Practices on Aarogya Setu: Mapping Citizen Interaction with the Contact-Tracing App in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

The usage of contact-tracing applications has been synonymous with ensuring one's health security and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. These contact-tracing apps have been scripted differently by each country, within design choices of centralized vs. decentralized architecture, closed vs. open-source protocol and collecting location vs. proximity data features. The distinct script of contact-tracing apps caters to the contextual background of each country with a presupposition about on-ground and consistent usage of the app. The article explores the ways in which citizens in India negotiate the usage of the Aarogya Setu digital contact-tracing app. It reveals citizens' on-ground practices of adopting or evading the app usage, besides reflecting on the broader institutional shortcomings that shape the scepticism towards technological solutionism in critical health exigencies. Three such practices are identified and thematically presented as resistance by early deletion, resistance by selective adoption and constrained adoption. The findings steer concerns regarding user-friendly designs and revisiting governance structures before deploying any technological solutionism by the state. Here, the paper attempts to reverse the gaze and explore how citizens'(in)effective adoption of the Aarogya Setu app not only responds but also challenges the norm of digital contact-tracing solutionism.

Keywords:

• Aarogya Setu contact-tracing apps
• technological solutionism
• pandemic
• trust
• (dis)affordances

1 Introduction

A surfeit of expeditious measures to sustain a prompt and tangible record of the spread of the novel “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV-2) virus fuelled many technological solutions worldwide. Internationally, the World Health Organization (WHO) steered countries by explicating the four pillars of testing, isolation, tracing, and treatment during the pandemic (Lacina 2020). Concomitantly, the unforeseeable sweep of the virus and the public fluster justified legislative actions to precipitate a nationwide lockdown and adopt self-assessment contact-tracing applications (hereafter, app) in India. In line with the strategy of “test, track, and trace”(Lacina 2020), the contact-tracing apps deployed as a technological response to the pandemic primarily aid in “syndromic mapping” and logically flatten the curve through path tracing and movement patterns of COVID-19 positive patients (Iyengar et al. 2021). Not long ago, the practice of contact tracing and control measures was revamped during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-1) epidemic in 2002 (Ferretti et al. 2020), and the successful curb of the Nipah outbreak in Kerala in 2019 became emblematic of the method of intensive precautionary isolation and timely contact tracing to combat transmission of epidemics (Wilson et al. 2020)

In March 2020, the National e-Governance Division (NeGd) at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) developed the Corona Kavach app, which was temporarily downloadable on Android mobile devices for beta testing in India (Ananth 2020). The Corona Kavach app, released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) was soon replaced by the Aarogya Setu (“a bridge of health”) digital contact-tracing app in India (GOI 2020a). The deployment of the Aarogya Setu contact-tracing app was coupled with impetuously mandated installation and use guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) (GOI 2020h). Aarogya Setu, unlike the Corona Kavach app, was available in both Android and Apple app stores in India. In the initial days of its introduction, Aarogya Setu was reported to have 114 million users, outdoing any other contact-tracing app in the world (GOI 2020b). Furthermore, experts suggested that the app requires at least fifty per cent of its population to download and use the app to make it an effective solution in managing the spread of the pandemic (Mehrotra 2020).

The success of technological solutionism is conditioned on factors such as full disclosure of personal information and regular usage of the app by the citizens. Meanwhile, as the global deployment of the contact-tracing app becomes the new norm in the background of the rising cases and COVID-19 fatalities, the efficacy of this solutionism remains incomplete without mapping the citizens’ response to such a health policy imagination. Congruently, the effectual adoption of contact-tracing apps includes simultaneously negotiating altered social norms and ethical values. For instance, the confidential exchange of information in the form of health data flow between doctor and patient expands with the sharing of information with many known and unknown data-collecting entities in the digital world. Thus, it makes the users of a contact-tracing app navigate through the trade-offs such as “security promised in return of a trade-off” (Schneier 2009: 515) that underlie this seemingly pragmatic exchange of information on contact-tracing apps.

