A voluntary mandate: On the APAAR student ID

The introduction of an Automated Permanent Academic Account Registry ID by the Ministry of Education, to digitise the academic transcripts of every student, aims to ensure a “single source of truth” for all their records throughout their life in the academic ecosystem in India. Linked with Aadhaar, APAAR is far from the first such step towards a rapid digitisation of school records in India: since the implementation of the National Education Policy, 2020, education authorities have pushed the Unified District Information System for Education Plus and the Student Database Management Information System. In their fervour to attain this target, schools have warned parents of consequences in the event of non-enrolment, and State education authorities have rattled their sabres at religious minority institutions and even at fellow administrators, alleging a mismatch of enrolment data between APAAR and existing records. In the initial days of what has now been rechristened as Digital Public Infrastructure, the government had similarly been all too keen to propagate Aadhaar and services such as Digi Yatra to an unsuspecting public, achieving such broad coverage that a formal mandate later becomes a fait accompli.