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Public disconnection and private expansion: Digital privatization of village-level administration in India

Marine Al Dahdah et Javed Alam

Résumés

L'administration indienne a longtemps été dépeinte comme inefficace, corrompue et sans compassion. Une image que le gouvernement tente de corriger depuis 15 ans, en partie grâce au plan national de la gouvernance électronique et au programme « Digital India », qui contribuent à la digitalisation massive de l'administration indienne au nom du développement. Pierre angulaire de cette transformation numérique, les centres de services communs (CSC) visent à assurer le dernier kilomètre de la relation gouvernement-citoyen dans chaque village d'Inde. Utilisant les infrastructures numériques financées par l'État - telles que les plateformes Aadhaar, UPI, eDistrict et eSevai - ces centres Internet sont censés servir de liens essentiels entre les citoyens et l'administration, en permettant l'accès aux services publics. Cependant, cette strate technologique a rendu les services de l'État de plus en plus coûteux pour des millions de personnes, les empêchant d'accéder à des services essentiels tels que les soins de santé, l'éducation et l'alimentation. Points de vente uniques pour les services publics numérisés et des services privés dédiés au bas de la pyramide, les CSC sont devenus des intermédiaires incontournables et onéreux du travail administratif.

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Introduction

1Academic literature has substantiated the image of the Indian Administration as cumbersome, ineffective, corrupt, and even uncaring (Gupta, 2012; Mathur, 2012). The government of India has been trying to fix this image for the past 15 years through the National e-governance plan and “Digital India” program, both of which are contributing to the massive digitalization of India’s administration. We chose to analyze the big, layered, and complex “Indian Platform State” through one of its core infrastructures, the Common Service Centers (CSC), single point delivery centers that ensure the last mile of the Government-citizen relationship in every village of India. This paper builds on classical STS literature around politics encapsulated in sociotechnical objects (Winner, 1980), information infrastructures as powerful sorting agents (Bowker and Star 2000), and technologies used by States to perform modernity (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) especially in postcolonial settings (Breckenridge, 2014). We combined this important heritage with the socio-anthropological study of the state, understood as a complex composite, made of a vast nexus of practices (Das & Poole, 2004).

2Common Service Centers (CSC) operate under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program and serve as the main point of access for citizens to receive government services at the village level. According to the central CSC scheme, these centers offer web-enabled e-governance services in rural areas, including application forms, certificates, and utility payments such as electricity or water bills, etc. They should provide good quality and cost-effective internet access and multiple e-Services, related to various domains, such as education, health, telemedicine, banking and finance as well as other private services. Indeed, in addition to the universe of Government-to-Citizen services, the CSC Guidelines envisaged a wide variety of content and services that could be offered at these local digital service centers. More than a decade after their implementation in rural India, CSCs have emerged as a critical infrastructure to access food, health facilities, and education for a majority of Indians. This blend of public and private services is a way to experiment multiple innovations around digital payments, e-education, e-health and e-banking services for the poorest and most excluded citizens of India, CSC became a unique point-of-sale of State services as well as bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) private services.

  • 1 Interviews were conducted in Hindi, Bhojpuri and Tamil (with the help of Antony Raj, IFP) and trans (...)
  • 2 Uttar Pradesh (UP) as one of India's most populous states (220 millions), falls behind Tamil Nadu o (...)

3What kind of state-citizen relationship happens in these specific spaces? How does CSC staff manage to sell both State and private services to citizens? How do citizens perceive these new unavoidable intermediaries in the village? Between October 2021 and November 2022, the authors conducted fieldworks in 42 common service centers in India, half in the Northern State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and half in the Southern State of Tamil Nadu (TN). From village level to small towns, they interviewed 50 staff and managers and 250 users of CSC in both peri urban and rural setups1. The authors have been working in both states for many years, and even if these States are very different in terms of socio-demographic indicators2, the impact of digital administration is astonishingly similar. Indeed, findings in UP and TN converge and highlight how the Indian government is building a platform State that relies heavily on the private sector on the ground. This paper details the day-to-day concrete operations to erect a digital giant with feet of clay.

Building a Digital Giant With Feet of Clay

4Western scholars have characterised the bureaucracy in India as essentially “Western” (Drechsler, 2015), or postcolonial, arguing that the colonial experience shaped the contemporary administrative tradition of India (Painter et Peters 2010). Asian scholars have argued that postcolonial India has diluted the concept of mandarin bureaucracy inherited from colonial-era Britain with “the democratic philosophy of a semi-retainer bureaucracy” that existed in the earlier period (Masum, 2018: 431). They add that the influence of precolonial historical legacies on public administration in India has increased with time (Yerramsetti, 2022). Indeed, Indian bureaucracy is unique in many ways. Firstly, it is gigantic. With 2.5 million civil servants employed by central government, India still hosts one of the biggest centralised civil servant contingents of the world, even if it has dramatically declined by almost 25% over the past four decades. Indeed, India’s civilian employment by the public sector (including government staff of both the central and state governments), is just 1.2 percent of India’s population compared to the global average of more than 3 percent. Secondly, it is highly imbalanced. Public workforce suffers from an imbalance in the skill mix owing to too few people in line positions (such as teachers, doctors, and police officers) and overstaffing in support roles (Saxena 2019). As a consequence, citizens, civil society organisations, as well as politicians have voiced the need to improve bureaucratic performance, democratic responsiveness, and accountability ever since the early decades of the Indian Republic. The present nature of India’s administrative transformation is most apparent in the field of public sector digitalisation. Today, digitising seems to be a central mantra for past and present grievances towards the quality and efficiency of administration in India.

