Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) Challenges: Prioritizing Workers Over Tech

April 1, 2024

Context

Recently, the Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) and its ramifications for the MGNREGS have received significant attention due to a number of concerns and issues.

Relevance for Prelims: Aadhaar Based Payment System For MGNREGS Workers, Aadhaar Card, Moody’s Report On Aadhar, and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) Annual Report.

Relevance for Mains: Challenges in ABPS and MGNREGA.

Challenges in Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) Implementation

Issues in Database Management: Despite a considerable financial allocation for MGNREGS, issues such as unrecorded working days, name duplication, linkage mistakes, and name deletion continue.
- The elimination of 5.2 crore workers from the database in 2022-23, as well as the ineligibility of 34.8% of employment card holders for Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS), indicate the scale of the problem.
Dependence on Technology: The ABPS puts rural people at the mercy of technology, emphasising technical solutions over job security.
- This strategy undermines the primary goal of MGNREGS, which is to offer socioeconomic security to rural households through wage employment.
Linking challenge: There are challenges in the project of linking rural employment guarantees to digitised individual identification systems.

Conclusion

In an era of increasing socioeconomic inequality, intensifying precarity in work, diminishing social security, and rural distress, technology can play a vital role, but it cannot be the state’s favoured child. The priority has to always remain the workers and their livelihood security.

Also Read: India Employment Report 2024: Key Highlights

Prelims PYQ (2020):

Consider the following statements:

1. Aadhaar metadata cannot be stored for more than three months.

2. State cannot enter into any contract with private corporations for sharing of Aadhaar data.

3. Aadhaar is mandatory for obtaining insurance products.

4. Aadhaar is mandatory for getting benefits funded out of the Consolidated Fund of India.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 4 only

(b) 2 and 4 only

(d) 1, 2 and 3 only

Ans: (b)

Mains Question: Examine whether the Aadhaar based Payment System (APBS) has been disadvantageous or problematic for marginalized and vulnerable groups in society. (15 Marks, 250 words)

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