Adding Digital Layers of Outrage

The right to live with dignity is a constitutional imperative. However, it rarely appears in the discussions surrounding digital initiatives in governance. Centralized data dashboards – valuable as they are – have become the go-to mode for assessing policies, principles such as the difficulties in accessing rights to human dignity and its blind spots. Often when technical flaws prevent someone from accessing rights, there is a tendency to make the rights-holder feel responsible. For example, I remember living in Rajasthan with Natho Ba, an old MGNREGA worker who had a severe speech impediment. Despite repeated attempts at the bank to get his e-KYC, he was not able to access his MGNREGA wages as his biometrics would not work. The bank manager said in Hindi, “He has bad fingers”. Nathoba felt humiliated, but was physically unable to voice his humiliation. The bank official was not intentionally insensitive, but had internalized dehumanizing technical terminology. Dehumanization is the potential result when the trust and humanitarian aspects of governance are outsourced to opaque technologies.

two technical initiatives

Two recent technological initiatives by the central government underscore these issues again. The Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), launched in 1975, is one of the largest early childhood care and development programs in the world. An important component of ICDS is supplemental nutrition for children aged 0 to 6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers. It became a legal right when it became part of the National Food Security Act in 2013. According to this, rights-holders get hot cooked food at the local anganwadi or take home ration. In 2021, the central government launched nutrition trackerA centralized platform for monitoring all nutrition initiatives including ICDS. a Recent article on Tapasya Reporters Collective Some of the dangerous technical proposals for ICDS were highlighted. As per central government circulars, it is mandatory to update the Aadhaar of ICDS entitlement-holders, including children, on the nutrition tracker, and subsequent central funds for supplementary nutrition to the states are being made contingent on this. Nearly three-fourths of children in the age group of 0 to 5 years do not have an Aadhaar card, and the Supreme Court order states that children cannot be denied their rights due to lack of Aadhaar. The government has replied that only mothers in Anganwadis need to authenticate their Aadhaar. However, it provides no data or evidence to show how many “fake” or “ghost” children there are. In our study of Common Service Center (CSC), CSC owners also reported that 42% of users’ biometrics do not work on the first attempt. This has been shown in other studies as well.

According to the recent National Family Health Survey, 36 percent of children under the age of five are stunted and nearly a third of children in this age group are underweight. These are the numbers before the pandemic and it would have been worse after the pandemic. As such, creating new barriers for children – migrants or otherwise – and young mothers to access food in the name of digitization appears cruel. It is also not clear how such a move will affect the psyche of a child whose mother’s Aadhaar authentication fails. For example, a pensioner whose biometrics repeatedly failed had the poignant remark, “I feel humiliated that my own body is denying my identity.” Dealing with serious structural issues with technological improvements is like putting a band-aid on a person having a heart attack.

The Central Government has issued an order to launch the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS). App to record attendance of MGNREGA workers at workplaces. According to the order, the app will record “two time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs of workers in a day”, which “enhances citizen monitoring of the program and potentially enable the process of payments to be accelerated”. ” In workplaces with 20 or more workers, the app will replace physical attendance registers. A recent article by Chakradhara Buddha and Lavanya Tamang Hindu And a letter to the government by the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee explains the dangers of such a move. Here is a brief summary. MGNREGA workers can take leave after completing their share of work. This gave them time to do household chores or other work that would provide them supplemental income. The app makes this difficult as they now have to stay back at work even after completing their work just to be photographed and geo-tagged. Even from a tough economic standpoint, the move stifles the contribution of workers to GDP. Attendance at workplaces is taken by mates who are usually the local women in charge of workplace supervision. Now, mates have to carry smartphones, which many don’t have. Another ground report by Vijayta Lalwani reveals that many companions are forced to take loans to buy smartphones to use the app. It also shows how an employee has lost over ₹1,100 of his salary as the app failed to upload his attendance. It has also been a curse for many officers. A district MGNREGA official told me how he has been getting constant calls since 6 am about the glitches in the NMMS app. Hence, the basis of the government’s claim that such an app would help “increased surveillance of citizens” and faster payments is misleading. There is no doubt that the cases of corruption in MGNREGA need to be addressed. But for this, instead of struggling more for the already burdened women, social audit needs to be strengthened.

Both these technological initiatives point to the digital embodiment of Panopticon, with no clear positives for rights-holders. The feeling of being constantly watched creates fear in people. This normalizes and exacerbates the power disparity between rights-holders and the government as rights-holders begin to accept and accept this type of coercion. In addition, rights-holders will be made to take the blame for technical reasons that block their participation. This further alienates and erodes the political capabilities of rights-holders, who are usually addressed in patronizing terms such as “beneficiaries”. In the process, the breach of dignity gets buried in the calculus of the technical machinery and the ambiguity of government actions.

‘Watch’ the actions of the government

One thing that regularly bothers me during my frequent trips to parts of rural India is the absence of people wearing glasses. Let alone the panchayats, opticians are rarely seen in most of the block headquarters. We have made great technological progress in the country, but have paid little attention to ensure that the poor get a clear view. It also extends to a metaphorical level. While the Indian state has put so much weight behind ‘watching’ its people, the majority are unable to observe and scrutinize government functions. Democratic dictatorships suggest that the people should be able to ‘see’ the state clearly, and not vice versa. It is the dignity and trust of those otherwise at stake.

Rajendran Narayanan is a faculty member at Azim Premji University, Bangalore and is associated with Libtech India