The Indian Platform State

5From 2005 onwards, demands for improved public services by the growing middle classes, for a rights-based approach to governance by civil society advocacies have been increasing. As a response, along with bureaucratic support from within the government, and in line with the global trend of freedom of information laws, the Right to Information (RTI) Act came into effect and gave right to access information held by the government, promoting transparency and accountability (Sharma, 2017). The act applies to all levels of government, from central to local authorities. Following this act, in 2007 many state governments launched the Right to Service (RTS) laws: an assurance of time-bound delivery of public services against the threat of monetary penalties on frontline staff (Robinson, 2012). Meanwhile, the growth in government contracting has increased the hiring of government consultants at both central and state levels, aiming at reshaping the state agencies and state-society relations towards a “deregulatory ‘minimum government’ with a leading role for the private sector” (Chatterjee, 2022: 63). For more than two decades, scholars have noted that the Indian government is characterised by a form of techno-cultural nationalism that cultivates domestic political elites who could expand a new hybrid realm: “This realm is undergirded by an infrastructure that harvests citizens’ data, which companies can monetise and governments can use for political surveillance”(Jain & Gabor 2020: 813). This realm corresponds to the figure of the “platform state” already depicted by several scholars worldwide (O’Reilly, 2011; Jeannot, 2020).

6The Indian platform state - with its unique blend of digital schemes and heavy reliance on Aadhaar as a foundational digital ID system - faces critical scrutiny while navigating challenges of equitable access, privacy, bureaucratic adaptability, citizen participation, and contextualised solutions, shaping citizens' perception of a distant and opaque state (Chaudhuri, 2021, Rao & Nair, 2019). This realm started with the National e-Governance Program in 2006 to initiate systematic public sector digitalisation to make government services easily accessible. However, by the second decade of the 2000s, the focus had shifted towards leveraging ICTs to advance the policies of financialisation (through the promotion of no-frills bank accounts) and digitalised welfare regulation (through targeted cash transfers). The use of Aadhaar, a central government-issued 12-digit biometric, digital, unique identity number, was made integral to the delivery of food rations under the National Food Security Act of 2013 – popularly known as the “Right to Food” Act (Drèze et al., 2017). The widespread use of Aadhaar in social policy began with the “Direct Benefits Transfer for LPG (Gaz) Subsidies” just before the arrival of the actual Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014. Modi became an advocate for Aadhaar. He used his popularity to rebrand and promote no-frills bank accounts (Jan Dhan bank accounts), Aadhaar, and Mobile phones – clubbed together using the acronym JAM – as essential documents for accessing Direct Benefits Transfers and most welfare state benefits (Belorgey & Jaffrelot, 2021). The Modi regime has fully embraced this emergent form of technocratic populism initially conceptualized during the previous government and even propelled it to a whole different level (Yerramsetti, 2021).

7Aadhaar became the world’s largest digital identification system, assigned to almost the entire Indian population, combining identification data, fingerprints and iris recognition3. Initially not compulsory, it is now required in order to obtain any identity document or voting card, receive a pension, register a child in school, access healthcare or benefit from food aid. As a pillar of its “Digital India” policy, the current nationalist government has connected Aadhaar to the private sector, making it a requirement for opening a bank account or a telephone line, and for taking out insurance or a loan (Singh, 2020). The centrality of the database, its interoperability between the public and private sectors, and the lack of protection for the personal data it holds are at the heart of a controversy that has spread well beyond India4 over the digitalisation of the state and the protection of personal data. The Indian Supreme Court, in a landmark unanimous judgement in 2017, rejected the central government’s request to define privacy narrowly and proclaimed the “Right to Privacy”, a fundamental right for Indian citizens under the constitution of India, asking the central government to enact a Personal Data Protection Act, which is still at the draft stage in 2022.

8Due to the delay in enacting the Personal Data Protection law, citizens continue to lack adequate legal safeguards against the government’s infringement of individual privacy (Masiero & Shakthi, 2020). Despite the absence of a stable legal framework, the Modi regime has continued to reshape citizenship through digitalisation by enacting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in December 2019. Citizenship in India now relies solely on a digital repository that replaces the principle of jus soli (citizenship based on an individual’s birth on the soil of the country) in favour of jus sanguinis (citizenship based on an individual’s descent, or the citizenship of their parents). The enactment of the CAA has led to widespread protests across India. Hundreds of thousands of Indians protested all over the country against this Act, seen as a discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law. As a backlash, violent attacks occurred on universities and Muslim and working-class neighborhoods by armed vigilantes (Jaffrelot, 2020). Thus, public administration in present-day India is at a critical juncture with growing friction between its administrative state, including its technocratic bureaucracy, on the one hand, and citizens on the other. The main bone of contention is the digitalisation of administration-citizen relationship. In this paper, we analyse the big, layered, and complex “Indian Platform State” from below, through one of its core infrastructures, the Common Service Centers (CSC), that ensure the last mile of the Government-citizen relationship in every village of India.

From village officers to net centres, the last mile of administration

  • 5 https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/data/population-finder
  • 6 https://cvc.gov.in/sites/default/files/CEO.pdf

9India is a union of states and the powers and boundaries of governance are ventilated between central (or union) and state governments. Each state has an elected government to run the state as per the constitutional division of subject matter between the state and the union of India. The Indian Union government is responsible for managing the country's overall affairs and implementing policies that affect the entire nation. On the other hand, state governments are responsible for managing the affairs of their respective states and implementing policies that affect the state's citizens. There are also certain areas of policy, such as agriculture and transportation, where both levels of government have concurrent jurisdiction. One of the major responsibilities of the state governments is to provide for the welfare and development of their citizens. This includes implementing policies and programmes related to education, healthcare, and poverty alleviation. The states are divided into smaller units called districts, further divided into much smaller units called blocks, covering several villages in rural areas (Johnson, 2003). According to the 2011 census, 833 million people - two thirds of the entire Indian population - reside in villages.5 The local governance depends on the civil servants recruited by both union and state governments to carry out the policies at the village level. However, inefficiency, malpractices and corruption in the delivery of services on the ground have been a continuous concern for all governments since independence (Das, 2000; Quah, 2008; Tummala, 2002). The central vigilance commission of India reports that 91% of bribes in India are demanded by government officials and half of these were for the timely delivery of public services which the individual was already entitled to6. In rural India, the well-being of millions depends on the last mile administrators for timely delivery of services and schemes to fight economic insecurity, poor health, poor primary education, malnutrition and health emergency like COVID-19.