Several valuable studies have been conducted on the Aarogya Setu digital contact-tracing app. These range from embracing discussions advocating for the app in addition to recommendations to ethical considerations to be taken at the design stage (Basu 2021; Nagori 2021); to studies positioning the rollout of Aarogya Setu amidst legislative gaps (Collaco 2021; Bhandari and Rahman 2020; Gupta et al. 2020) and lastly, on gauging factors aiding in adoption of the app using quantitative methods (Kodali et al. 2020; Sharma et al. 2021; Srivastava and Sharma 2021). The present work departs from studies conducted so far, by exploring how inscribed features, associated affordances in Aarogya Setu, and the institutional context shape citizens’ probable actions and inactions on the app. The paper tries to unpack user perceptions and practices on Aarogya Setu and simultaneously underscores the factors propelling choices to use and subvert predictable ways of using contact-tracing apps in India. The findings of this research show that these practices are premised on factors of perceptions of trust deficit, obduracy of material disaffordances, technological illiteracy, lack of awareness, access, and cost constraints, in addition to the institutional and design-based shortcomings of undermining overarching socio-economic inequalities in India.

To set the context, the paper presents a backdrop of the legislative vacuum within which the Aarogya Setu app was introduced in India, followed by a thick description of the Aarogya Setu app. This background contributes to the reader’s understanding by bringing forth the status of normative public values of equality, privacy, and others in the face of technological interventions in India.

2 Legislative Background

The introduction of the Aarogya Setu app created uproar owing to the low number of smartphone users in India. Additionally, concerns regarding privacy breaches, app-channeled harmful surveillance, and potential threats of social control transpired in the early phases of the app’s launch. Although similar to other countries, India adopted the digital contact-tracing solutionism as a prerequisite and an inevitable technological solution to digitally interrupt the rapid transmission of COVID-19 (WHO 2021); however, the country stood out by rolling out the app in the absence of a data protection framework for its citizens.

The genesis of the data protection framework began in 2011, followed by the past decade of multiple iterations that consequently led to the Personal Data Protection Bill of 2019. This data protection bill was eventually withdrawn and has again been pulled in the form of the data protection Bill, 2021 by the Ministry for Communications and Information Technology in August 2022. While the pretext of withdrawing the data protection framework hinges on an inclusive public consultation, suspending the existing frameworks jeopardizes public trust by overthrowing the essence of fundamental rights in a democracy. Resultantly, a legislative vacuum of no data protection law and obsolete surveillance provisions formed the background for Aarogya Setu in India.

On the other hand, civil society and legal experts read the operational framework of the Aarogya Setu app in consonance with the recently recognized fundamental Right to Privacy in India (Justice K.S Puttaswamy (Retd) and Ors. v Union of India [(2017) 10 SCC 1]). The judgement established the three-fold test of legality, legitimacy, and proportionality as restrictions to the right to privacy in India. The Aarogya Setu app was criticized for faltering on all three conditions as the state failed to adopt the least restrictive means to achieve the desired objective of health security in an emergency. For instance, the orders mandating the app’s usage were applied to public employees.

Similarly, colonial acts such as the Indian Penal Code of 1860 and the recent National Disaster Management Act of 2005 were enforced to demolish any acts of defiance and non-compliance during the lockdown (Prakash 2021). Such acts undermined the test of legality under the rubric of “issuing any direction” by the executive. These were further insulated by invoking the Epidemic Diseases Act, of 1987, a routinely enforced colonial act that has historically been enforced to deal with outbreaks of cholera, dengue, swine flu and empowers the state along with Union territories to take extraordinary measures to enforce evacuations, forcible searches, and segregations amongst others. (The Indian Express, March 12 2020)

Additionally, the contact-tracing solution was implemented against the backdrop of prevailing data convergence and sharing imperatives such as National Health Stack (NHS), 2018, and National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB), 2019.¹ Subsequently, with the readiness of vaccines in India, Aarogya Setu has been used as a window to book vaccination slots has also been integrated to generate a 14-digit unique ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) number that is integrated with Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) (GOI 2022). Such incremental improvisations gradually institute the norm of using Aarogya Setu in everyday life and make it more than just a digital solution to combat the present health emergency.

