Source: The post Reimagining India’s Digital Welfare through Democratic Lens has been created, based on the article “The technocratic calculus of India’s welfare state” published in “The Hindu” on 6th August 2025. Reimagining India’s Digital Welfare through Democratic Lens.
UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper 2- Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes
Context: India’s welfare model is becoming increasingly technocratic, driven by Aadhaar-based schemes and data algorithms. While promising efficiency and scale, this shift raises critical concerns about the erosion of democratic deliberation, rights-based entitlements, and political accountability. The article explores whether this model supports true welfare or risks excluding those it aims to serve.
Technocratic Transformation of Welfare
- Shift from Rights to Efficiency: India’s welfare approach now prioritises efficiency over entitlements. With 1,206 DBT-linked schemes and Aadhaar enrolment crossing a billion, focus has shifted from “who needs support” to “how to reduce leakage,” ignoring the complexity of welfare as a constitutional right.
- Emergence of Data-Driven Rationality: Welfare policies now embody measurable, streamlined rationality. Influenced by Habermas’s technocratic consciousness and Foucault’s governmentality, schemes like E-SHRAM and PM-KISAN avoid ambiguity and operate with a one-way, audit-driven logic.
- Decline of Deliberative Practices: Democratic debate and community input are fading. Welfare no longer acts as a forum for participatory planning. The rights-bearing citizen is now reduced to a passive, auditable beneficiary, echoing Agamben’s homo sacer — stripped of political voice.
Diminishing Political Accountability
- Fiscal Austerity and Shrinking Welfare: Social sector spending has declined to a decade-low 17% in 2024–25, compared to the previous decade’s 21% average. Key sectors like minority welfare, labour, and nutrition dropped from 11% (pre-COVID) to 3% (post-COVID), contradicting claims of a socialistic state.
- Crisis in the RTI Regime: The Right to Information Act is weakening. As of June 2024, over 4 lakh appeals were pending across 29 Information Commissions, and eight CIC positions remained vacant—reflecting administrative apathy and eroding transparency.
- Centralised Grievance Systems and Algorithmic Insulation: The Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System resolved lakhs of complaints (2022–24). However, it centralises visibility while weakening responsibility. The federal structure is reduced to a flat ticketing mechanism, evading deeper political accountability.
Philosophical and Judicial Warnings
- Rancière’s Democratic Lens: Democracy depends on making suffering visible and contestable, not just computable. The current model neglects the voices of the marginalised and reduces welfare to technical administration.
- Justice Chandrachud’s Aadhaar Dissent: In his 2018 dissent, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud cautioned against depersonalising citizens into machinic data. He warned that decontextualised identity systems can exclude care, context, and constitutional protections.
Reimagining Democratic Welfare
- Democratic Antifragility and Federal Design: Governance must be redesigned to withstand stress, drawing on Taleb’s concept of antifragility. States should build context-specific, pluralistic welfare models that reinforce both federalism and democracy.
- Community-Driven Impact and Feedback: Institutionalising community-led audits through Gram Panchayat Development Plans and Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan can enhance responsiveness. Kerala’s Kudumbashree serves as a model for platform cooperatives and local engagement.
- Restoring Democratic Partnership: Citizens must be recognised as partners in governance, not just data entries. Civil society must invest in grassroots education and legal aid. Embedding offline fallback systems, bias audits, and the “right to explanation” in digital systems is essential for democratic digital welfare.
Question for practice:
Examine how the shift towards a technocratic welfare model in India has impacted democratic deliberation and political accountability.
