The Aadhaar enrollment camp at the Nagpur Regional Mental Hospital. Express Sometime in 2010, the Vidarbha Police found a 13-year-old girl by the roadside. Severely undernourished, the girl was diagnosed with mental developmental disorder and later admitted to Nagpur Regional Mental Hospital, which was to be home ever since. Under the column for ‘name’ in the official records, the hospital staff wrote: ‘Unknown’. She stayed that way for 11 years until last year, she got a name — ‘Chakuli’.
Chakuli, now 25, is among 239 mental health patients who have been given new names since 2021, when the Nagpur hospital decided to start enrolling their patients for Aadhaar. After living for years as ‘unknown’, the 109 men and 130 women patients now have identities of their own — Aboli, Soni, Anand, Gauri.
Anagha Raje, social service superintendent, Nagpur mental hospital, says Chakuli has taken to her new name. “When people look at her, they only notice her disabilities but she has a child-like innocence and a smile that can melt hearts. So we decided to name her ‘Chakuli’. In Marathi, the name translates to ‘cute baby girl’. Now every time she hears her name, she turns around and smiles,” said Raje.
She said the hospital staff did a fair amount of brainstorming before arriving at the names. “Each of them has a unique personality — features that give out positive vibes. We have been trying to identify those traits to arrive at names,” said Raje.
So there’s ‘Hashmukh’, a 41-year-old man with schizophrenia who smiles a lot; ‘Rajesh Khanna’, who mimics the late Bollywood actor. Then there’s ‘Mummy’. “She would keep calling out for ‘mummy’ and wouldn’t respond to any other name. So we started calling her that. Her Aadhaar application has been completed and we are waiting for her to get the card,” said Raje.
Some of the patients were also given a set of names to choose from. “We would call them by three to four names and keep the one they react to the best,” said Dr Purushottam Madavi, medical superintendent of the hospital.
As The Indian Express reported on February 1, between January 2016 and September 2021, 5,877 patients with mental ailments who had been abandoned by their relatives were admitted to the four regional mental hospitals in Maharashtra — Pune, Thane, Ratnagiri and Nagpur. Nagpur, with 3,829 patients, accounts for nearly 60 per cent of the patients, followed by Ratnagiri (1,674), Pune (361) and Thane (13).
“We get around 1,400 admissions annually, of which a third are usually abandoned patients — abandoned by their families or separated from them,” said Dr Praveen Navkhare, a senior psychiatrist at the hospital.
Owing to the logistical challenges involved in ferrying the patients to the Aadhaar enrollment center, officials of the UIDAI visited the hospital to enroll the patients. “Each enrollment usually takes about five minutes. But in the case of mental health patients, it takes over 20 minutes each. Our staff have to support them,” said Dr Madavi.
Raje said an Aadhaar card would help patients claim several government benefits. “Patients who recover are usually rehabilitated elsewhere. In such situations, an Aadhaar card will help them get benefits such as health insurance schemes. Also, we will help them get ration cards in their names,” she said.
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