Degenerative outcomes of digital identity platforms for development
通过研究印度Aadhaar数字身份平台纳入粮食安全计划后的案例，发现该平台在获取、监测和政策三个层面导致系统退化，表现为排斥、扭曲和转向，使补贴物资分配被现金转移替代。
Abstract Digital identity platforms are widely regarded as important means to improve social protection systems. Yet these platforms have been implicated in the production of a range of unintended outcomes for development beneficiaries. To clarify how digital identity platforms enable the production of one such outcome that we call degenerative , because it causes target systems to deteriorate, we conduct a case study of the incorporation of Aadhaar, the world's largest digital identity platform, in India's primary food security scheme. Based on the data from two South Indian states, we show how the incorporation produced degenerative effects in the access , monitoring , and policy layers of the social protection system. These effects lead us to theorise how Aadhaar enabled the degenerative outcome via exclusion , distortion, and redirection , making public distribution of subsidised goods displaceable in favour of cash transfers.