Modi govt should "stop weaponising technology", especially Aadhaar: Congress

The Congress on Monday slammed the Narendra Modi government and said it should stop weaponising technology especially Aadhaar to deny the most vulnerable Indians their social welfare benefits The statement comes after reports of Aadhaarbased system becoming mandatory for MGNREGA paymentsThe opposition party also condemned it and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modis wellknown disdain for MGNREGA has translated into a slew of experiments designed to use technology as a weapon to exclude newswire PTI reportedIn a statement Congress general secretary incharge communications Jairam Ramesh said the fifth extension of the deadline set by the Ministry of Rural Development MoRD to mandate the payments for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act MGNREGA through the AadhaarBased Payment System ABPS ended on December 31 2023There are in total 2569 crore MGNREGA workers of whom 1433 crore are considered as active workers As on December 27 348 per cent of total registered workers 89 crore and 127 per cent of active workers 18 crore are still ineligible for ABPS Ramesh saidDespite many challenges highlighted by workers practitioners and researchers in using ABPS for MGNREGA wage payments the Modi government has continued with its destructive experiments with technology he saidThis is prime ministers cruel new year gift to exclude crores of the poorest and marginalised Indians from earning a basic income he allegedRamesh pointed out that a statement issued by the MoRD dated August 30 2023 made certain questionable claims such as job cards will not be deleted on the basis that the worker is not eligible for APBS and that different stakeholders in certain consultations have found ABPS as the best route for making wage paymentIt also claimed that ABPS helps workers get their wage on time and avoids transaction rejections Ramesh notedAlso readNo confusion on seatsharing among INDIA bloc allies for 2024 Lok Sabha elections NCP MP Supriya SuleFirst since April 2022 an alarming 76 crore registered workers were deleted from the system 19 crore registered workers were deleted from the system nine months into the current financial year Ground verification of deleted workers has shown that a significant number of deletions have been wrongfully done as a result of the tearing hurry of the Modi government to implement Aadhaar authentication and ABPS he allegedRamesh said the ministry must clarify who these stakeholders were and when these consultations were heldIn fact the Modi government has turned a deaf ear to the multiple concerns from numerous delegations on the implementation of ABPS and other technological interventions he claimedThe MoRDs claims regarding the increase in payment efficiency with the ABPS which remain unsubstantiated have been thoroughly debunked by a LibTech India working paper The study analysed 32 crore wage transactions to demonstrate that there is no statistically significant difference in the time taken to process account and Aadhaar based payments by the Union government he saidThe working paper also shows that the difference in rejection rates between ABPS and the accountbased payments is statistically negligible he addedThe PMs wellknown disdain for MGNREGA has translated into a slew of experiments designed to use technology as a weapon to exclude such as the digital attendance NMMS ABPS drone monitoring and the proposed integration of facial recognition to NMMS Ramesh allegedNo due consultation or scientific piloting was done before unleashing these experiments on crores of Indians he claimedThe Indian National Congress reiterates its demand of August 30 2023 that the Modi government should stop weaponising technology especially Aadhaar to deny the most vulnerable Indians their social welfare benefits release delayed wage payments and implement open muster rolls and social audits to improve transparency Ramesh said in his statement With inputs from PTI