Legal experts suggest that the conversion of the contact-tracing app to a national health app steps beyond the test of “legitimacy and proportionality” by invoking the repeated usage of the app for more than the singular purpose of contact tracing. While this compromises on the consent of the citizens, it bluntly shows the lack of accountability of the State by contradicting the rules set in the “Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol” (Suraksha and Thacker 2022)

The deployment of technology-based solutions with a lack of legislative safeguards indicates the inherent tendency of the state’s impulsive decision towards digitization in every area of governance. However, this wider context of introducing different technological solutions deficient in human rights-based safeguards and an ethical framework aligns with previous projects such as the Aadhar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. Aadhar is a unique identification number that links to an individual’s biometric details and has been used as identity proof to access public and private services (Weinberg 2016). It has been a subject of public scrutiny for its privacy-invasive and compelling usage by conditioning access to essential goods and services.

The on-ground practice and requirement of holding the Aadhar card have nurtured the neoliberal economic vision of seeing the citizen as a consumer of acquiring the “clientele status of residents” (Chaudhuri and König 2017). In line with such state proposals, Aarogya Setu was introduced for the citizenry in the background of a pending data protection legislation, which, in effect, designates informational privacy and security as deferred constitutional rights.

3 Aarogya Setu app as an Artifact

To begin with, India’s digital contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, is “owned, designed, developed and hosted” (Aarogya Setu 2020) by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), MeitY, Government of India. In response to a series of RTI queries concerning the creation of the app, MeitY clarifies that the app has been developed in a public-private mode, of “NIC in collaboration with volunteers from industry and Academia” (GOI 2020c). The app interface first leads the user to choose from twelve languages on Android, iOS and KaiOS platforms. It is accompanied by a mobilizing rhetoric of “each one of us has the power to help prevent the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic in India” (Aarogya Setu 2020).

It embarks a duty as a citizen of the country to “protect yourself, your family and friends, and help our country in the effort to fight COVID-19”. Further, it aims to instill power in the citizen as the app user by spelling out how “each one of us has the power to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in India” (Aarogya Setu 2020). Such rhetoric has also been noticed in other contact-tracing apps worldwide, such as a study conducted by Brakel et al. (2022) on the CoronaMelder contact-tracing app of the Netherlands showed that a radically distinct attempt to uplift the notion of collective responsibility was done by limiting the individualistic notion of messages such as “Your privacy”, instead increased public awareness regarding the influence each user had in the wellbeing of the larger population.

Similarly, the TraceTogether contact-tracing app of Singapore also emphasizes an ethos of togetherness and ideals of collective action, further attributing to the communal properties of TraceTogether (Stevens and Haines 2020). While Singapore’s TraceTogether app has been a prominent best practice model that pioneers only Bluetooth-based location model (Goggin 2020), the Aarogya Setu digital contact-tracing app tracks through Bluetooth and GPS to effectuate a location generated social graph, asking the user to “switch on Bluetooth & Location” and “set location sharing to ‘always’” (Aarogya Setu 2020). Aarogya Setu only works on allowing the app to access Bluetooth and GPS data from mobile devices, and “hampers the completeness and accuracy of the service if either of the two is turned off, or the device is switched off or in the Airplane mode” (Aarogya Setu Terms of Service 2020).

The app continuously collects location data and stores it on the mobile every fifteen minutes. It is followed by a color-coded warning system ranging from red – indicating COVID positive to orange – indicating a high risk of infection; yellow -- indicating a moderate risk of infection; green -- indicating the user is safe (Aarogya Setu Privacy Policy 2020). The app asks to fill in the information pertaining to “name, phone number, age, sex, profession and countries visited in the last thirty days” which is stored securely on a server managed and operated by the Government of India (Aarogya Setu Privacy Policy 2020).

