Programmed welfare: An ethnographic account of algorithmic practices in the public distribution system in India

Abstract

Although considered to be fixed sequence of computational procedures, the actual nature of algorithms emerges only in practice through its performative agency enacted within a network of human and non-human actors. In this article, I trace this agency in the everyday practices of the algorithmic system of welfare distribution, namely, the Aadhaar-enabled Public Distribution System (AePDS), through ethnographic fieldwork across three states in India. Conceptualising the AePDS as a programmed welfare system, I unpack its underlying assemblages to show that far from being objective technologies of governance, algorithmic sorting for targeted welfare is enacted in relation to a multitude of human actors, databases, machines, documents and shifting institutional contexts, in ways that are markedly different from its fixed computation properties. This mode of enquiry, I argue, makes the process of algorithmic enactment more transparent and comprehensible, which in turn will aid in better design and governance of such systems.