[Answered] Automation of humane aspects of governance can lead to Dehumanisation of governance. Examine.

Right to live with dignity is a constitutional necessity. Digital initiatives in governance like centralised data dashboards have become the go-to mode for assessing policies. It has lowered the value of principles such as human dignity and hardships in accessing rights. Often when technological glitches prevent one from accessing rights, there is a tendency to make the rights-holder feel responsible for it. Dehumanisation is the likely outcome when trust and humane aspects of governance get outsourced to opaque technologies.

Dehumanised nature of technocratic initiatives:

Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS): Updation of Aadhaar of ICDS rights-holders, including children, on the Poshan Tracker (centralised platform, was made mandatory to monitor all nutrition initiatives. For supplementary nutrition, subsequent Central funds to States also are dependent on this.

• Nearly three-fourths of children between the ages of 0 to 5 years do not have Aadhaar cards.
• A study of Common Service Centres (CSC), reported that biometrics of 42% of the users don’t work on the first attempt.
• As per the National Family Health Survey, 36% of children under the age of five are stunted and nearly one-third of children in this age group are underweight.
• These are pre-pandemic numbers and this would have worsened since the pandemic. It creates new hurdles to access food in the name of digitisation.
• Moreover, the rights-holders will be made to take the blame for technical reasons blocking their participation.

2. National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app: The app records the real-time, photographed, geo-tagged attendance of NREGA worker, once in each half of the day. It was intended to “increase citizen oversight of the programme besides potentially enabling processing of payments faster.

• Generally, NREGA workers do not need to commit to fixed hours. However, marking attendance on the app mandates that workers are at the worksite the entire day.
• Photo attendance is taken by Mateswho are usually local women in charge of worksite supervision. Now, the mates need to own a phone. Many of them are forced to take loans to buy smartphones to use the app.
• Workers either needs to be present at the worksite all day or travel twice to mark their attendance.
• A stable network is a must for real-time monitoring; unfortunately, it remains irregular in much of rural India. This could lead to workers not being able to mark their attendance, and consequently lose a day of wages.

Way forward:

• Social audits should be strengthened instead of technocratic solutions of transparency.
• Digital illiteracy should be removed as it prevents effective e-governance and service delivery of government schemes to beneficiaries.