The Aarogya Setu Data and Knowledge Sharing Protocol list the following with respect to data retention; first, the self-assessment and location data is not retained for more than 180 days from the date of collection, and second, the demographic data, including name, mobile, age, gender, profession and travel history is retained for as long as the “protocol is in force or at the request of the individual that it be deleted are kept for a maximum of thirty days from any such request made”. (GOI 2020f)

The Aarogya Setu app has been mired in controversies over its extended functionality of going beyond simple contact tracing affordance to serving as digital representations of an e-pass along with acting as a “link to convenience services offered by various service providers” (Aarogya Setu Privacy Policy 2020). Civil society vigil, public interest litigations and Right to Information (RTIs) filed by experts led to the striking down of the guideline mandating the usage of the app to voluntary terms based on “best efforts” by public employees and directed it to be used on a “may be advised” criteria by district authorities (GOI 2020j). Despite the shift in guidelines, in practice, instances of lateral surveillance (between citizens) transgressed private offices and public places. For instance, private establishments made it mandatory to download and show Aarogya Setu to enter the mall premises (Tiwari and Butani 2020), and municipal corporations made the download of Aarogya Setu a must to enter public parks in Delhi (Hindustan Times, May 22 2020). State-wise guidelines documented by the Airport Authority of India (AAI 2020) made the usage of the Aarogya Setu app essential for air travellers.

The criticism by privacy advocates led to incremental changes in the app, making it “open source” (GOI 2020d) and introducing the Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge sharing protocol by the Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management (GOI 2020g). While newer developments at the design front have been evident in introducing an “Open API service” for business and economy (GOI 2020e) and extending functions such as updating vaccination status (Vaccination status on Aarogya Setu app 2021), the text of the technology is always opened for how a user can attempt at an “interpretative closure” of the technology (Hutchby 2001, 445). At this juncture, the paper brings forth citizens’ practice on the app by elucidating their perceptions of the state that eventually shape their conformance and denial of the app in everyday life. The following section sets the analytical framework for the study.

4 Contextualizing Pandemic Solutionism

Technological solutionism is underwritten by complex social situations that are neatly defined into problems characterized by computable, definite solutions or even transparent and self-evident processes that optimize the right technologies (Morozov 2014). In other words, technological solutionism is emblematic of a solutionist ethic that translates social phenomenon within intelligible problematics and promises discrete interventions with predictable effects. Morozov (2014) opines that the era of the “digital revolution” bolsters this solutionist ethic; however, other scholars argue that solutionism is not a product of the digital era alone but has its roots in the culture of engineering dedicated to the belief of a “technological fix” (Johnston 2017).

Technological solutionism is often outlined as a silver bullet solution that propels the principle of the “will to improve” (Li 2007) in order to justify the current state of affairs as inadequate to achieve greater social progress. Theoretically, this outlook of quantifiable solutions to social problems is embedded in the neoliberal techno-deterministic discourse, favoring the belief that digital technologies are sufficient to disrupt power asymmetries or inequalities without challenging the status quo in society. (Sætra 2023)

Similar opinions persist regarding the assumption behind adopting a straightforward libertarian approach to technologies such as contact-tracing apps (Lucivero et al. 2020). Contact-tracing solutionism, a subset within the solutionist ethic, is included under the rubric of “pandemic solutionism” and is defined as solving complex virological crises using digital tools or other technological means (Maschewski and Nosthoff 2022). Concurrently, another group of scholars assert that technological solutionism in pandemic-like situations drives on desperation (Aarts et al. 2021) and intensifies as a fast-track decision-making process to meet emergency crises (Calhoun 2010). In line with the beforementioned principle of the “will to improve,” contact-tracing apps were devised to curb the social and economic costs of the virus (Milan 2020) and respond to the push to technologically innovate during the crisis.

