Articles on 8 December 2025

Surveillance Apps in Welfare, Snake Oil for Accountability

Context

• In recent years, India has turned to digital technologies to address persistent governance failures.
• From workers photographing themselves at job sites to mandatory biometric authentication for welfare benefits, techno-centric solutions have become the default response to absenteeism, corruption, and inefficiency.
• These interventions are promoted as tools of greater accountability, yet they often shift incentives in counterproductive ways, creating new forms of manipulation, exclusion, and demotivation while leaving underlying structural problems unresolved.

The Persistent Quest for Accountability

• Technological interventions have been introduced to address issues such as absenteeism, delayed service delivery, and petty corruption.
• Biometric attendance systems exemplify this trend. They were intended to curb evasion of duty but instead reshaped work priorities.
• Officials in Jharkhand, for example, became preoccupied with marking timely attendance rather than completing essential tasks that required flexibility.
• Evidence from Rajasthan showed that biometric monitoring failed to improve attendance among nurses, and in fact reduced it over time.
• This pattern extends to welfare programmes. In MGNREGA, where inflated attendance records have long enabled wage theft, the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) mandated twice-daily photographic evidence of worker presence.
• Yet corrupt actors quickly adapted by uploading irrelevant images or photos of photos, exploiting the system’s technical loopholes.
• Official documentation later confirmed widespread misuse, demonstrating how easily such accountability systems can be manipulated.

Biometric Dependence and Its Human Costs

• Facial recognition and biometric authentication have been promoted to safeguard welfare entitlements by ensuring that benefits reach the intended recipients.
• The Ministry of Women and Child Development’s decision to make Facial Recognition Technology (FRT) compulsory for Take-Home Rations aimed to prevent diversion.
• Yet these verification procedures often burden beneficiaries, especially women in rural areas, who must grapple with poor connectivity, crowded centres, and app instability.
• More critically, successful authentication does not guarantee access to benefits. Frontline workers retain discretionary power, and beneficiaries may still be denied rations after completing the required digital steps.
• Similar issues arose with Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) in the Public Distribution System, where the elderly, disabled, and immobile were disadvantaged by rigid identity checks.
• Meanwhile, corruption persisted through methods such as recording full entitlements while distributing less. These systems frequently imposed exclusion without reducing malpractice.

Perverse Incentives and Worker Demotivation

• The use of digital monitoring to oversee frontline health workers creates further distortions.
• Auxiliary Nurses and Midwives (ANMs) must upload geo-tagged photographs to document tasks such as breastfeeding counselling.
• This produces perverse incentives, where uploading proof becomes more important than providing the service itself.
• Completing a task without digital evidence risks punishment, while superficial compliance satisfies the system.
• Cases where ANMs were reprimanded due to GPS fluctuations or connectivity issues reveal how such systems treat diligent workers with suspicion.
• Instead of encouraging sincere service, they create an environment of surveillance-driven anxiety, eroding intrinsic motivation and diminishing public-spiritedness.

Accountability vs. Responsibility

• The core problem lies in conflating accountability with responsibility.
• Accountability enforces compliance, often in mechanical ways, whereas responsibility arises from intrinsic motivation and a commitment to the public good.
• Digital tools grounded in monitoring and verification cannot cultivate this deeper sense of purpose.
• By focusing narrowly on procedural control, they overlook the need to strengthen work culture, support frontline staff, and build trust-based systems.
• This raises a fundamental question: why do so many nurses, teachers, doctors, and cleaners work diligently even in contexts with weak accountability?
• The answer lies not in surveillance, but in professional ethics, community respect, and supportive environments, factors that technology cannot replicate.

Agnotology and the Politics of Not Knowing

• Despite growing evidence of exclusion, inefficiency, privacy violations, and continued corruption, digital systems continue to expand.
• This persistence reflects a deliberate cultivation of ignorance, or agnotology.
• By disregarding the harms arising from these technologies, policymakers maintain the illusion of effectiveness.
• This ignorance aligns with the interests of technology vendors who benefit from rapidly expanding markets for surveillance infrastructure, devices, authentication services, and data systems.
• Like industries that historically obscured the harms of their products, these actors gain from framing digital tools as inevitable solutions, while structural problems remain unaddressed.

