Representing the adarsh biometric balak or the ideal biometric child: locating poor children’s care work in the Aadhaar welfare state

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article spotlights the role of children from poor, underprivileged families who are drawn into care work to facilitate inclusion for their families in food security by performing fingerprint authentication. Owing to the youthful suppleness of their bodies, children’s fingerprints are more likely to succeed in fulfilling biometric requirements. They are also more compliant in having their schooling or playtime disrupted by the unpredictable and time-consuming biometric authentication process. Children’s names may also be added on ration cards to facilitate food security for relatives other than their parents who depend on the biometric viability of children’s bodies and time for welfare. Supplementing ethnographic data with the state’s data of the biometric authentications recorded in the Aadhaar database of India, I make visible the poor child as an ‘ideal biometric child’ in enabling the biometric assemblage of the welfare state to care for its citizens.