Context:
The Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS) has received considerable focus, largely due to the numerous challenges it faces. This warrants significant attention because the government, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), is obligated by law to provide up to 100 days of assured wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members opt for unskilled manual labor. Moreover, there has been a noteworthy rise in the budgetary allocation to MGNREGS this year, reaching nearly ₹86,000 crore.
Relevance:
GS2-
- Poverty
- Government Policies and Interventions
- Issues Relating to Development
GS3-
- Employment
- Growth and Development
Mains Question:
The objective of MGNREGS is not to offer a playing field for technological interventions, but to provide deprived households a sense of work security, facilitated by digital technology. Discuss. (15 Marks, 250 Words).
Challenges Associated with Digitalisation:
- Numerous analysts have highlighted the difficulties associated with integrating rural employment guarantees with digitalized individual identification systems.
- These challenges encompass issues such as internet connectivity, problems with fingerprint recognition, obstacles faced by individuals with disabilities, unrecorded working days, name duplication, lack of awareness, linking errors, authentication problems, removal of names, discrepancies in name spellings, and difficulties in seeding – mostly attributable to minimal fault on the part of the workers.
- Research indicates that there are over 260 million workers registered with MGNREGS. Among them, up to 52 million workers were removed from the database in 2022-23.
- An article in The Hindu highlighted that 34.8% of job card holders remain ineligible for ABPS. Other commentators have elucidated how, even for those enrolled, there are numerous flawed elements within the payment system.
Beneficiaries or Dependents?
- The core issue underlying these challenges is that workers have been rendered dependent on technology, contrary to the idealized concept of them being its beneficiaries.
- Evidently, technology has been given precedence over employment security, with the worker being relegated further down the priority scale.
- The design, structure, and implementation of the ABPS have led to a scenario where the worker appears to be merely a component within a state-supported technological program, rather than technology serving as an enabler for the worker in a state-supported livelihood guarantee scheme.
- The rural employment guarantee system has become overly reliant on technology, imposing excessive complexity on the worker’s life. This perpetuates the notorious legacy of inefficiency and complexity in government-managed development processes, albeit now within a digital context.
- This raises the question of whether the state aims for an empowering, modern, transparent, and efficient digital economy, or if it pursues technology for its own sake. Perhaps there has been an excessive focus on techno-solutionism, often sidelining the actual beneficiary.
Way Forward:
- The primary aim of these employment guarantee programs is not to create opportunities for technological interventions, but rather to offer socioeconomically disadvantaged households a sense of job security, facilitated by digital technology.
- Programs like MGNREGS are grounded in principles such as inclusion in the development process and the reduction of inequality and socioeconomic hardship, which have been internationally recognized, such as by the United Nations Development Programme, as contributing to a productive, equitable, and interconnected society.
- When the state adopts a technocentric approach in managing such programs, it risks contradicting its own objectives. A scholarly study published in World Development has demonstrated how these programs lead to improved nutritional intake in participating households, empower women by ensuring equal pay, act as substitutes for insurance, provide significant benefits to marginalized communities including Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and households with disabled workers, and contribute to political transparency.
- These principles should not be overshadowed by eagerness for technological intervention. The lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the potentially counterproductive nature of technological interventions for deprived communities are still fresh in our minds.
- This situation urgently demands attention to the technological infrastructure’s dimensions. Additionally, there’s a need for introspection regarding how the state perceives and comprehends technology and the worker.
- Throughout history and across the globe, technological interventions have consistently demonstrated the capacity to advance progressive ideals.
- Technology lies at the core of all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and India’s rural employment guarantee schemes have proven to be effective avenues for advancing several SDGs, both directly and indirectly.
- The significant budget allocated to MGNREGS should be directed through a system free of technological shortcomings. While both technological and non-technological solutions have been explored to rectify these issues, there is also a need to reevaluate some fundamental techno-developmental concepts.
- The state’s perception of the worker as an active participant in these goals and in the nation’s specific development priorities must not be overshadowed by an excessively enthusiastic embrace of technology.
Conclusion:
In a period marked by growing socioeconomic disparities, heightened job insecurity, dwindling social safety nets, and rural hardships, technology can certainly be instrumental, but it shouldn’t be given undue favoritism by the state. The primary focus must always be on the welfare and job security of the workers.
