DIGITAL SURVEILLANCE AND THE ETHICS OF WELFARE ADMINISTRATION: LESSONS FROM INDIA’S AADHAAR-ENABLED STATE

Abstract

The Aadhaar biometric identification system in India is a contentious case study and a cross-section of digital surveillance, welfare management, and ethical governance, which is examined in this paper. Introduced in 2010, Aadhaar is now the largest biometric identification system in the world, with more than 1.3 billion citizens covered, and has radically changed the welfare delivery system structure in India. With the help of the analysis of empirical data, policy documents, and field studies, this study demonstrates a paradoxical system in which financial inclusion is encouraged. However, at the same time, new versions of digital exclusion are developed. This research concludes that failure rates to authenticate between 13 and 49 percent in various states have led to systematic denial of welfare benefits to the vulnerable groups, especially the elderly, women, and marginalized communities. The paper records how the shift to compulsory linking of access to basic services has established a surveillance infrastructure that has gone beyond the application of welfare service delivery to the utilization of surveillance in the private sector. The recent trends in 2025 that enable the infrastructure of Aadhaar to be accessed by private entities represent important issues of behavioral data mining, as well as the breach of privacy. The results indicate that even though Aadhaar has attained high levels of enrollment coverage (93% of the populace), its practice presents underlying conflicts between techno-efficient solutions and rights-based welfare delivery. The paper has concluded that the transformation of Aadhaar as a welfare instrument into a full-fledged surveillance machine provides important lessons to any digital identity implementation in the world and states that solid data protection policies, accountability provisions, and alternative authentication solutions to lock vulnerable groups out of essential services can help avoid the marginalization of vulnerable groups.