Hello, I am Preeti Mudliar from the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore.
I am presenting my paper ‘Biographies of Biometric Devices:
The POS Machine at Work in India’s PDS. The PDS is the public distribution system for
food security in India that distributes monthly entitlements to beneficiaries.
In 2016, the state of Rajasthan, where this study was conducted, with several other states,
introduced Aadhaar – India’s biometric identity infrastructure to govern all PDS transactions.
Aadhaar replaced the paper ledger that PDS dealers would use to record transactions
with point of sale devices or POS machines as they are popularly known.
authenticate their fingerprints on the POS machine to receive their
food entitlements from the dealers. The state reasoned that using biometrics
would lead to targeted inclusion of beneficiaries and curb corruption in the PDS.
I began studying the PDS in 2017 approximately a year after POS machines were introduced.
In a CHI 2020 paper, I show how infrastructural disruptions and biometric rejections cause
value conflicts for adults and they are forced to pass on the responsibility for
biometric authentication to their children, affecting their schooling and play times.
Drawing on economist Amartya Sen’s conceptualization of justice,
which he explains using the Sanskrit terms niti and nyaya
and the philosopher Onora O’Neill’s principle of non-coercion in designing
hunger solutions for the poor, I present that technological design for social justice
should also be mindful of translating into a fair and just experience for users.
In this CHI 2021 paper, I view the PDS through the POS machine, to ask what it reveals about
the design and administration of a social justice program. I observe that the POS machine acts as
an essential boundary object of public policy and governance between three key stakeholders
of the PDS |
First, it is used by the beneficiaries to perform fingerprint authentication
Second, it serves as a record of all the transactions undertaken by the dealer
And third, the machine allows the state to track all data and transactions in real time
Given the significance of the POS machine for the three stakeholders, I adopt a biographical
lens to enquire what the POS machine means to each of them. I argue that the POS machine is an
infrastructural translation of a biometric-based welfare state and represents the discourse of
biometrics as a humanitarian technology that is often championed by aid organizations.
I conducted fieldwork in rural Ajmer in Rajasthan from 2017-2019. It included interviews and
observations at 14 PDS shops across 10 villages and observing the biometric transactions of 136
beneficiaries. I interviewed eight district and state authorities in Ajmer district and in
the state capital Jaipur and I also filed a Right to Information application for age related data
on PDS biometric transactions. My findings are organized around
three biographies: the practical, the moral, and the knowledge
The practical biography surfaces the labor of the three stakeholders on the POS machine. It
contains narratives of inconvenience from dealers and beneficiaries, while state representatives frame
their labor on the POS machine as an achievement that contributes to nation building.
The second biography invokes morality and discusses the POS machine as a site of
contestation about corruption in the PDS The third biography discusses the knowledge
claims of data and transparency generated by the POS machine and how the state and beneficiaries
view and value these claims very differently So what do biographies of the POS machine reveal
about the PDS? I am highlighting two points and I hope you will read the paper for more.
First, in its design and functioning, the POS machine primarily satisfies the state’s practical,
moral, and knowledge requirements, but not that of the beneficiaries and dealers.
This renders the POS machine’s design exclusive to the state’s needs.
Second, state representatives often foreground the scale
and the large volume of transactions that the POS machines processes every month
as proof of the successful functioning of biometrics in the PDS.
The preoccupation with scale minimizes challenges faced by the actual end users of the POS machines, who are
the beneficiaries and dealers, as outliers, aberrations, or excuses for corruption.
In conclusion, the biographies of the POS machine reveal that the boundaries of inclusion
in the PDS are very narrowly defined. Currently, the POS machine’s record of a
successful biometric authentication, at the very end of the PDS process is
counted as proof of inclusion. This discounts the challenges and
exclusions that beneficiaries face in their POS machine interactions.
Moving the point, where inclusion in the PDS takes place, to the beginning of the design process,
would ensure that the POS machines biographies by end users are also accounted for in the
technology design of a program that seeks to fulfill a social justice agenda by offering
protection against hunger. Thank you for watching. For
feedback and questions please write to me at preeti.mudliar@iiitb.ac.in