IDHAR UDHAR KI BAAT 52 (SPARSH)

    There is an old joke. A lovey dovey couple was traveling in Punjab Roadways Bus. Public display of affection was a big taboo those days. So as per plan the girl said, “I have a headache.” The boy said let me treat you and he leaned to kiss her on the forehead. She said, “I am fine.” So every five minutes the girl would come with a pain in some part of her body and the boy would make it vanish. At a point a man sitting in the rear seat taps the shoulder of the boy and asks, “Kaka tere kol bawasir da vi ilaj hai? (Son, can you treat piles also)

    I don’t know why but every time I attempt doing something with SPARSH I am reminded of this old joke. Though the only and far off similarity I can see is that the Hindi meaning of SPARSH is touch. Or maybe in the back of my mind somewhere I feel that SPARSH was a treatment to the non-existent piles in the erstwhile system of pension disbursement.

    I was among the first batch to move on to SPARSH in Sep 2021. Though it took me three days to feed my data on the platform with a lot of difficulties, I was very hopeful and optimistic about the system. In fact, I advocated the advantages of the system to some old veterans (including my father-in-law) to the point of their annoyance.

    Maybe I didn’t take into consideration that a large number of them do not own a laptop. With their shaky hands on mobile, they are not able to type the correct password even if they have noted it down somewhere. Worst is the Capcha which tend to confuse several old people. An ‘O’ can be input as zero and an ‘I’ looks like ‘L’ in small case. People with not so good eyesight due to the smudging cannot distinguish between a 5 and an ‘S’ or they may take ‘n’ to be ‘r’ and vice versa. And then the computer gives a warning that you are moving on to an unsecure site. It takes a bit of courage to click ‘continue on HTTP site’.

    The most frustrating experience is when after doing everything right they put up the notification that the site is down for maintenance. After all the same can be done in the beginning when you start the process of login. And sometimes without any reason the platform shifts you back on to the login page. I feel the architects of the platform failed to assess the magnitude of data required to be handled. Or people have cut corners to make the system tardy.

    Low on their confidence in handling the login, veterans  prefer to take the services of some professionals who charge them a hundred rupees. I wonder if the move to bring in SPARSH was to save money given to banks. The aim is achieved, as the burden has been taken off the head of the Govt and passed on to the veteran. Of course, it needs to be checked what the amount of savings is. If they have added on the expenditure on increasing the establishment I will doubt their prudence.

    The problem is that all those senior veterans whom I annoyed with my optimism, make it a point to tell me about the non updation of personal details, non-receipt of ePPO, non-receipt of second installment of OROP, non-resumption of full pension after the commutation period. When I ask them to approach the liaison officer, they ask me as to what is the advantage of automation.

    My worst fear is going to my father-in-law who immediately after I have my tea asks me, “Have you brought your laptop?”

    I get onto the exercise of logging into his SPARSH account. After forty minutes of hard work, I can tell him that the issue raised by him in the last message has been resolved. But when I see the details, the errors remain. His address is of Jalandhar but his state is shown as Nagaland and erroneous date of enrolment remains. He grumbles, “Maa****an nen gandh paya hai (mother*****s have spoiled the whole thing)”.

    I don’t know who he is directing his expletives to. He doesn’t know that people from Directorate of Ex Servicemen Welfare DESW, PCDA (P), L1 Vendor are responsible for managing the system. It cannot be towards the Govt as he is a big fan of Modi. So that leaves me who extolled the virtues of the scheme.

    As I tell him that his Form 16 has not been uploaded, he mumbles something angrily.  I try to guess and I feel he has said, “What an idiot I have married my daughter to.”

Note :- Stakeholders you are requested to improve the system for my sake.