10The last mile administrator is a critical link between villagers and the Indian state; this civil servant is known by different names in the multiple states of India, called Village Officer (VO or VAO) in Tamil Nadu or “Lekhpal” in Uttar Pradesh. First introduced in the Indian subcontinent during the reign of Sher Shah Suri (1540-1545), then further refined by the Mughals and the British in its current form (Raychaudhuri et al. 1982), this representative of the state at the village level keeps and manages land and agricultural records, collects taxes, grants certificates and entitlements (Chaturvedi, 2007; Habibullah & Ahuja, 2005; Shukla, 1976). As explained by one of them, they are the frontline workers of the state at the village level: “All government policies from District Magistrate to Prime Minister and central schemes, all orders are on us because we are village-level employees and we know all geographical boundaries, demography, caste, and issues in the village. We keep records and make new records.” Going from village to village, taking notes, issuing certificates, measuring lands, and doing surveys with very few resources, the VO job is a difficult one but he also concentrates a lot of power and has the ability to change people's lives.

11The working of the VO is incomplete without an elected body of governance at the village level, called Panchayat Raj (Banerjee, 2013; Johnson, 2003; Mathew, 1994). The elected panchayat or village head, as a local political leader, has the power to recommend, pressure and influence the budget and who gets the benefits of government schemes. The village head works with the VO to distribute resources, vouch for the constituency, resolve issues and give feedback to the administration. They identify villagers as rightful beneficiaries to receive food, caste certificates for positive discrimination in schools and government jobs, houses, crop insurance or disaster relief. They are a very powerful tandem, if only the VO is employed by the State and accountable for the right distribution of public services, in case of any administrative problems the village head plays an important role of mediation. In the new digitised system of administration, this tandem is no more the primary point of contact for citizens, as the village officer and the elected representative have lost their direct working relationship, and partially the contact, with villagers.

  • 7 See the extensive list of 210 e-services accessible in CSC in Tamil Nadu for instance : https://it. (...)

12With the National e-Governance Programme and its promise of accessibility, efficiency, and corruption-free administration, local administration now relies on several digital platforms (mainly eDistrict, eSevai and APNA) offering more than 200 services on software run by the National Informatics System7. These platforms are accessible and operated by VOs as well as licensed Common Service Centers (CSC). The changes in the working of the village administration are massive and last mile administrators have been pushed to make space for these new CSCs. Every village now has at least one CSC encroaching on VOs work. The VO is normally responsible for four to six villages. Depending on the regions, there will be eight to ten CSCs for one VO. CSCs are private businesses charging people for each and every service they provide and they are not recognized by the administration as a public service provider, so they have no official relation with VOs, as explained by one of them: “We have no relation with CSC. It is a business. If someone comes, I can see if he is poor, so I do this work without any charge. Now at CSC they have to pay”. However, people in villages are sent to CSC to register for schemes and to get their certificates, paying more, aligning with rules and costs set by private businesses providing state services. We will detail the consequences of this shift for citizens in the second part of the article, and in the third part, examine its implications in terms of privatisation of public services.

Promises and Lived Experiences of Digitised Administration

13Worldwide, the transition of public services into the digital age is supposed to produce better quality services. Fed by the massive collection of data and artificial intelligence, digitalisation would be a means of consolidating the place of the public service, by improving its efficiency while taking better account of citizens' expectations. In line with Joly's approach to the economy of techno-scientific promises, Flichy's around the imaginary in technical innovation, or Sunder Rajan's about the promise as a symptom of techno-scientific capitalism (Flichy, 2003; Joly et al., 2010; Rajan, 2012), we briefly describe below three structuring promises of the Indian state's digital reform: efficacy, cost-effectiveness and empowerment. 

14In the words and intentions of Asian or Western regulators alike, digital technology would make the administration more efficient and improve the effectiveness of civil servants thanks to digitised data that make it easier to manage the urgency and difficulties of the administrative relationship, through real-time access to update administrative data (Algan et al., 2016; Fang, 2002). Public structures save time efficiently (faster computerised data entry without duplication compared to paper) and money (costly work time spent on administrative tasks is reduced). Mobile administration makes it possible to reach citizens in the absence of public structures, wherever they may be, even in rural areas. Reminders of appointments or payments are automated, exchanges with the various administrations are monitored remotely with alert systems in the event of abnormality, delay or non-payment. Exchanges between civil servants are facilitated by digital technology and thus reduce the errors associated with a lack of coordination.

15Digitisation is also presented as a low-cost process for rationalising and even reducing the costs of Indian administration. It makes it possible to simplify payments and thus avoid unpaid and uncollectible debts for public institutions. By saving time for civil servants, avoiding unnecessary appointments, misallocated or even undue consumption of public services, digitisation would be a source of savings. By offering payment facilities or platforms for managing expenses or direct payments, digital technology brings new cost-effective ways of injecting money into the administration (Pandurangi & Misra, 2019). The notion of empowerment is repeatedly used as a core promise of the digital reform of the Indian administration. While this notion deserves to be referred to its original concept of reinforcement or acquisition of power (Calvès, 2009), most of the time it is reduced to a relative autonomisation or responsabilisation of the citizen. The promise of 'empowerment' combines the idea of empowerment vis-à-vis state structures through new communication channels, and the idea of shared responsibility between administrations and citizens (Colin & Verdier, 2016). A better understanding of the administration's actions and needs would help avoid errors and administrative deadlocks. Thanks to digital technology, citizens can report on the government services delivered to them directly. This is both emancipation from public structures and also from associative and political bodies as representatives of citizens. This feedback from users on the quality of public services would generate a virtuous circle that would push administrations to offer the best service in the best possible time.