The common inadequacy of the discourse of technological solutionism, and particularly the phenomenon of pandemic solutionism, is the risk of ignoring marginalized voices, values, and social functions, which undermine contextual factors to render technological innovations ineffective (Jasanoff et al. 2021). Application of digital technology under the pandemic solutionism potentially ignores the “plural conception of citizen and communities” by viewing the standard human as digitally literate and possessing sufficient financial resources to purchase gadgets, such as smartphones (Milan 2020). The third property of the “standard human” for Milan (2020) corresponds to users’ participation in the co-production of technology. The vision of including only a specific type of user perpetuates existing vulnerabilities and identifies technological solutionism as exclusionary.

In the case of contact-tracing solutionism, a theoretical standpoint comprising solely of technological solutionism lacks comprehensiveness as an analytical category, as it disregards individuals’ varying perceptions and capacities, along with capabilities in constituting an integral part of interpretative strategies deployed by a citizen in adopting to forms of pandemic solutionism during a crisis.

Situating the “standard human” with a desired positionality in society dilutes the capacity of the citizen while simultaneously “overlooking alterity and inequality”(Milan 2020). The inclusion of each user of the contact-tracing app should incorporate contextual intersubjectivity and move beyond the “objectivist orientation to social reality” (Paul 2022). Scholars such as Lucivero et al. (2020) emphasize overarching assumptions about human behavior and draw on works of behavioral scientists to highlight issues of acceptability, equity, affordability and other technological responses paramount to the efficacy of contact-tracing apps. Integrating subjectivities is vital against the societal harms of increased inequality and exclusion created by staunch adherence to technological fixes (Salvo 2021). Theoretically, such an input has always stood as a critique of technological fixes where we are increasingly made to reinterpret challenges that become technological despite being social and political in origin (Sørensen 2004).

It is essential to reiterate the remarkable contribution of Milan’s (2020) framework that also brings forth Escobar’s (2018: 4) concept of “pluriverse” to encapsulate many worlds of reimagining local worlds instead of one-way solutionism. Her framework comes very close to the analytical category of going beyond uniform solutionism for all (Epstein 2009). In addition, the present framework urges consideration of the underlying perceptions, differential capacity, and capabilities that shape the app’s usage.

The theoretical contribution of this paper lies in surpassing the “ideal digital user” and acknowledging individuals’ underlying perceptions behind the uptake of technologies; socio-economic capacities of individuals enabling access to the technologies; cultural embeddedness constraining or shaping usage; skill-based capabilities to meaningfully utilize any digital solutionism initiated for the citizens. For instance, in the case of the digital contact-tracing app, the affordance (features) inscribed in the app is backed by the assumption of a particular type of user, which will simultaneously shape citizens’ practice of using the technology. Such a practice may not align with the imagination of the designer’s original intent and alter citizens’ usage, leading to conforming or “modifying, consuming, reconfiguring and resisting” the given technology (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005: 1).

The present work aims to unearth both, institutional and design-based factors that, together with people’s contextual perceptions, capacities, and capabilities, become invisibilized under the garb of an overarching digital contact-tracing solution. At this moment, it should be clarified that the research aims not to outrightly question the deployment of the contact-tracing solutionism in India but to assess how contact-tracing solutionism connects or disconnects with the on-ground usage, thereby challenging the extent of reliance on the application.

I analyzed citizens’ practices on the Aarogya Setu app within the above analytical framework. The following two sections discuss the study’s methods and explore the nuances of citizens’ practices shaped by their perceptions and engagement with the Aarogya Setu App.

5 Methodology

I conducted thirty semi-structured in-depth exploratory interviews in New Delhi from June 2020 to September 2020. The interviews were conducted mainly by telephone (due to the social distancing norms). The capital city of New Delhi was chosen as the site for the fieldwork as it represents a population comprising individuals from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and was also registered as one of the cities with the highest numbers of COVID cases and fatalities in the country. The respondents² were recruited through a purposive selection technique guided by an attempt to cover a wide range of users from different ages, genders, literacy levels and occupational backgrounds. The impetus behind applying qualitative research methods stems from the gap between reading perceptions and practices alike on technological apps. The use of the in-depth interview aided in unearthing the affective experiences and perceptions of the users. It also helped break language barriers while conversing with the respondents.

