Publication Date
January 2019
Publisher
New York: NYU Press
Language
English
Type
Book Chapter
Book Title
Spaces of Security. Ethnographies of Securityscapes, Surveillance and Control
Editors
Setha Low and Mark Maguire
Pages
231–252
Additional Information
About the Book Chapter
This chapter analyzes the changing logic and logistics of welfare security in the biometric governance era. Power is exercised spatially, and in modern nation-states it follows a model Gupta and Ferguson call “vertical encompassment”. Citizens are cared for by institutions that communicate hierarchically. Information about needs travels upwards, from district and state to national statistics, and eventually it informs decisions at central government offices, where funds are disbursed downwards through the hierarchical channels of the welfare state. The system requires permanently settled citizens. Therefore, it works badly for itinerant citizens who travel seasonally for work. Biometric governance promises to improve the system by rendering data mobile and thus permitting citizens to identify and collect welfare anywhere. Using the case study of India’s biometric National Health Insurance (RSBY), the chapter examines an emerging securityscape that creatively combines old and new ways of managing welfare distribution. While doing so, it confronts all participants with the difficulty of combining the protection of the integrity of state structures with the imperative to care for citizens and ensure survival. Regardless the technology, securitization of the state undermines the goal of inclusiveness challenging policy makers to either abandon their welfare aspirations or relax surveillance.
About the Author
Prof. Dr. Ursula Rao (SFB 1199 & Leipzig University)
Ursula Rao is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. Her research explores questions of politics and governance in India, with a specific focus on urban dynamics. Currently, she is involved in several research projects about the social consequences of biometric technology and e-governance. How do the new tools and techniques of governing impact human relations and state-citizens interactions? Other fields of interests include question of urban citizenship and social justice, as well as journalistic practices, ritual theory and urban Hinduism.
Before joining the University of Leipzig Ursula Rao held academic positions at the University of Heidelberg (1999-2002), the University of Halle (2002-2006) and the University of New South Wales, Sydney (2007-2012).