16Efficiency, cost-effectiveness and empowerment are the three core promises of the discourse on the digitisation of the administration in India. These are deployed in a media and communication space but they also resonate strongly with the perceptions of both civil servants and citizens. From North to South India, the promise of efficacy of digital public services is brought up by many civil servants we met. They describe how digitised forms are time-saving for their day-to-day work: “In the old system, it was time taking because everything was manual but now its instant. We process as we receive. We go to field and collect data. Now we can search on mobile and see all records.” They explain how mobile phone became their central tool of collection and communication, a convenient and unique terminal to access and manage everything: “All the work is done on mobile.” They insist on the fact that computerised data are beneficial for citizens: “People can look at the documents through the internet staying at home.” They also highlight that transparency, oversight and time constraints imposed by this digitisation of registrars helped reducing corruption: “There is transparency in digital mode and it works. They can’t hide mistakes so people are scared too. Corruption is less.” Citizens are also relaying improvements in public service delivery thanks to digitisation. The majority of people think that going to CSC to get the certificates they need is much more convenient than before, as emphasised by this farmer: “Previously we used to go to the village office, meet the officer, submit all the documents and get the approval. Now in the internet centres, we produce the documents, they key in the details and it is directly sent to the person concerned and online approval and signature is taken. This is better because things are happening at a faster pace and we need not to walk in two-three times to get the things done.”

17The question of cost-effectiveness is much more complicated as most of the administrative services have been delegated to CSC that make people pay for each data entry operation, each form, each download, each print. Cost effectiveness is questionable as the citizens are paying out-of-their-pocket a minimum of twice the actual price of the certificate as explained in both States: “CSC is charging money for everything if you are poor then it is a problem”; “In the CSC we have to pay 60 rupees for the certificate and 60 rupees for their service, but in the government office we have to pay 60 rupees only for the certificate.” And for the majority of our interviewed users, corruption is still there, with the additional cost of the net centre as explained by this farmer: “No matter how many changes come, you have to pay for it. Even if we go to the internet centre, they will tell us to get signature from the village officer, we have to spend some money there and the document will be sent to the revenue inspector for verification and then they will approve. In the internet centre also we have to spend some more money to get the certificate faster.” CSCs are adding a new layer of financial constraints on people, costs are just piling up to get access to the same services and half of these amounts are going to unaccountable private entrepreneurs.

18As for the empowerment of citizens, after a decade of digitisation in all public sectors, many studies converge to show that access and agency is still limited to resourceful citizens capable of harnessing the requirements of these new digital media (Al Dahdah, 2019; Masiero & Das, 2019; Prakash, 2007). If the power is still in the hands of VOs, CSC have become unavoidable administrative brokers. As explain by many heads of CSC, they are just fee-based intermediaries, the validation and verification process are still totally depending on VOs and their superiors: “For certificate registration you can go to us, but anyway you have to meet the certificate related officer, then only the process will start otherwise the officer hold the file for verification,” and confirmed by all the VOs we met: “Whether it is online documents or hand-written documents there is no change. I have to verify everything. If one person comes to my place or by online for applying pension, I will receive the filled online document in my login ID and I will send my assistant to check how many members are there in the family, are they having own land or not, do they live in a concrete house or not, is it a rich family or poor family. If the person is eligible for a pension or not, then I will sanction or refuse it immediately.” If VOs are still in power, CSCs have cut the VO interaction with villagers turning these last mile administrators into facilitators of digitised services. Armed with state authority credentials, biometric ID and digital payment systems funded by the government of India, these private entrepreneurs are building businesses with a unique blend of public and private services at the bottom of the pyramid.

Forced Connectivity: Incapacitation, Brokerage and Digital Inequalities

19Even if India's internet penetration rate stood at 47 percent of the total population in 20228, most public services in India are only accessible online: applications for student grants, activity allowances, social housing applications, registration for MNREGA public jobs, the list is long of procedures that have switched to " all-digital ", offering no other alternative to citizens. There is no exit or alternative option here: the relationship with the service must necessarily be via a digital interface. Connectivity, understood as the ability to be connected, becomes a sine qua non for access to administrative procedures; correlatively, the digitally non-autonomous citizens are put at a distance by the remote processing of the relationship and materially prevented from accessing their rights. As many scholars proved it already, digitisation objectively disadvantages the public who are far from the digital world, generating de facto inequalities and leading to a breach of equality and continuity in public services (Al Dahdah & Mishra, 2022; Deydier, 2018).

Forced Connectivity and Citizens’ Digital Incapacitation

20As explained by a village officer, people have no choice: “All has been changed, like income certificate, nativity certificate, …, old age pension, widow pension, physically challenged pension are compulsory registered online. There is no hand-written documents anymore, no other solution for people.” As it stands, the administrative obligation to connect remains very unequal across individuals: a person receiving social rights subject to monthly entitlements and frequent declarations of resources from different - central and state - public schemes are automatically more obliged to connect than a person not receiving social benefits. Since connectivity is socially distributed, we are thus witnessing a double penalty: “The most precarious individuals, both economically and in terms of social isolation, are less connected, while, being more dependent on social rights and benefits, they are more obliged to do so" (Mazet, 2019: 7). Worldwide, the digitisation of 100% of administrative acts - at a forced pace - has the effect of putting away or even excluding some users. Statistically, the profile of people with "digital difficulties" is clearly established. All studies indicate a strong correlation between digital use and age, level of education and level of resources: the non-connected citizens are older, less educated and have fewer financial resources than the connected ones (CSDS, 2019). The same pattern can be found with regard to administrative digital uses. It is the most highly educated, those with the highest incomes, who declare doing the most administrative procedures online and who are the most satisfied with them, attesting to a strong social distribution of administrative connectivity (Credoc, 2019). Nowadays, any administrative process - of searching for information, requesting a right, following up on a file, etc.- implies mastering the digital medium, i.e. being equipped and having digital "skills" or "abilities". It is indeed a constant in the discourse of administrative digitisation to elude the requirements of dematerialisation.