Conclusion

• While digital tools promise transparency and efficiency, they often generate exclusion, new opportunities for corruption, worker demoralisation, and privacy risks.
• They promote a narrow vision of governance where procedural compliance overshadows meaningful service.
• The refusal to confront these failures suggests institutional inertia and vested interests rather than evidence-based policymaking.
• In this context, tech-fixes function as snake oil, seductive but ineffective remedies that distract from the real work of strengthening institutions, improving work culture, and fostering responsibility among those who serve the public.

Surveillance Apps in Welfare, Snake Oil for Accountability FAQs

Q1. How do biometric systems affect access to welfare benefits?
Ans. Biometric systems can restrict access to welfare benefits by excluding people who face connectivity issues, physical limitations, or authentication failures.

Q2. What impact do surveillance apps have on frontline workers?
Ans. Surveillance apps demotivate frontline workers by prioritising documentation over genuine service and penalising them for technical issues beyond their control.

Q3. What is the difference between accountability and responsibility in public service?
Ans. Accountability enforces compliance with procedures, while responsibility reflects a worker’s intrinsic motivation to act in the public interest.

Q4. Why does the government continue promoting tech-fixes despite their failures?
Ans. The government continues promoting tech-fixes because of institutional inertia, commercial interests, and a cultivated ignorance of the harms these tools cause.

Q5. Why are tech-driven tools often ineffective in improving accountability?
Ans. Tech-driven tools are often ineffective because they can be easily manipulated and do not address the underlying structural problems in governance.

Source: The Hindu

A Black Friday for Aviation Safety in India

Context

• The government’s response to IndiGo’s flight cancellations has raised serious aviation safety concerns.
• After Indigo’s large-scale disruptions, the Civil Aviation Minister announced that DGCA’s new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules were being put under abeyance, prioritising operational stability and passenger relief.
• Earlier, the DGCA had appealed to pilots and associations to cooperate and subtly signalled a dilution of FDTL norms—despite these rules being mandated under a High Court order to address crew fatigue.
• Critics argue that these actions undermine flight safety, suggesting that India has compromised regulatory integrity to accommodate IndiGo’s commercial interests.
• This article highlights how India’s aviation safety framework has come under severe strain following IndiGo’s mass flight cancellations, exposing long-standing regulatory weaknesses, chronic understaffing, dilution of safety norms.

A Pattern of Diluting Safety Measures

• The DGCA had introduced a strong Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) in 2007 to address crew fatigue and ensure adequate rest.
• However, airline owners objected, and the Civil Aviation Ministry ordered the DGCA to keep the CAR in abeyance. In May 2008, the DGCA formally suspended the regulation.
• This set a long-standing pattern: commercial interests consistently outweighing crew fatigue and aviation safety.
• Judicial Intervention and Reversal
  • Pilot unions challenged the 2008 order in the Bombay High Court.
  • The Court initially granted interim relief and criticised the Ministry and DGCA for:
    • Endangering pilot and passenger safety
    • Arbitrarily increasing pilot duty hours
    • Prioritising airline profits over safety
  • The Court said airlines should reduce flights if pilot shortages existed.
  • Yet, in a surprising turn, the same High Court later reversed its stance and upheld the Ministry’s decision.

IndiGo and DGCA Ignored a Long-Known Deadline

• The new FDTL rules were known more than a year in advance, with a clear implementation date of November 1, 2025.
• Despite this, both IndiGo and the DGCA failed to prepare, resulting in nationwide chaos and thousands of stranded passengers.
• Refunds may be issued, but passengers’ losses from hotels, transport, and missed commitments remain uncompensated.

Underlying Structural Problem: Chronic Understaffing

• The root of the crisis links back to DGCA’s own requirement (CAR Series C, Part II, Section 3) issued in April 2022, which mandates:
  • At least three sets of crew per aircraft
  • All crew holding valid DGCA licences and endorsements
• The regulation exists on paper, but enforcement has been lax.
• Airlines—including IndiGo—operate with lean staffing models, making them vulnerable to even small regulatory changes and exposing deeper systemic weaknesses.
  • Even under the older and already inadequate FDTL rules, airlines were required to maintain at least six pilot sets per domestic aircraft and twelve for long-haul widebody aircraft.
  • However, airlines — particularly IndiGo — appear to have understaffed intentionally, exploiting gaps in the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR).

