Biographies of Biometric Devices: The POS Machine at Work in India's PDS

Abstract

The centrality of the biometric point of sale (POS) machine in the administration of food security in Indian's public distribution system (PDS) invites scrutiny for its primacy as a non-negotiable artifact in the monthly PDS process. In this paper, I critically examine how the POS machine emerges as a site for varying imaginaries of a technologically-mediated welfare system for the three primary stakeholders of the PDS, consisting of the beneficiaries, dealers, and state administrators. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper traces the histories of interaction and portraitures that the three stakeholders bring to their description and interpretation of the POS machine. It shows that an active POS machine provokes the stakeholders in the PDS to view it as an artifact that invites engagement on practical, moral, and knowledge dimensions. The varying ‘biographies’ that stakeholders narrate of the POS machine, collectively reveal the design, disposition, and functioning of a social justice infrastructure that rests on the compulsions of biometric technologies to improve inclusion and deter corruption in welfare delivery.