5 months ago
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It is progressively communal to spot cleaning unit photographing oregon filming themselves astatine work. This is meant to guarantee that they bash their job. How effectual it is, is anybody’s guess.
The deficiency of accountability of authorities employees manifests itself successful galore ways successful India — they whitethorn beryllium absent from work, whitethorn travel precocious oregon permission early, whitethorn not enactment successful a time-bound manner, and whitethorn expect bribes.
The biometric era
Somewhere on the line, integer tools emerged arsenic the magic wand for this vexatious problem. For instance, years ago, immoderate governments successful India introduced biometric attendance to guarantee punctuality. In immoderate cases, if biometric attendance was not marked connected time, employees were threatened with punitive action. At that time, successful Khunti Block (Jharkhand), immoderate conscientious officials worked aft bureau hours to implicit online tasks that required connectivity (“digital paperwork”) due to the fact that Internet bandwidth improved successful the evenings. With the strategy of clocking successful and out, their accent shifted from getting the enactment done to marking biometric attendance successful a timely manner. In Rajasthan, a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) that studied the interaction of biometric attendance connected absenteeism among authorities nurses recovered that, successful the agelong run, it resulted successful little attendance.
Take different example. In the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), official idiosyncratic attendance is wide inflated to siphon disconnected wages. Wage expenditure is booked connected the ground of fudged attendance and either shared with participating “workers” (job cards holders who bash not really work) oregon pocketed wholly by the masterminds.
In response, the authorities introduced the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app successful 2022. The NMMS app requires a photograph of workers astatine the worksite to beryllium uploaded doubly a day. It was meant to enactment an extremity to fudged attendance records. The app mightiness win successful forcing idiosyncratic beingness astatine the NREGA worksite, but it cannot warrant that they bash immoderate utile enactment erstwhile they are there. In the astir egregious cases workers were not adjacent showing up doubly a time to people attendance: the masterminds were uploading random photographs. They worked retired that the NMMS app lone needs a jpeg file: irrelevant photographs and photographs of photographs tin bash the trick.
A July 2025 circular of the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) lists 7 specified malpractices. Fudged photographs replaced fudged signatures to inflate attendance and the racket continued, much oregon little arsenic before.
Around the aforesaid time, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MoWCD) made “Facial Recognition Technology” (FRT) compulsory for Take Home Rations (THR). The reasoning is familiar: THR packets for children and large and lactating mothers bash not scope them. Making it mandatory to upload the mother’s photograph (with blinking) connected the Poshan Tracker is expected to guarantee that she does not get cheated. The Poshan Tracker ostensibly does a real-time lucifer of the unrecorded photograph with an on-record photograph.
An Anganwadi idiosyncratic successful Nuh (Haryana) who was struggling with connectivity, a assemblage and the clunky app, said matter-of-factly, “those who privation to cheat volition continue”, i.e., thing prevents an Anganwadi idiosyncratic from refusing THR packets to mothers aft they person jumped done the hoops of Poshan Tracker’s FRT.
This loophole was documented successful 2017 erstwhile the Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) was made mandatory for Public Distribution System (PDS) rations. It was the aforesaid logic again: ABBA would guarantee that lone idiosyncratic A could person their benefits. This meant that the aged and persons with disabilities who would petition neighbours oregon relatives to prime up their rations, could nary longer bash so. Person A (sick, old, oregon immobile) would person to amusement up successful person. Many began to beryllium excluded arsenic a result.
Subsequently, immoderate States enactment an ‘override’ mechanics successful place, astatine slightest connected paper. Meanwhile, PDS ration dealers would marque radical authenticate — biometrically — for their afloat quota of rations, portion giving them a spot little (in 2017, successful Jharkhand, an accepted norm was 4.5 kilograms alternatively of 5 kg). ABBA resulted successful “pain without gain”.
Limited effect
In galore States crossed India, a fig of tasks done by Auxiliary Nurses and Midwives (ANMs) necessitate geo-tagging oregon photographic evidence. For instance, uploading photos of a breastfeeding parent arsenic impervious that the ANM had done breastfeeding counselling. This results successful a perverse situation: uploading a photograph without counselling would not get her into trouble, but counselling without the photograph upload would. In a tribal country of Andhra Pradesh, different ANM said that she was compelled to determination astir for connectivity successful bid to log a location sojourn connected the app. She looked visibly wounded arsenic she showed america a “show origin notice” she got soon after: arsenic she had moved much than 300 metres to log the location sojourn and the app red-flagged her sojourn arsenic fraudulent. Such surveillance apps, successful accountability clothing, demotivate sincere workers.
At best, specified apps tin person a constricted interaction connected accountability. But accountability itself is simply a constricted achievement.
Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (2025) impulse america to spell beyond accountability (which “can induce radical to bash what idiosyncratic other wants them to do”) towards work (as it “includes what radical themselves privation to bash successful the nationalist interest”).
The tech-fixes described supra cannot foster liable behaviour, and cannot assistance self-motivate workers to enactment successful nationalist interest. The existent obsessive fixation with tech-fixes diverts attraction from the larger extremity of improving enactment civilization and changing societal norms. It blinds america to different pathways to get there. For instance, fewer inquire however is it that adjacent successful areas with mediocre accountability, truthful galore nurses, teachers, doctors and cleaners enactment diligently?
A lawsuit of agnotology
Returning to accountability successful payment programmes, the authorities is consciously ignoring the failures of tech-fixes. For instance, adjacent though the MoRD officially acknowledged that the NMMS was being “misused and manipulated”, successful July, the MoWCD made FRT compulsory for THRs successful July. Moreover, having admitted to the nonaccomplishment of NMMS, the MoRD responded by ordering “100% verification of each uploaded photographs” each time successful each gram panchayats.
There is simply a cautiously cultivated ignorance towards caller problems created by apps: exclusion (in the PDS, of the elderly, and the immobile for whom ABBA fails; successful NREGA, of workers whose photographs could not beryllium uploaded connected NMMS), inefficiency (distribution of PDS rations and THR packets takes overmuch longer), caller forms of corruption (claiming ABBA failures adjacent erstwhile it is successful), privateness invasions (uploading photographs of breastfeeding mothers), individuality fraud, and idiosyncratic demotivation.
The stubborn refusal to larn is baffling. It raises questions astir the imaginable seizure of decision-making by vested interests to make assured markets for their products. The infrastructure for surveillance apps (devices including smartphones for each frontline workers, physics constituent of merchantability machines, hard drives, servers, Internet data, authentication services) is not cheap. Tech companies are doing contiguous what the baccy and refined achromatic sweetener manufacture did successful the past — cultivate ignorance astir the harms from their products to stall corrective action. The authorities is playing along.
Science historiographer Robert Proctor uses the word agnotology, however and wherefore assorted forms of cognition person “not travel to be”, for this phenomenon. Put simply, tech-fixes are snake lipid for accountability successful welfare.
Reetika Khera is Professor of Economics astatine IIT Delhi
