The village and ward volunteer system in Andhra Pradesh, launched by the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) government in 2019, has come under attack from opposition parties, the Jana Sena Party and Telugu Desam Party (TDP). TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu has alleged on multiple occasions that the volunteers (whose job is to provide last-mile governance and access to welfare schemes) are being used by the YSRCP to also conduct activities that benefit the party. Now, Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan has alleged that the household level data of citizens collected by the volunteers, particularly that of welfare scheme beneficiaries, is being misused, and raised concerns of data security. Naidu cautioned people about sharing personal information with volunteers, while Pawan Kalyan declared that his party would move court against the volunteer system to protect personal data and privacy.
“Volunteers are entering homes and collecting people’s personal information on the pretext of providing various benefits. They are even asking women if they suspect their husbands are having extramarital affairs. They are asking men what the women in their families are doing outside the home… Isn’t this wrong? Privacy [is important]… Why do they need our personal information?” Naidu asked on Friday, July 14, while flagging off a procession focused on women’s welfare at the TDP headquarters in Mangalagiri. It’s unclear what kind of data inputs Naidu was talking about. However, information related to individuals’ sex and marital lives including number of sex partners, instances of polygamy, domestic violence and attitudes towards contraception, etc. are gathered as part of the National Family Health Survey conducted by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. While village and ward volunteers are not involved in these surveys, as part of an education survey, volunteers were able to gather details of individuals’ marital status.
The recent controversy erupted after actor-politician Pawan Kalyan made the sensational claim that volunteers in Andhra Pradesh were surveilling residents and targeting women living alone, to hand them over to “anti-social forces” who were kidnapping them. However, he has failed to furnish evidence to back these alarmist claims so far. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures that Pawan Kalyan cited for untraced missing women too are way above the official numbers for Andhra Pradesh. While he claimed that 17,000 to 18,000 missing women were untraced, as per NCRB figures for 2021, 474 minor girls and 2,711 adult women remained untraced in the state, including those reported missing in previous years.
Claims of human trafficking aside, concerns over misuse of citizens’ data gathered under e-governance initiatives aren’t new to Andhra Pradesh. Such large-scale comprehensive collection of socio-economic data was first carried out in the state in 2016, under the previous TDP government, in the name of the Andhra Pradesh Smart Pulse Survey conducted statewide. Surveyors carrying smartphones carried out an eKYC (electronic Know Your Customer, a process by which a person’s identity and address are verified digitally with Aadhaar authentication) targeting nearly socio-economic data of 1.48 crore households in the state. The survey entries were also matched with the State Resident Data Hub (SRDH), an Aadhaar-linked repository of citizens’ data to create ‘360-degree profiles’ of residents.
Clusters of 50 households were first created as part of this survey, and a similar mechanism is now used by village and ward volunteers too. Under the Smart Pulse Survey, officials used an app to collect various data points of residents to build the Andhra Pradesh government’s ‘360-degree profile’ database on residents in the name of ePragati, an authority which enables e-governance for providing citizen services and welfare schemes.
Now, village and ward volunteers are using various state government apps, including the Grama Ward Sachivalayam Volunteer Mobile Application, to gather citizens’ data.
Here’s a look at the kind of data inputs sought by each of these apps, based on the mobile app code.
The following code shows the parameters collected as part of the Smart Pulse Survey. The information sought in the app used for this survey includes the individual’s occupation, address, phone number, Aadhaar number (UID), any agricultural vehicle owned, electricity bill, ration ID, their possessions including land, vehicle, refrigerator etc., whether they hold any government job, whether they pay income tax, etc.
Code showing parameters collected under Smart Pulse Survey in 2016
This information became the foundation for deciding who should receive government welfare schemes. The information on income tax status, electricity consumption, land and vehicle ownership, having a government job etc. were used as the criteria for exclusion from government welfare schemes.
But the volunteer system is not just about welfare schemes. The data collected by village and ward volunteers is now used for day-to-day governance as well. Volunteers have been roped in to carry out varied surveys related to COVID-19, education, health, livestock etc. usually carried out by individual departments for governance activities. The volunteers use an app for these surveys, and code from the Grama Ward Sachivalayam Volunteer Mobile Application shows the kind of data they have been authorised to gather.
Each of the 50 (or more) households allocated to the volunteer are listed on the app, with the volunteers expected to reverify the household details once every 6 months using Aadhaar eKYC. Each household member’s information is collected with their name, household ID, Aadhaar number (UID), date of birth, mobile number, gender and door number.
The code also shows that the volunteers can use the app to find out who is the head of the household and which family members are living in the household.
The volunteers are also authorised to collect photos of the household members, geotagged with GPS location as part of these surveys.
The volunteers are also able to gather details of citizens’ religion, caste and even sub-caste.
As part of the education survey, the volunteers were able to gather details of individuals’ marital status along with other personal data already being collected.
The education survey collected the following details of individuals’ education and employment status — educational qualification, whether they know how to read and write, whether they have dropped out in the middle of their education and their reason for doing so.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the volunteers were the agents of last-mile governance, identifying people’s health status, distributing masks and even identifying vaccination status of individuals. These are the health parameters volunteers were expected to collect using their app — including information on various non-communicable diseases, HIV/AIDS status, pregnancy, etc.
This data is a lot more detailed than what was asked in the Union government apps designed for citizens — AarogyaSetu (for contact tracing and self-assessment) and CoWIN (for vaccination). Earlier in June, a massive data breach came to light when the private information of lakhs of citizens who had used the CoWIN app to get their COVID-19 vaccine was leaked by a Telegram bot. Delhi police have arrested a man and his minor brother from Bihar over the data breach.
Beyond these surveys, volunteers were also authorised to collect information related to regular welfare services including distribution of ration, pension, insurance, etc.
As part of the state government's activities to promote livelihoods for people with livestock, the volunteer app lists code to collect information on dairy animals — a livestock census of sorts.
The app also includes a questionnaire on local governance, on access to various civic services such as garbage collection, cleaning of roads and canals, water supply, functioning street lights etc.
There are more functions that are part of the app, which are primarily directed towards the state government’s welfare schemes such as Amma Vodi (financial incentive for mothers of school-going children), Manabadi Nadu Nedu (an infrastructure revamping scheme for schools), YSR Nethanna Nestham (financial incentive to handloom weavers), etc.
Apart from these, the app code suggests that the state government also collected information about the volunteers themselves, including the Whatsapp groups the volunteer is part of and whether the volunteer is reading a newspaper from the funds allocated for the same. I am not trying to put out the entire code here, but just enough to show the kind of information that is being collected from only one app — the Grama Ward Sachivalayam Volunteer Mobile Application, out of numerous mobile applications used by various government departments and even citizens in Andhra Pradesh.
This is how the Andhra Pradesh government is collecting citizen’s data as part of their e-governance initiatives. Compared to a traditional census and survey, here the information is being collected continuously. There’s a lack of privacy that us guaranteed in anonymises census and statistical surveys, where only summarised data is shared with government departments. Now, government departments have access to profiles of every individual with constant collection of personal data linked with their Aadhaar.
A major concern with such large scale data collection is possible voter profiling — the fear that volunteers possibly working on behalf of YSRCP tracking different needs of people to target them during elections. Ahead of the 2019 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the TDP itself was accused of data theft. A private firm called IT Grids which had developed the TDP’s official app Seva Mitra was booked for voter data theft, for allegedly stealing data related to Aadhaar, electoral rolls and beneficiaries of government schemes from the government database to help improve TDP’s election outcomes.
This article is published under Creative Commons Attribution – No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)