21More than digital exclusion, which would refer to a lack of skills of individuals who would not be comfortable with the digital, this unequal exposure to the obligation to connect leads to exclusion “by the digital". The implicit norms of dematerialisation make users unable to apply for their rights without mastering the multiple digital infrastructures and data brokers associated with each and every online scheme. In line with other scholars, we want to highlight the “incapacitation” produced by digitised administration in India and to look at the production of paths dependencies by the technical processes rather than at the (digital) incapacity of individuals, which would make them personally responsible for the withdrawal of their rights. Individuals are placed in the impossibility of asking by the material and social norms required by digitisation and they are pushed towards unavoidable brokers and paid intermediaries in order to get access to their rights. This incapacitation affects all the steps in the process of accessing public services: the application process, but also access to information that is increasingly exclusively online, the follow-up of one's application and also grievances and recourse mechanisms.

22As explained by several CSC staff, the success rate of application will be better through their centre: “I process about 100 applications every day only 4-5 get rejected but if you apply yourself chances of getting certificates are very low.” Because like many, this CSC manager has developed relationships with officials to become an unavoidable link for citizens: “The officials have trust in me. They know if I have sent it, it wouldn’t be a problem.” They negotiate with officials on behalf of the citizen and have become central to the relationship between citizens and the state. A digitally efficient school girl told us that she applied at this CSC for its success rate and payment methods: “You have to upload and pay online. I don’t have an account for the transactions. Here it takes Rs100.” We noticed during our fieldwork that the processing fee at CSC varies randomly, people pay whatever is asked by the CSC, even if it triples the official price. This concerns people who are unable to use the system "digitally illiterate", but also “digitally autonomous” people who lack of functional equipment (smartphones), a satisfactory connection (reliable network and electricity is still an issue in rural India) or mode of payment, making it all the more difficult for them to initiate the process and more likely that they will abandon it. The material support of recourse itself, in its technicality becomes an obstacle when it goes digital and a factor of non-recourse. People lose their rights because of digital constraints and are unable to claim them back.

23Feedbacks from the field are all convergent, front-line social workers and common service centres’ staff all describe the influx of people who come to them because they don't know how to use "digital technology". Shoba, a mother of three, is desperate to get the “Aadhaar-Card” for her family: “I am trying for the last two months… I need Aadhaar-card for food. Now, they are asking in schools. Something happens every time, the machine, [inter]net, sometimes he [CSC staff] is not there…what do I do?”. Shobha needs the Aadhaar-Card to receive subsidised food every month. Aadhaar-related services are available only in selected CSC to file the application and collect biometrics, not having it is seen by many as a major problem, as stated by this farmer: “In school, bank and for everything, if you don’t have Aadhaar card you are like a dead body”. The difficulties are gradual, and concern access, but also the renewal of rights, breaks due to uncontrolled digital exchanges, the follow-up of one's file or the request for supporting documents that are only accessible online. The need to have an Aadhaar account has led to a number of breakdowns in entitlements, resulting in delays and frictional non-recourse. An old man at CSC is applying for the third time to get a caste certificate: “I am coming here for four days but haven’t received the caste certificate. I met Tahsildar [block officer] he said to go to Seva-Kendra [CSC] … same thing happened with Aadhaar.” It is not just the several visits or unpleasant experiences but also the cost of these intermediaries and multiple applications.

24For instance, we met old women in both States, queueing to get their Widow Pension Scheme (Rs500 or six euros per month). They were charged between Rs50 and Rs100 by CSCs to get this pension and praying for thumb recognition to function as explained by this widow: “I’ve been waiting since the morning. I applied water and alcohol on my hand, but still my thumb impression is not getting recognised”. The process at the CSC and through the platform is non-negotiable, filled with delays, rejections and reapplications for forms and certificates from dozens of respondents. However, these feedbacks only concern the enlightened side of the phenomenon: very often, it is third parties, neighbours, family or friends, who make up for the difficulties and carry out the online procedures at CSCs in their place, giving rise to a "collectivised" management of rights that can cause problems. And this distorts all the calculations that can be made to account for administrative connections in India, as the digitally fittest will be the one handling these interactions for the weakest.

Strained Intermediaries, Social Asymmetries and (Un)Accountability

25We wanted to study the work but also the profiles and trajectories of CSC managers. Strikingly, these intermediaries have very similar profiles across both states and reproduction mechanisms of education, gender, caste and class divides can play a determining role in terms of accessibility. Moreover, they are private entrepreneurs, they have no public service obligations and are not accountable for the State, so in case of any problem related to these administrative services, people have no means of recourse.

