Old age in the digital age: Negotiating data politics in Bangladesh’s digitalised social safety nets

Abstract

This paper contributes to the literature on human mediation within digitalised social protection programs by considering the role of data practices in digital-social encounters in Bangladesh’s Old Age Allowance programme. Because all data relations are political relations (Bowker & Star 2020), how and whose data is collected, ingested into databases, verified against other databases, communicated back to beneficiaries, misused by officials, and intercepted by fraudsters has tremendous implications for beneficiary (dis)empowerment. The study examines how data practices reorganise power dynamics and what this means for data justice (Masiero & Das 2019), inclusive development, and public service delivery. By looking specifically at data, this approach considers what is continuous in addition to what is new, as citizens have long been datafied in non-digital ways. Findings reveal that digitalised social welfare delivery creates new data injustices: increased social dependencies across age and gender, enduring exclusionary effects of data-input errors, reduced accountability and transparency, and new vulnerability to data misuse and fraud.