In India, an algorithm declares them dead ; they have to prove they’re alive | Technology

A few publicly available government documents, however, provide a peek into the workings of the programme.

To build the database, the government first collected demographic and identity data of the families, including their Aadhaar numbers, the biometric-based unique identity number assigned to every Indian citizen, their age proof, bank accounts, and tax identification numbers through data-entry operators at the village level.

A centralised electronic system then used Aadhaar-based authentication to match the identities of citizens in other government databases such as birth and death registries, land and property records, government employee databases, electricity consumption, and income tax return databases, among others, to build their comprehensive socioeconomic profiles.

This data was then used to “electronically” verify the annual income, age and other eligibility conditions of the applicants. Where electronic verification was not possible due to the unavailability of data, physical field verification was carried out. In cases where the physical verification did not pan out, the family income is derived by “logic-based artificial intelligence [AI].”

The chief minister’s office and the departments administering the PPP and the old-age pension schemes did not respond to Al Jazeera’s queries asking about the logic, formula and source code used by the AI. Neither did it clarify if the errors in the PPP were a result of wrong data entry or incorrect predictions by the AI. The government has also not responded to Dhuli Chand’s RTI query asking the authorities to explain why PPP had marked him as “dead.”

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