26Praful has been running a CSC for the last eight years: “I started as an internet café, then Railway reservation Centre and then Jan-Seva-Kendra [CSC].” A running business with basic equipment- a computer, printer, and scanner- and an official access to the public online platforms: “I just applied for ID and started working [as CSC]. In the beginning, it was for certificates [for] caste, and income but now there are a lot of things. Now all certificates, IDs are made here… everything digital.” Before people had to go to different levels of district administration for the issuance of physical certificates with official stamps and discrimination mechanisms were happening at these many different levels (Gupta, 2012). CSCs like any other infrastructure encode many inequalities (Star 1999), asymmetries in terms of accessibility and delivery of their services are reported by many users. Inclusion to public schemes and services in India is bounded by social realities such as caste, income inequality, gender, and literacy. In some groups, they overlap to create a multi-level effect of exclusion. For instance, a scheduled caste woman may face cumulative disadvantages of caste, gender, low income and illiteracy, as highlighted by many scholars working on intersectionality (Jaunait & Chauvin, 2012; Yuval-Davis, 2015) . If in cities the caste divide can be subtle, in rural parts it comes out as a visible part of everyday life and has materiality that determines people’s access to tangible things like food, shelter, or funds. These exclusion mechanisms can be seen at the level of the end user but also at the level of certification to open CSC in villages. As Jodhka and Manor say, “in the Indian context, caste and kinship (sometimes religion-based) communities actively try to preserve their ‘monopolies’ in a given trade or business” (Jodhka & Manor, 2018: 7). The “caste networks” (Witsoe et al., 2017) are fundamental to understand the political economy of India at large, but also to question the certification process and attribution of the credentials to become a CSC and accessing the online administrative platforms.

27All the CSC managers we interviewed were educated, high caste, well-off and well-connected males. There is no official or intentional attempt that leads to the social homogeneity we discovered during our fieldwork, but at the same time – and contrary to government jobs (and VOs placing) - there is no affirmative action mechanisms to compensate for the gender/caste/class effects to become an authorised CSC. Indeed, we found that all CSC owners belong to the upper caste, as stated by them or by CSC users. The term upper caste is often used in daily conversation for someone who belongs to a higher class in the Indian caste system. This caste effect is connected to the selection mechanisms to get official authorisation as a CSC. The selection of CSC depends on education level, digital literacy, a set of necessary costly computing equipment, and a suitable place for the net centre, and both social and political backgrounds play a crucial part in the final selection. As stated by this CSC manager: “There are a lot of procedures to register as an authorised agency for the government schemes. Whatever logins we have, we have people coming in and making thorough investigation...We also have the exams to be passed.” Sometimes, private companies are responsible for the registration of CSC, it is the case in UP, where the company Sahaj is the main provider of CSC licences. And Sahaj's managers told us that they collect information on CSC applicants through unidentified sources or send their staff to verify the “character” of CSC applicants before giving access to the platform. It is highly unlikely for someone from weaker social and economic groups to fulfil the selection criteria to become a CSC.

28As the CSC managers told us, you need a minimum of education and socio-economic capital to get the certification: “To get the CSC certificate, first, you must write the exam. Once you clear that exam, you must apply for CSC. The district coordinator will come and do verification. They will check if there are any other IDs issued for this area. If you have the required material and place, or they will reject the application”. The starting costs and maintenance costs to open and run a CSC require financial capital, as stated by multiple CSC managers: “All the equipment which we are using now all were bought by ourself. We spent 150 000 only for the starting equipment.” But to get the authorisation, political connections are also an important lever, frequently acknowledged: “The main thing is there will be no chance to get problems from people because I am in BJP political party (in power at central level), I am from local and I know all the peoples in the village, and I know all the political people as well.”; “If you have good influence in the Thaluk office, you will have so many opportunities for so many other government services.”

29When it comes to gender, CSCs are hegemonically run by men. We did not see any women running CSC in villages, the rare women we met were employed staff or wives of CSC managers. If women are registered as CSC owners, most of the time their husband seats there or young males employed to run the CSC, as explained by the authorisation agency in UP: “We gave many centres to women but someone else is running. Or they have an operator but we can’t deny them. If you see the literacy graph in rural, it's very little.” If it is true that literacy and digital literacy rates are lower for women all over India. However, these rates are much higher in Tamil Nadu than Uttar Pradesh and these differences are not materialising on the ground. Indeed, for women, there is still a question of male preference for running businesses and especially when these businesses are providing digital services. The women’s access to digital infrastructure in India is tied to the pre-existing social system of gender hierarchies (Al Dahdah et al., 2018). “In this regard, effective access is determined not only by contextual sociotechnical factors (as evident in the digital inequality literature) but also by the interactions of ICT solutions with the preexisting systems and infrastructures that they build on and connect to” (Singh & Jackson, 2017). The primary hurdle for women to run or access CSC is to surpass the male prerogative over everything that is digital or digitised in India.

30Digitisation allows governments to further dilute the question of accountability, inclusion and rights. Nowadays, state and district administrations rely on CSC to disseminate welfare programmes, to register and help vulnerable sections of society to access public services. But CSC staff do not picture themselves as the ones who are supposed to tell people about schemes and they do not feel responsible or accountable for anything related to the provision of this administrative work as constantly stated by them: “when it gets rejected…people don’t understand that it is not in my hands”. Reliability and accountability are a major issue of this delegation of public services to private providers. CSC can open and close whenever they want, they have no obligation of continuity or availability. They cannot be held accountable for their services; in case of rejection, they just send people back to the civil servants that are still in charge of processing applications, as stated by this CSC staff: “it is not our problem (…) we ask them to go and see tahsildar or VO to explain the difficulties faced to get the certificate, and get the signature from them”. And the whole process comes back to older forms of corruption and bribes at different levels, as explained by this farmer: “if you need certificates, people come and apply here at CSC now, but you should go and meet the VO to get the signature from him so for that you have to give some bribe”. The CSCs just took their share of the money on this new digitised trail. If corruption is still there, what really changed with CSC is the progress of digital privatisation.

Digital Privatisation: Public Disconnection and Private Expansion

31Digital technology offers a new form of reconfiguration of the public-private divide that some scholars rightly call digital privatisation (Jeannot & Cottin-Marx, 2022); privatisation, to emphasise that these rearrangements tend to restrict the public domain; digital, to recall that this recomposition is inseparable from the technological developments of the last decade, such as widespread use of smartphones and increased platformisation. What happens when digital services gave non-accountable private entrepreneurs the ability to encroach on the public sphere of action? When public services are used as baits for building new markets or new areas of influence for the private digital economy? When government-citizen relations are entirely transferred to the private sector? What we witnessed on the ground is a great disconnection between the State and citizens and the rapid expansion of private digital businesses at the expense of citizens’ fundamental rights.

