Author ORCID Identifier
Vanita Leah Falcao: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0959-3941
Abstract
The narrative about India’s successful transformation of public welfare governance via the biometrics-linked digital identifier Aadhaar and associated digital public infrastructure (DPI) dominates mainstream policy discourse. This is despite local administrators continuing to encounter systemic inefficiencies and citizens facing inconvenience and exclusion. Challenging the dominant narrative, this paper evaluates the digital innovations for public welfare through the lived experiences of citizens and local administrators. It draws on a multi-sited ethnographic study of the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana - a maternity cash entitlement, conducted in one of India’s most impoverished states, Jharkhand. It proposes the idea of ‘digitalwashing’, a concept coined to describe the tendency to equate using digital tools with transformative digital governance. The article argues that this phenomenon is characterised by technological determinism and inequity. Consequently, it is especially rampant in public welfare programmes targeting the poor and vulnerable. The article concludes that digitalwashing via DPI is allowing a dangerous situation to persist in which the vulnerability of citizens and confronting governance challenges are systematically deprioritised.
Recommended Citation
Falcao, V. L.
(In press).
The ‘Digitalwashing’ of India’s Public Welfare: Evidence from the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana.
Information Technology for Development.
Available at:
https://aisel.aisnet.org/itd/vol32/iss1/19