Aadhaar and social assistance programming: local bureaucracies as critical intermediary

Digital identity as platform-mediated surveillance

“…In the platform view the functions of identification, authentication and authorisation theorised in Nyst et al (2016) become evident: it is, however, the technical vision of platform components that overshadows its effects. Paradigmatically of this view, Madon et al (2022) note that "the platform architecture provides scope for government to orchestrate the functioning of a range of local government and third-party players towards service delivery. "…”

Technological Solutions for Digital Identity

“…Some services use finger biometrics to verify an individual's authenticity to provide the services or subsidized benefits. Besides, the platform should be designed to combine identity data with analytics to provide the required social assistance to the beneficiaries (Madon et al, 2022). The proposed computer visionbased framework would help UIDAI and service providers to authenticate an individual through face recognition with higher accuracy to speed up the contactless e-KYC process.…”

“…The launch of Aadhaar aims to give the Indian citizen a unique identity, improve the use of government subsidies, and deal with illegal immigrants (Mir et al, 2020). Digital identity helps in simplifying the administrative processes and delivering public and private service efficiently to enhance social inclusion (Madon et al, 2022) Most service providers use the e-KYC (electronic Know-Your-Customer) process through the Aadhaar platform for quick paperless on-line customer verification. The Aadhaar system makes extensive use of biometrics for identification purposes.…”