The Great State-Citizen Disconnection

32Beyond the procedures for requesting rights or access to administrative forms, the dematerialisation of administrative relations raises questions. A growing number of exchanges now takes place electronically (e-mail, SMS, chat bots), coupled with the impossibility of having physical contact with a public officer for initial contacts, registrations, and the steps involved in initiating procedures. More and more, users are directed to an online interface to contact the administrative services, or to obtain information or explanations. Incidentally, the administrative relationship is becoming mostly digital, with the "human" contact (telephone or physical face-to-face) constituting a secondary way, if at all, of online procedures. This shift towards dematerialisation of the relationship appears to be all the stronger because it has occurred at the same time as a reduction of civil servant employment, the closing of physical offices and other forms of contact (like public hotlines), reinforcing the perception of the dehumanisation of administrative contact.

33An old VO fondly remembers direct interaction with people as an efficient mode of delivery of services at their doorstep: “Earlier [before CSC] people meet us directly and we give them certificates manually in less time, less money and less trouble but now people are spending time and money for simple work.” Some civil servants told us that they consider CSC staff as heartless crooks that are abusing citizens with no public good interest at heart and very high-processing charges: “If you want to know about the gain and loss of the CSC system then I think is not useful for people. It is a harmful process. It takes lots of time, waste of money. CSC charges hundreds of rupees for one caste-income certificate.” Some also state that it had really bad consequences on their own income: “In the past, people come to my office and give some money to get my signature, but now everything is in online so I am not able to get money now. This is a great loss for government officers.” And as their salaries are really low, fewer and fewer youngsters are ready to commit for this low-paid village job and more and more VOs positions are vacant all over India. However, the disparities in regional bureaucratic representation are very important, Uttar Pradesh or Bihar often depicted as “underdeveloped States” have much higher levels of vacancies than Tamil Nadu or Kerala for instance, this results in “underdeveloped” areas experiencing longer duration of state absence at the village level over time, and lower state capacity (Agnihotri, 2022).

34The use of administrative sites requires skills other than the mere ability to connect to the Internet. The majority of these digital platforms suppose identification and validation procedures, navigation and location capacities in the succession of the pages and the global architecture of the sites. Effective day-to-day use requires various and gradual skills depending on the tasks to be carried out, the ergonomics of the sites and the complexity of the rights concerned. Furthermore, all these administrative interfaces are today thought almost exclusively for browsing from computers, while uses, and in particular those of the local administrators who have not learned computer skills, are mainly centred on the smartphone; digital requirements are therefore essentially computer requirements, presupposing computer skills in terms of manipulation, as evidenced by the bulk of short training organised at district and State level for local administrators detected as lacking digital autonomy. The difficulties of local administrators in performing digitised public services are also pushing citizens away from them, and to CSC staff that are sometimes more tech savvy and have invested in digital equipment to fit better the digital requirements of administrative work.

35Finally, administrative digital technology also has its own requirements for end users that distinguish it radically from other online uses (entertainment, commercial). Firstly, because it is above all administrative: it requires additional administrative autonomy in order to find one's way around the administrative maze, universe and language; secondly, because the effects of a mishandling are out of all proportion to other online uses: a mistake can have dramatic consequences in terms of suspension of rights, often essential to the financial equilibrium of precarious households dependent on the payment of benefits or subsidised access to food rations or essential health services. Regardless of the digital capabilities of individuals, carrying out administrative procedures online always refers to trust in the institution concerned, an understanding of how it works, and the potential impact of mishandling. This translates into a need for reassurance and additional support, which is all the greater given that individuals do not master the rationality of the calculation or allocation of their rights and depend on the rights in question. Sociologists have already shown in the 1990s the structuring character of the physical relationship with the "counter clerk", as an embodied representation of the relationship with the State and the administration (Dubois, 1999; Weller, 1999). This support is completely absent from the VOs and CSC sides alike, it has consequences on the credibility and trust in digitised administration in India. Many users told us that both VO and CSC are just competent enough to get money out of them, but the administrative outcomes are as poor and unexpected as before. The digital has not brought transparency to administrative procedures for villagers in UP and TN, it has just cut them from the local officials and pushed them towards local private entrepreneurs that are using these public services as baits to sell multiple private services to villagers.

The lure of public services to develop business at the bottom of the pyramid

36The growing presence of corporate entities in essential services thanks to digitisation of public services is preoccupying. It has led to a situation where the availability of CSC, often at the expense of more efficient public e-service options, has put a burden on less privileged citizens. The gap, between those who can afford to pay for access to public services and those who cannot, has become wider, with a large number of citizens paying for services that are effectively being provided by a private business acting as an extended arm of the government. Indeed, it allows these private entrepreneurs to exert a specific form of influence on villagers that depend on them for accessing their official papers and their rights. In the new realm of the platform state, private companies have carved a role for themselves making profits out of public services otherwise available for free or at a very little token amount. CSC managers are primarily motivated by the desire to tap into the "consumerist potential" of the BOP market (Prahalad, 2016) rather than addressing fundamental issues of inequality and social exclusion.

37In this PPP model, the private entrepreneurs bear zero accountability towards citizens, and sell them multiple additional services that generate profit, as explained by CSC managers: “With CSC services, we earn nothing.” They earn extra money by selling additional services in relation with this administrative work, with Xerox impressions, lamination, scanning, as explained: “For services connected with the government schemes, the government fixes the charges and there are some extra charges like the expenses on electricity, staff and other things for which we fix the charge. And we add services like scanning, copying, browsing, etc., for which there are various expenses incurred from our end.” But they earn more money on fully private services, like banking, insurance or travel services. Many of them are in fact tied up with banks to open private bank accounts and offer loans and insurance products to villagers: “We do account opening for Baroda Bank, money withdrawal and deposits, insurance, Aadhaar card link with the bank, ATM card, passbook.”

