Editorial 2: ​​The technocratic calculus of India’s welfare state

Context

The drive for data-driven welfare delivery may trade off democratic norms and political accountability for efficiency.

Introduction

With over a billion Aadhaar enrollments, 1,206 schemes linked to the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system, and 36 grievance redressal portals across States and Union Territories, India’s welfare architecture is undergoing a profound shift towards a technocratic model. While the push aims to deliver social welfare at scale, minimise leakages, and eliminate ghost beneficiaries, this transformation risks a subtle yet significant recasting of welfare. The focus on efficiency and coverage, though commendable, may come at the expense of democratic norms, transparency, and political accountability, raising concerns about citizen participation and institutional responsiveness in this new digital welfare regime.

From Rights-Based to Data-Based Welfare

• India is shifting from a rights-based welfare regime to a technocratic, data-driven system.
• The fundamental question has changed:
  • Then: “Who deserves support and why?”
  • Now: “How do we minimise leakage and maximise coverage?”
• Politicians across party lines have offloaded ethical and distributional decisions to algorithmic systems, often without questioning constitutional values.

Technocratic Rule: A Depoliticised Logic

• According to game-theoretic research, technocracy thrives in politically polarised societies.
• Referencing Habermas’s “technocratic consciousness” and Foucault’s “governmentality”, India’s welfare state is now built on:
  • Auditability
  • Measurability
  • Depoliticised rationality
• Schemes like E-SHRAM and PM-KISAN showcase:
  • Unidirectional logic
  • Low tolerance for error
  • Innovation-focused design, but minimal space for local feedback.

The Decline of Democratic Deliberation

• Welfare is no longer a site for democratic dialogue.
• Citizens are now seen as auditable beneficiaries, not rights-bearing individuals.
• Referring to Giorgio Agamben’s “homo sacer”, we are witnessing:
  • A life stripped of political agency.
  • Participation and local feedback mechanisms like gram sabhas being sidelined.

Social Sector Spending in Decline

• This marks a decade-low in social sector investment.
• Minority welfare, labour rights, nutrition, and employment schemes have been disproportionately affected.

The RTI Regime in Crisis

• Commentators have described the Right to Information (RTI) regime as being in an “existential crisis.”
• As of June 30, 2024:
  • 4 lakh+ cases were pending across 29 Information Commissions.
  • 8 Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) posts remained vacant.
• This signals a breakdown in institutional accountability, weakening citizen oversight.

Need for Reflexive, Contextual Governance

• The Indian welfare state must recover its ability for:
  • Reflexivity (self-questioning capacity)
  • Situated knowledge (local, contextual decision-making)
• These are inherently present in gram sabhas and frontline bureaucratic discretion, but have been marginalised.
• Drawing from Rancière’s critique, we must ask:

“Whose suffering is made visible and contestable — not just computable?”

A Warning from Aadhaar

• Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s dissent in the 2018 Aadhaar ruling cautioned:
  • Against decontextualised identity systems.
  • Against reducing citizens to machine-readable data.
  • He warned such systems may lack care, context, and constitutional assurance.

Centralised Grievance Portals: Innovation or Illusion?

• The Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) was envisioned as a cutting-edge mechanism to track and resolve complaints across various levels of government.
• Between 2022–2024, the system disposed of lakhs of grievances, indicating a significant administrative effort.
• However, it tends to flatten federal hierarchies into a ticket-tracking structure, raising concerns about loss of accountability.
• The system may be centralising visibility, but not distributing responsibility, resulting in what may be termed “algorithmic insulation.”
• This creates a dangerous gap where political accountability becomes harder to trace.

Problem Diagnosis at a Glance

Rethinking Welfare Governance: A Call to Action

• This critique does not discount the utility of digital platforms, but calls for rethinking governance models.
• We must build “democratic antifragility”, where systems improve under stress rather than collapse (drawing from Nassim Taleb’s concept of hyper-integrated systems).
• There is a need for context-sensitive federalism, where States innovate within their own welfare models.

Strategic Reforms for Democratic Antifragility

Conclusion

We, as citizens of India, must recognise that a welfare state without democratic deliberation becomes a system that may function efficiently on paper but fails the very people it is meant to serve. If we truly aspire for a Viksit Bharat, our approach to digitisation must be reoriented with the principles of democracy and anti-fragility at its core. This means ensuring that citizens are not reduced to passive data points or mere entries in a government ledger. Instead, they must be empowered as active participants in governance, with a voice in decision-making processes that affect their lives. Only through such inclusive and resilient frameworks can we build a future that is not just digitally advanced but also socially just and equitably governed.