Around 9 pm on a Friday night, near a crowded intersection in Lucknow, the Parivartan Chowk, a 40-year-old rickshaw puller, Himachal, originally from a village in the Rae Bareli district and homeless in Lucknow, gears up to spend yet another bitterly cold night on the streets. A privately run night shelter just a few steps away won't allow him in as he doesn't have an Aadhaar card. "I had an Aadhaar card at home, but rats chewed it up. I don't know if I can get another one made. I don't have any other id proof. If we go to a night shelter, private or government, they demand to see our Aadhaar and if we don't have, we are turned away, leaving us with no choice but to sleep on the pavement," Himachal said.