ICAO’s Long-Standing Warning on India’s Aviation Oversight

• The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) warned in 2006 that India needed an independent aviation authority, not one controlled by the government.
• Eighteen years later, the prediction appears validated: DGCA’s oversight has weakened, and airlines operate with the confidence that violations will be overlooked.

December 2025: A Clear Example of Collapsed Oversight

• Recently, in December 2025, two contradictory actions exposed the regulatory breakdown:
  • DGCA appealed to pilots to cooperate with the existing FDTL rules (mandated by the High Court).
  • Hours later, the Ministry suspended those very rules, enabling IndiGo to continue operating without meeting safety-critical crew requirements.
• This amounted to government-sanctioned dilution of safety norms, unprecedented even in developing aviation systems.
• IndiGo has failed to comply with earlier CAR requirements for more than a year, yet the Ministry’s latest order gives the airline until February 10, 2026 to fall in line.
• Given past behaviour, it is unrealistic to expect compliance within two months.
• Further extensions are likely, compromising passenger safety and perpetuating a system where airlines face no meaningful accountability.

Aviation Safety Still Ignored Despite Past Crashes

• India has witnessed three major aviation disasters since 2010 — in Mangaluru, Kozhikode, and Ahmedabad — yet meaningful lessons have not been learned.
• The Air India AI 171 crash report remains inexplicably delayed by the Ministry.
• Even as IndiGo assures that operations will stabilise in 10–15 days, safety has sunk to its lowest point, with flying in India reduced to being “on a wing and a prayer.”
• Despite constant official claims that “safety is paramount,” the decisions taken on December 5, 2025, particularly the dilution of FDTL rules, demonstrate that aviation safety in India remains more myth than reality.

A Black Friday for Aviation Safety in India FAQs

Q1. What triggered fresh concerns about aviation safety in India?

Ans. IndiGo’s mass cancellations and the government’s decision to suspend new FDTL rules exposed systemic safety failures, weak oversight, and prioritisation of airline operations over pilot fatigue management.

Q2. Why is the dilution of FDTL rules considered dangerous?

Ans. FDTL rules prevent pilot fatigue, a major safety risk. Diluting them undermines global safety standards and allows airlines to operate without adequate crew rest.

Q3. How did regulatory lapses worsen the crisis?

Ans. Despite a year’s notice, both IndiGo and DGCA failed to prepare for new rules, ignoring chronic understaffing and allowing unsafe operational practices to persist unchecked.

Q4. What structural issues underlie India’s aviation safety problems?

Ans. Airlines routinely understaff crew, DGCA weakly enforces CAR requirements, and ICAO’s call for an independent regulator remains unaddressed for nearly two decades.

Q5. Why does the article argue that accountability is lacking?

Ans. Repeated dilution of safety norms, inconsistent judicial decisions, and tolerance of violations have created a system where airlines face no real consequences for compromising safety.

Source: TH

Towards Regional Climate Multilateralism in South Asia

Context

• The message from COP30 (UN Climate Change Conference held in Belém, Brazil) is unequivocal: the world has overshot the 1.5°C warming threshold, and the remaining window for effective climate action is rapidly closing.
• The Paris Agreement, while norm-setting, has failed to generate the scale of ambition, finance, and collective action required—especially for climate-vulnerable regions.
• In this backdrop, there is a growing demand for a Global South–led climate multilateralism, with South Asia emerging as a critical region for cooperative climate action.

Why South Asia Needs a Regional Climate Approach

• By 2050, South Asia could suffer losses of nearly 1.8% of annual GDP due to extreme heat, sea-level rise, floods and droughts.
• The region also faces irreversible losses to lives, livelihoods, ecosystems, and cultural traditions.
• Interconnected ecosystems (Himalayas, monsoons, river basins, coastal systems) make unilateral action insufficient.
• Therefore, collective regional action offers scale, efficiency, and resilience.

