अमानवीयकरण संभावित रिजल्ट होता है यदि सरकार - शासन के मानवीय पहलुओं को टेक्नोलॉजी के माध्यम से आउटसोर्स करती है ।
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Two technocratic initiatives
1 Two recent technocratic initiatives by the Union government underscore these issues again.
2 The Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), launched in 1975, is one of the world’s largest early childhood care and development programmes.
3 An important component of ICDS is supplementary nutrition for children in the 0 to 6 years age group, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
4 This became a legal entitlement when it became part of the National Food Security Act in 2013.
5 As per this, the rights-holders get hot cooked meals or take-home rations at the local Anganwadis.
6 In 2021, the Union government launched the Poshan Tracker, a centralised platform, to monitor all nutrition initiatives, including ICDS.
7 A recent article by Tapasya of The Reporters’ Collective highlights some alarming technocratic proposals for ICDS.
As per Union government circulars, the updating of Aadhaar
💐of ICDS rights-holders,
💐including children,
💐on the Poshan Tracker is mandatory,
💐and subsequent Central funds for supplementary nutrition to States is being made contingent दल या संगठन on this.
समस्या। इसमें ?
1 Nearly three-fourths of children between the ages of 0 to 5 years do not have Aadhaar cards,
2 and Supreme Court orders specify that children cannot be denied their rights for lack of Aadhaar.
3 The government has responded saying that only the Aadhaar of mothers need to be authenticated प्रमाणित करना at Anganwadis.
4 However, it does not provide any data or evidence to show how many “fake” or “ghost” children exist.
5 In our study of Common Service Centres (CSC), even CSC owners reported that biometrics of 42% of the users don’t work on the first attempt. This is borne out in other studies too.
As per the recent 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.
In such light, creating new hurdles for children —
migrants or otherwise — and young mothers to access food in the name of digitisation appears cruel
It is also unclear what impact such a move will have on the psyche of a child whose mother’s Aadhaar authentication fails.
For instance, a pensioner whose biometrics failed repeatedly had poignantly remarked, “I feel humiliated that my own body is rejecting my identity.”
Tackling grave structural issues with technocratic fixes is like putting band aid on a person having a heart attack.
The Union government has issued an order introducing the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) app
1 to record attendance of MGNREGA workers at worksites.
2 As per the order, the app will record “two time-stamped and geo-tagged photographs of the workers in a day”
3 which “increases citizen oversight भूल of the programme besides potentially enabling processing of payments faster.”
4 In worksites with 20 or more workers, the app will replace physical attendance registers.
A recent article by Chakradhar Buddha and Laavanya Tamang in The Hindu and a letter to the government by People’s Action for Employment Guarantee articulates the perils खतरा of such a move
1 Here is a short summary. MGNREGA workers could complete their share of work and leave.
2 This gave them time for household work or for other work that gave them supplementary income.
3 The app makes this hard as they have to now stay back at the worksite even after completing their work only to get photographed and geo-tagged.
4 Even from a hard economic standpoint, this move deters workers’ contribution to the GDP.
5 The attendance at worksites is taken by Mates who are usually local women in charge of worksite supervision.
💐 Now, Mates have to carry smartphones which many don’t own.
Another ground report by Vijayta Lalwani shows
1 that many Mates are forced to take loans to buy smartphones to use the app.
2 It also demonstrates how a worker has lost more than ₹1,100 of her wages because the app failed to upload her attendance.
3 It has also been a bane for many officials. A district MGNREGA official told me how he is relentlessly getting phone calls regarding glitches on the NMMS app from 6 a.m.
4 The very need for an app, its failures plus other impediments such as unstable network connectivity are likely to discourage women from MGNREGA work.
5 So, the basis for the government’s claims of how such an app will assist in “increasing citizen oversight भूल” and in making payments faster are misleading.
No doubt that cases of corruption in MGNREGA need to be addressed.
But for that, social audits need strengthening
instead of making already overburdened women struggle more.
Both these technocratic initiatives point
to a digital avatar of panopticon सिस्टम with no evident positives for the rights-holders.
The sense of being constantly watched induces fear among people.
लगातार देखे जाने का भाव लोगों में भय पैदा करता है।
This normalises and exacerbates the power asymmetry between the rights-holders and the government as the rights-holders begin to internalise आत्मसात and accept this form of coercion.
यह अधिकार-धारकों और सरकार के बीच शक्ति विषमता को सामान्य से और भी बढ़ा देता है क्योंकि अधिकार-धारक इस प्रकार के जबरदस्ती आत्मसात वा स्वीकार करना शुरू कर देते हैं।
Moreover, the rights-holders will be made to take the blame for technical reasons blocking their participation.
अधिकार-धारकों को उनकी भागीदारी को अवरुद्ध करने वाले तकनीकी कारणों के लिए दोष लेने के लिए बनाया जाएगा।
This further alienates अपने से दूर करना and erodes कमजोर the political capacities of rights-holders who usually get addressed in patronising terms such as “beneficiaries.”
In the process, violations of dignity get buried in the calculus परिवर्तन की दर of technocracy and opacity of government actions.
‘Seeing’ government actions
One thing that routinely strikes me during my frequent visits to parts of rural India is the absence of people wearing spectacles.
One rarely sees opticians in most block headquarters, let alone in panchayats.
We have made huge technological strides in the country, but have paid scant attention in ensuring that the poor get to see clearly.
This extends at a metaphorical level too. While the Indian state has put so much weight behind ‘seeing’ its people, the majority are unable to see and scrutinise government actions.
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.
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