Adding digital layers of indignity

Source: This post is created based on the article “Adding digital layers of indignity” published in The Hindu on 25^th July 2022.

Syllabus: GS Paper 2 – Social Issues – Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes

Context: The article provides many examples to prove that outsourcing humane aspects of governance to technologies lead to dehumanisation.

Right to live with dignity is a constitutional imperative. 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.

Author has provided one such example. Natho Ba, an MGNREGA worker wasn’t able to access his own MGNREGA wages because his biometrics wouldn’t work. Moreover, the bank manager also used dehumanised technocratic vocabulary “His fingers are defective”.

Thus, when trust and humane aspects of governance are outsourced to technologies, dehumanisation is the likely outcome.

Some examples of dehumanised nature of technocratic initiatives

1) Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)

An important component of ICDS is supplementary nutrition for children in the 0 to 6 years age group, pregnant women and lactating mothers.  In 2021, the Union government launched the Poshan Tracker, a centralised platform, to monitor all nutrition initiatives, including ICDS.

Updating of Aadhaar of ICDS rights-holders, including children, on the Poshan Tracker is mandatory. Subsequent Central funds for supplementary nutrition to States is dependent on this. However, as per government clarifications, only the Aadhaar of mothers need to be authenticated at Anganwadis.

Technocratic issues

Nearly three-fourths of children between the ages of 0 to 5 years do not have Aadhaar cards, and Supreme Court orders specify that children cannot be denied their rights for lack of Aadhaar.

This is the case despite Common Service Centres (CSC) owners reported that biometrics of 42% of the users don’t work on the first attempt.

36% of children under the age of five are stunted and nearly one-third of children in this age group are underweight. Thus, creating new hurdles for children in the name of digitisation will worsen this situation.

2) National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app

As per the order, the app will record “two time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs of the workers in a day”. It was intended to “increase citizen oversight of the programme besides potentially enabling processing of payments faster.”

Technocratic issues

1) Earlier, MGNREGA workers could complete their share of work and leave for household work or for other for supplementary income. However, now they have to now stay back at the worksite even after completing their work only to get photographed and geo-tagged.

2) Photo attendance is taken by Mates who are usually local women in charge of worksite supervision. Now, the mates need to own a phone, many of whom doesn’t have that. Many of them are forced to take loans to buy smartphones to use the app.

3) Now there are technical issues. Workers are losing money when they are unable to upload their attendance due to technical glitches. Network connectivity is another issue.

4) The sense of being constantly watched induces fear among people. Gradually, it forms a habit among the subjects of internalising and accepting this form of coercion.

Social audits need strengthening instead of technocratic solutions of transparency. Democratic dictum suggests that people should be able to ‘see’ the state clearly, not the other way around. It is the dignity and trust of people at stake otherwise.