Aiyar, Yamini and  Sircar, Neelanjan <br/><br/>
Technology for votes: Techno-patrimonialism and the rise of competitive welfarism in India 

 - Economic & Political Weekly   
 - 59(48), Nov 30, 2024: p.79-86 
<br/><br/> India has had a dramatic scale-up in the use of technology for welfare delivery, especially in the direct benefit transfer of cash and in-kind benefits. Technology disintermediates traditional political structures and centralises political attribution into the personal authority of party leaders. The paper calls this phenomenon as “techno-patrimonialism” and examines its implications on citizenship and democracy, using data from the Indian Election Survey 2024. It demonstrates how this model, propagated by the centre, has been duplicated at the state level, leading to an era of “competitive welfare” that attenuates the electoral dividend for the Bharatiya Janata Party.- Reproduced <br/><br/>https://www.epw.in/journal/2024/48/general-elections-2024/technology-votes.html<br/>