Digitalisation of welfare has been on the rise in South Asia over the past two decades so much so that it became a model for digitalising welfare globally. Digitalisation efforts that started with e-governance measures including digitisation of government records and services and delivery through internet kiosks (Chaudhuri 2014) eventually evolved to incorporate newer technologies, such as digital biometrics, data dashboards, digital payments and more recently, AI and algorithms (Bärnreuther 2024, Chaudhuri 2019, Rao and Nair 2019, Singh 2019). The incorporation of digital technologies in welfare have shifted from domain specific initiatives to more platformised solutions that cut across domains. As a result, there have been significant changes not only in institutional and administrative processes of welfare delivery of good and services – such as participation of private companies or the introduction of new work flows – but also in the way citizen perceive and experience welfare (Zakharova, Jarke and Kaun 2024).
We welcome paper submissions from various disciplines dealing with the digitalisation of welfare in South Asia with particular focus on (but not limited to):
1. internal changes in the state bureaucracy (at all levels) or changes in the organization and form of welfare delivery
2. the impact of these changes on ‘beneficiaries’ with particular attention on dynamics of gender, caste, class, age, religion etc.
3. possible changes in the perception of the state in terms of its legibility, accessibility and opportunities of negotiations