38It is precisely thanks to state provided biometric infrastructure that they can sell banking services to villagers, they are using the Aadhaar biometric recognition system to provide these services, as explained by this CSC: “I don't have swiping card machine but I have fingerprint machine so people can withdraw with this.” CSCs are telling us that they are making a significant amount of their income through banking services like money transfer or withdrawal: “Most of our work is banking”; “They just have to scan their fingerprint and can take cash.” CSC ask users commissions of 20 to 50 rupees for money transfers or cash withdrawals below 1000 rupees, taking between 3 to 5% of money transfers via their banking accounts transiting through net banking apps, UPI or other payment apps like GooglePay or PayTM. For every 10.000 rupees of transaction done through specific bank portals, banks will give between 150 and 300 rupees of commission to CSC, and CSC can tie up with any bank. They will also receive commissions for opening accounts and for every credit or insurance products they can sell to villagers.

Conclusion

39This paper has analysed how e-governance at the village level - through CSC - has become a unique point-of-sale of state services as well as bottom-of-the-pyramid private services. This has changed tremendously the state-citizen relationship and introduced new unavoidable fee-based intermediaries of administrative work. CSCs have been built on and using state-funded digital infrastructures and resources -like Aadhaar, UPI, eDistrict or eSevai platforms. These centres have effectively privatised governance at the village level for profit. This means that the management and operation of these centres are not being held accountable to the public, and their primary focus is on generating revenue rather than serving the needs of people. The lack of accountability of CSC compared to direct government-employed public servants can be attributed to a complex interplay of factors, including lack of oversight, profit-driven incentives, limited resources, inadequate training and qualifications, and a narrow legal framework. CSCs are not covered under the same legal framework as a public servant VO. Additionally, this privatisation of governance at the village level can also lead to a lack of representation and input from the community in decision-making processes, further exacerbating the disconnection between the state and villagers. CSCs are intended to serve as a vital link between citizens and government services, providing access to public services. However, this added layer of governance has made the state services expensive for millions of people in India. These new intermediaries make it difficult for citizens to access their rights, which can result in a lack of access to essential services such as healthcare, education and food.

40CSC may provide a range of services, including e-governance, financial, education, and health services, to citizens but their primary focus is on generating profits rather than on providing public services and they are not accountable for the public services they are providing to citizens. Despite this, CSCs have become the face of local governance and are perceived as efficient tech-savvy replacements of last mile administrators that are underequipped and undertrained to respond to the requirements of digitised administration. CSCs have disrupted the traditional channel of last mile governance while creating new business opportunities for multiple private companies they tied up with. CSCs are seen by citizens as an extension of state governance, which gives them legitimacy and a sense of trust from citizens. This legitimacy is used as an opportunity by multiple private companies to sell their products to citizens through these centres, leading to a potential conflict of interest and abuse of power.

41Given the budgetary constraints weighing on both local and central administration in India, with a spectacular decrease in civil servants and public investments at the village level all over India, it is indeed to be feared that the objective of last-mile digitised administration might ultimately be reduced to a fully privatised delegation of the service to private local entrepreneurs for the purposes of management and money savings; black outing completely the emancipating and "empowering" dimension aimed at by digital inclusion. This digital privatisation process is happening in many parts of the world, many scholars and activists are documenting its dire consequences on citizens’ rights and several are asking to build and maintain public digital infrastructures for public services (Al Dahdah, 2021; Fiormonte, 2021). The Indian state should take these claims into account to build a truly accessible open digital governance platform. The Indian State mission would be to make accessible to all Indian citizens the common goods that digital services can bring. By re-embedding public services in the logic of the commons, the state would constitute an indispensable counterpoint to the actual processes of privatisation inherent to digital capitalism that are destroying state-citizen bond and trust.

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Notes

1 Interviews were conducted in Hindi, Bhojpuri and Tamil (with the help of Antony Raj, IFP) and translated into English by Antony Raj and Jasper Daniel to be analysed qualitatively.

2 Uttar Pradesh (UP) as one of India's most populous states (220 millions), falls behind Tamil Nadu on all Human Development Index, in education, healthcare, and living standards (Chawla et al., 2022). These two states represent distinct case of governance, and digital inclusion within the diverse administrative landscape of India. The divergence in poverty indices underscores the state-level governance and developmental pathways shaping the unique profiles of UP and TN (Basar & Das, 2023).

3 On these questions, see the special issue Samaj n°23/2020 - Unique Identification in India

4 See “Aadhaar, le Big Brother indien, sur la sellette”. Libération, 23 Jan 2018. https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2018/01/23/aadhaar-le-big-brother-indien-sur-la-sellette_1624713. “Aadhaar, plus grande base de données biométrique au monde, est autorisée en Inde avec des garde-fous”. Le Monde, 27Sep 2018. https://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2018/09/27/aadhaar-plus-grande-base-de-donnees-biometrique-au-monde-est-autorisee-en-inde-avec-des-garde-fous_5361007_3216.html

5 https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/data/population-finder

6 https://cvc.gov.in/sites/default/files/CEO.pdf

7 See the extensive list of 210 e-services accessible in CSC in Tamil Nadu for instance : https://it.tn.gov.in/en/TNEGA/common_service_centres

8 See Digital India 2022 report: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-india

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Référence électronique

Marine Al Dahdah et Javed Alam, « Public disconnection and private expansion: Digital privatization of village-level administration in India »RESET [En ligne], 14 | 2024, mis en ligne le 31 décembre 2024, consulté le 15 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/reset/5562 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/136af

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Auteurs

Marine Al Dahdah

CNRS, CEMS

Javed Alam

Université Paris Cité, CEPED

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