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Paper short abstract

Based on fieldwork in Chhattisgarh, India, this paper shows how digitisation of welfare turns Anganwadi workers from caregivers into data labourers, intensifying surveillance, workload and precarity while redefining care as auditable, digital and data efficiency rather than social reproduction.

Paper long abstract

Aanganwadi workers (AWWs), the backbone of India’s child nutrition program - Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), are one of the largest groups of state-dependent, low-paid care workers in the country. This paper examines how digital governance and digitisation of their routine work has restructured the everyday rhythms of labour and livelihood for AWWs. The transformation of AWWs from caregivers to “digital footsoldiers” whose labour as data collector and uploader has been proving a basis for digital governance in India. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews, and participant observation conducted in Bemetara and Bilaspur districts of Chhattisgarh, India between 2023–2024, the study demonstrates how digital tools such as the Poshan Tracker App, Matru Vandan App has converted care into surveilled, auditable data. Drawing on feminist scholarship on care, social reproduction and feminist STS literature, the study aims to bring how digitisation extends the managerial control of the state at the expense of redefining care as efficiency and data. Findings from the field shows that AWWs face significant challenges while doing their digital duties, like- lack of digital literacy, infrastructural challenges, and complex app interfaces. The paper argues that digitisation of welfare programs has further devalued the women’s care labour and has put the burden of delivery of welfare onto them. Digitisation has also intensified surveillance and control, with workers monitored through GPS, real-time dashboards, which increases anxiety among the workers. While the data is made visible in digital welfare systems, the labour that produces it, remains undervalued and precarious.