Proposal - South Asian Climate Cooperation Council (SACCC)

• A dedicated regional institutional mechanism to enable mutually beneficial climate action.
• Inspired by precedents of crisis-led regional cooperation -
  • Quad (post-2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami)
  • Cooperation during Nepal earthquake and Maldives water crisis
• Past failures of SAARC-style institutions should not deter innovation in climate governance.

Existing Foundation - Energy Cooperation

• 2014 SAARC Framework Agreement for Energy Cooperation laid groundwork for cross-border electricity trade.
• Operational Nepal–India–Bangladesh trilateral power transaction is a testimony of this agreement.
• The One Sun One World One Grid (OSOWOG) provides scope for regional renewable energy pooling among India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
• This energy cooperation demonstrates that functional regionalism is possible.

Three Pillars of the Proposed SACCC

• Regional knowledge and innovation hub

  • Network of co-managed centres across South Asia leveraging complementary strengths -
    • Maldives: Coastal climate resilience, coral restoration, fisheries, maritime renewables.
    • Sri Lanka: 30×30 conservation target; Life to Our Mangroves promotes nature-based solutions.
    • Bhutan: Gelephu Mindful City depicts sustainable and mindful urbanisation.
    • India: Mission LiFE promotes behavioural change; technical expertise in renewable energy and grid integration.
  • Focus areas: Adaptation, mitigation, nature-based solutions, sustainable urban transitions.

• South Asia green climate finance facility

  • Climate action hinges on accessible and predictable finance.
  • A regional facility could -
    • Pool domestic and international resources
    • Enhance absorptive capacity for global climate funds
    • Build a pipeline of bankable, high-priority projects
  • In collaboration with ADB, World Bank, Green Climate Fund, it could -
    • Issue green bonds
    • Provide risk-mitigation instruments
    • Structure regional project portfolios to crowd in private climate investment
  • This could address chronic climate finance gaps in the Global South.

• Scientific commission for South Asia

  • An independent, evidence-based body to -
    • Define the type, scale, and speed of climate action required
    • Identify low-cost, high-impact interventions
    • Promote R&D and data-sharing
    • Leverage institutional excellence across countries
  • This will be similar in spirit to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but region-specific and action-oriented.

Key Challenges and Way Forward

• Political distrust and weak regional institutions: Build trust through pilot projects and crisis-response cooperation.
• Uneven technical and financial capacities: Align SACCC goals with SDGs, NDCs, and Loss & Damage mechanisms.
• Fragmented data and scientific coordination: Decouple climate cooperation from geopolitical rivalries. Ensure inclusive Global South leadership in climate governance.
• Risk of duplication with global institutions: Begin with functional cooperation (energy, disasters, finance) rather than grand treaties.

Conclusion

• South Asia stands at a climate crossroads. With shared vulnerabilities, interlinked ecosystems, and mounting economic risks, regional climate multilateralism is no longer optional but essential.
• A homegrown initiative like the SACCC—anchored in knowledge-sharing, climate finance, and scientific guidance—can transform climate vulnerability into collective resilience.
• Such cooperation can not only advance climate security but also foster peaceful coexistence and sustainable prosperity in one of the world’s most climate-exposed regions.

Climate Multilateralism in South Asia FAQs

Q1. Why is there a growing demand for Global South–led climate multilateralism, particularly in South Asia?

Ans. Because the Paris Agreement has failed to generate adequate ambition while South Asia faces disproportionate climate losses.

Q2. What is the rationale behind proposing a South Asian Climate Cooperation Council (SACCC)?

Ans. SACCC aims to pool regional resources, knowledge, finance, and technology to address transboundary climate risks.

Q3. How does cross-border energy cooperation strengthen the case for regional climate multilateralism in South Asia?

Ans. Existing initiatives like the SAARC Energy Framework, Nepal–India–Bangladesh power trade, show that functional regional cooperation is feasible.

Q4. What role can a South Asia Green Climate Finance Facility play in accelerating climate action?

Ans. It can enhance access to climate finance by pooling resources, issuing green bonds, mitigating risks, and creating bankable regional projects.

Q5. What is the significance of a regional scientific commission for climate governance in South Asia?

Ans. It would provide evidence-based guidance, promote data sharing, and provide climate solutions tailored to the region.

Source: IE