me since 2009.
"But Sir, is there any reason for non-payment "
"Madam, you have not provided us the certificate of your existence without which we can't pay annuity"
Another moment of truth !!!
As part of the company's process, every 5 years ( in some cases it is every year), the annuitant is expected to provide a certificate of existence. Null hypothesis is that after the specified period, the annuitant is non-existent unless proven otherwise.
"Sir, I did not know about such a requirement. What needs to be done to provide the certificate of existence ? "
"You need to download the form from our website, fill it , get it attested and send to us "
Call got disconnected.
Now, I need to personally appear before a Gazetted Officer to prove my existence. There is no database which shows I am alive. Or even if it is there in some form, it is not accepted as is . The amount of time and effort needed to prove and verify my existence is not small and so is the case with all other annuitants.
I dream of a digital India which can provide proof for my existence .
I dream of a digital India where in the click of a button gives the proof of my (our) identity, age, qualification ,address, income status and all other relevant information.
Hope that initiatives like Aadhar would help in creating and maintaining a central system and database with all the relevant details of the citizens and which is accessible to all public and private organizations with appropriate access ,privacy and security controls.
The systems and processes of both private and public organizations need to undergo necessary changes to access and accept this central data for their transactions.
Instant access to data could lead to instant approval of new mobile connections, loans , insurance policies, continued annuity payment and so on.
It also results in substantial effort savings for the organizations which could be used for much more productive work.
Imagine , if one could update a change in address in just one central system and synchronize it with all the relevant accounts, policies and other records one holds , in no time and with no hassles !
The benefits are multi-fold - from faster approvals to faster realization of our dreams.
Hope that our digital highways would take us to new levels of unity, transparency, equality and efficiency .
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