The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South DBT framework, and an expanding ecosystem of API-driven services under the IndiaStack. Both state and private actors interchangeably drop loaded terms like “transparency”, “efficiency”, “accountability”, “freedom”, “flexibility” and “innovation” in the name of public welfare and social good. Yet it has also normalized a new political economy of welfare, one in which public goods are reimagined as digital infrastructure, employer-employee relationships are mediated through digital platforms, and the boundaries between justifications for inclusion, surveillance, and exclusion become increasingly blurred. Positioning technology as both the means and the end of governance reform, the state and its private partners have advanced a set of recurring justifications for these interventions. Six stated intentions, in particular, have framed the deployment of digital systems across labour and welfare domains: • • • • Positioning technology as both the means and the end of governance reform, the state and its private partners have advanced a set of recurring justifications for these interventions. 90 • • Legitimacy and Targeting – to ensure that entitlements reach the “correct” person and eliminate fraud Efficiency and Convenience – to reduce bureaucratic friction and deliver services directly “at the door step” Transparency and Accountability – to use data to track performance and curb corruption Flexibility and Autonomy – to empower individuals through choice Inclusion and Empowerment – to integrate the poor into formal digital and financial systems Innovation and Modernization – to establish India as a global model of digital public infrastructure and “unlock” value and potential. The following sections interrogate these narratives by examining how digital infrastructures, across MGNREGA, platform-based gig work, and street vending reshape access to livelihoods and entitlements, redefine accountability, and reconfigure the social contract between labour, state, and society at large. It fundamentally reconstitutes how workers access livelihoods, how entitlements flow, and where accountability resides when systems fail. Platformed Lives: Technology, Accountability, and the Reshaping of Everyday Work The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South MGNREGA: The State’s Laboratory for Plugging Technology at Scale MGNREGA, the world’s largest public employment guarantee programme spending about 12 billion USD annually is implemented through an integrated management information system (MIS) called NREGASoft. Intended as a tool for transparency and accountability, its pathbreaking potential lay in the public investment that was channeled towards building a real-time, transaction-based digital platform that would not only help administer all aspects of the programme but also disclose crucial information relating to job card registration, muster roll issuance, wage payments and so on. In the process, however, the State has also managed to selectively shape it as a tool to manipulate information and deny workers their rights guaranteed by law. For instance, the MGNREG Act provides for compensation to be paid to workers if wages are delayed beyond the statutory period of 15 days, wherein Stage 1 (8 days) involves generation of the Fund Transfer Order (FTO) by the State Government and Stage 2 (7 days) involves processing of the FTO and payment of wages by the Central Government. The MIS, though, has been coded in a manner that the completion of Stage 1 i.e., FTO generation, is misleadingly shown as payment of wages to the worker. Only Stage 1 delays, which is the responsibility of the State Government, are publicly visible on the MIS. Whereas delays in Stage 2 , which involves the actual crediting of wages into the worker’s account and is the responsibility of the Central Government, are neither calculated nor displayed. The misrepresentation is deliberately built into the system to hide the liability of the Central Government from the public. Similarly for unemployment allowance, which is statutorily mandated to be paid if work is not provided within 15 days of a worker demanding it. Yet again, the MIS has been selectively engineered to calculate and show unemployment allowance in respect of only those workers whom it has actually been paid to, despite there being other workers who may be eligible but have not been paid. Given both work demand and muster The MIS has been selectively engineered to calculate and show unemployment allowance in respect of only those workers whom it has actually been paid to, despite there being other workers who may be eligible but have not been paid. Platformed Lives: Technology, Accountability, and the Reshaping of Everyday Work 91