Technocratic Shift in India’s Welfare Governance

India’s welfare delivery is increasingly being driven by data-centric and algorithmic systems, raising concerns about political accountability and democratic norms.

Transformation of Welfare into Technocratic Governance

• Algorithmic Efficiency Replacing Rights-Based Approach: India’s welfare system now prioritises performance metrics like minimising leakage and expanding coverage over fundamental questions of social justice and entitlement, shifting the focus from citizen rights to deliverables.
• Data-Driven Schemes Dominating the Landscape: Schemes such as PM-KISAN and E-SHRAM reflect a unidirectional logic of measurable and automated governance that often excludes deliberative democratic participation and context-specific decision-making.
• Decline in Social Sector Spending: Despite welfare claims, India’s social sector spending dropped to 17% in FY 2024–25, down from an average of 21% between 2014–24, with sectors such as labour, minority welfare, and nutrition witnessing steep post-COVID-19 declines.

Erosion of Accountability and Democratic Norms

• The Right to Information in Crisis: The RTI regime is weakened with over 4 lakh pending cases as of June 2024 and eight vacancies in Information Commissions, limiting public oversight and transparency in welfare implementation.
• Centralised Grievance Mechanisms Lacking Responsibility: Platforms like CPGRAMS, while improving complaint visibility, centralise data without devolving accountability, creating a gap between resolution tracking and actual responsiveness at state/local levels.
• Identity Reduced to Computable Data: Echoing Justice D.Y. Chandrachud’s Aadhaar dissent, the current welfare model risks reducing individuals to decontextualised data entries, devoid of socio-economic nuance or constitutional safeguards.

The Need for Reflexive, Inclusive Welfare Governance

• Rebuilding Participatory Federalism: India must empower States to design context-sensitive and pluralistic welfare models, drawing on initiatives like Kerala’s Kudumbashree and Gram Panchayat Development Plans under Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan.
• Instituting Democratic Safeguards in Digital Governance: Mechanisms such as bias audits, offline fallbacks, and the right to explanation and appeal, as recommended by UN Human Rights, must be embedded in digital welfare infrastructure.
• Citizens as Governance Partners: To ensure a resilient and inclusive Viksit Bharat, welfare digitisation must align with democratic antifragility, ensuring that citizens are active partners, not passive entries in welfare databases.

Practice Question