Paper short abstract:

Explores the effects of biometric technologies on social protection policies in Tamil Nadu. Considers how the poor experience new technologies, how access to social welfare is affected, and new forms of inclusion and exclusion. Explores how new technologies transform patterns of patronage.

Paper long abstract:

This article focuses on the effects of biometric technologies on social protection policies and in turn on poor, rural households in India. Drawing on recent ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu, it presents evidence of how new technologies are experienced by recipients of welfare schemes, and explores the impact of these new technologies on inclusion or exclusion from those schemes. The paper looks in particular at 'Smart cards', the new ration card linked to Aadhaar identity numbers, which were rolled in ration shops across Tamil Nadu from mid-2017. Across the state, ration shops have moved from entirely paper-based systems of management and recording, using ledgers and ration books with handwritten entries, to an automated system that uses smart cards, a smart card 'reader,' and mobile technologies. In this paper, we analyse the ways in which access to social welfare is affected by such new technologies for social protection, and the new forms of inclusion and exclusion that they produce. Secondly, we describe how ration recipients experience the use of such new technologies, and how they perceive the innovations that they encounter as they collect their rations. Finally, the paper explores how technological transformations produce new forms of mediation, including a new role for private actors such as internet centres. We examine how such private actors could potentially transform existing patterns of mediation by bypassing older networks of patronage.