'Stop weaponising tech': Congress slams Central govt for making Aadhaar 'mandatory' for MGNREGA payments
MGNREGA workers reportedly to be done only through an Aadhaar-based system, the Congress on Monday hit out at the Central government, saying that it should «stop weaponising technology», especially Aadhaar, to deny the most vulnerable Indians their social welfare benefits.
Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said the Modi government is continuing with the 'destructive experiments with technology' as the Ministry of Rural Development did not extend the December 31 deadline for implementing Aadhaar-Based Payment System (ABPS), which requires Aadhaar details of workers to be seeded to job cards.
In a statement, Ramesh said that there are 25.69 crore MGNREGA workers of which 14.33 crore are considered active workers and of this, 34.8 per cent (8.9 crore) and 12.7 per cent (1.8 crore) respectively are ineligible for ABPS. He said the government has gone ahead with it despite workers, practitioners and researchers having highlighted the problems.
«The Prime Minister's well-known 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.
