77 – Digitalisation of Welfare in South Asia

October 1, 2025
1:45 pm
H14
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

Convenors

Chaudhuri Bidisha
Sandra Bärnreuther

Presentations

Welfare Delivery in Digital Mode: A Case Study of Three Schemes
Tripathi Avinash Mani - Azim Premji University, Azim Premji University, Bhopal, India
Bureaucratic drift, or how digital technology shapes redistributive projects in India
Rao Ursula - Department of Anthropology of Politics and Governance, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
When Digital Technologies Meet Land and Bureaucracy in India
N Ambujam Meenakshi - Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Leaking at seams: Politics of technological fixing in Pakistan’s cash transfers program
Mohsin Ali - Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, University of Kassel, Germany, Kassel, Germany
Digitalisation of Welfare and Pilgrimage Management: Examining the Role of Technology in Enhancing Accessibility and Equity at Mahakumbh 2025
Meena Manoj - Department of Law, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Partially Included Citizens: Variation in coverage across IDs in India
Banas Gulshan - Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Old age in the digital age: Negotiating data politics in Bangladesh’s digitalised social safety nets
Huang Juli - Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Ainan Tajrian - -
Ananya Raihan - -