ACCESSING LEGAL IDENTITY DOCUMENTS: PROCESSES, CHALLENGES AND BEST PRACTICES

Chapter 5: Successes and Challenges: Rainbow’s experience Out of the randomly selected YAs across sample cities, some YAs whoever have institutional births possessed Birth Certificate from their places of origin before coming to the CCIs whereas some eligible YAs who could produce documents of blood relatives received Caste certificates. For some of the YAs in Kolkata, parents were helped by the team members of Loreto Rainbow Homes to access their own documents which helped in accessing few caste and domicile certificates of children under Loreto Rainbow Homes. Staff members accompanied girls to DWO, Kolkata Municipal Corporation for the required procedure and met councillors in certain occasions to get letters. In Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi, very few of the selected YAs received Income certificate, Caste certificate, Residence/ Domicile certificate either through parents or by the efforts of team members in Rainbow Homes. Few of the YAs in Hyderabad Rainbow Homes who did not have documental proof to access caste certificate were able to access orphan certificates. Common challenges observed in all sample cities were as under: o There is no single window system Perceptions of YAs on importance of identity across sample cities to access forms documents “Even for opening a bank account, Aadhaar card is for different identity documents. a must. We need birth and caste certificates at the Hence waiting in the long queue to time of joining School/College or to apply for some apply for different legal identity Government job/Entrance test or to apply for Govt. documents and repeated time visits to schemes/benefits.” – YAs in Bangalore “To avail loan for education, we must need Domicile the designated officials to get status of certificate but without Aadhaar, we cannot even certificates in cases of were common apply for that!!”- YAs in Delhi across cities in case of offline “Age proof is a mandatory document for college applications. On the contrary, in cases admission as well as a basic document to apply for of applications through online mode, all relevant legal identity such as caste certificate, nativity certificate”- YAs in Kolkata which were mainly through staff of “We are not able to apply for pre-matric or postRainbow Homes did not yield positive matric scholarships for not having caste certificates. result in most of the cases due to lack Few Schools do not allow YAs to sit in board of proper documental proof of examinations without Aadhaar card and Birth certificate even though date of births is written in children. school records.”- YAs in Hyderabad o Single parents especially in interior villages are not at all aware of importance of entitlement documents and do not know their own caste or hide their castes after migrating to the cities. Also due to illiteracy as well as lack of documental proof, they get exploited by the intermediary agents who demand arbitrary fees to access legal identity documents for their children.

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