Informed verbal consent was obtained from the respondents. In the background of the pandemic, the method of informed verbal consent seemed more appropriate than written consent for two reasons. First, a written form requiring signatures could be intimidating where the data collection authority addressed in the context of the contact-tracing app was the government itself. Second, informed verbal consent befitted the respondents with diverse and limited literacy levels.

Institutional approval at multiple stages facilitated an ethically sensitive framework to align with the affective responses without probing the respondent. For instance, to map actual practices and reflect on ground realities and local stories, the semi-structured interview began with the question, “How was your experience with the app?” with an intentional omission of indicative words such as privacy and access among others.

The responses gathered from the interviews were analyzed and thematically arranged after coding transcripts based on citizens’ accounts of using the Aarogya Setu app. These themes were generated in line with exhibiting a relational dimension of the user’s agency in a recursive interaction between institutional structures, social determinants, and technical dimensions within the situated usage of the app. This is reflected in the flexibility of the interview guide that included explicit questions on the nuances of both the use and non-use of the features of the Aarogya Setu app.

6 Using the Aarogya Setu app: Citizens’ Practices in the Local Context

During the interviews, it was found that the citizens resisted and modified their usage of the Aarogya Setu app in multiple ways. These varied negotiations were sorted into three sub-practices: resistance by early deletion, resistance by selective adoption and constrained adoption. Overall, the three practices describe the inconsistent app usage and compel us to observe the disjuncture between the expected and actual usage of Aarogya Setu. Furthermore, an interpretative epistemological approach was undertaken to reason out factors underlying the incompatible usage of the app.

6.1 Resistance by Early Deletion

The practice of resistance by early deletion became noticeable in the responses gathered in the interviews. Deleting the app immediately after downloading it on the phone hinged on citizens’ experience of lack of trust in the state. This made users devise ways of negotiating on technological platforms and challenge the dominant contextual norm of using a contact-tracing app during the pandemic. A 28-year-old female respondent (1) working as a marketing manager in an FMCG (Fast moving consumer goods) company in New Delhi said,

It is the first time that we are facing such a huge health crisis, and I got scared that the authorities could come home and forcefully get me and my family tested for COVID. Though we do not have a travel history […], it is hard to trust them, so I instantly deleted my app within an hour of downloading it.

The respondent (1)’s willingness to delete the app was voiced through a lack of trust in the state and significantly displayed a fear of retaining any kind of personal information on the mobile device. Additionally, concerns regarding the uptake of the app increased with the apprehension of keeping the app on the phone for a long time. The practice of early deletion was also adopted as a response to the self-assessment test. For instance, the respondent(2), a 22-year-old female respondent working at a grocery shop in Delhi, expressed,

I deleted the app after the first two days as all my family members had mild cold […]I feared that they would forcefully come home and take us all with them if I honestly filled in my health details on the app.

Such anxiety also led Respondent (3), a 40-year-old teacher in a public school, to delete the app early on. He said, “I never took the self-assessment test, and the moment I saw those details asked in the app, I knew they were bound to implicate me.” Similarly, respondent (4), a 28-year-old homemaker travelling to her hometown from New Delhi, shared, “I had trust issues and immediately deleted the app on reaching Calcutta. Even though I filled out the self-declaration form provided by Air India before boarding the flight, I realized that Aarogya Setu asked for way too many details.” For respondent (2), respondent (3) and respondent (4), the lack of trust and fear around the app inquiring for details such as existing health conditions, travel history, and cold symptoms, along with primary identifiers of age, gender and name felt like forced disclosures that had to be made in order to sign up for the app.

It was found that the respondents indicated distrust in the authority responsible for governance during the pandemic. They gauged the degree of risk before giving details on the app and consequently deleted the app as soon as they downloaded it. Another respondent reasoned the early deletion of the app based on previous encounters with the state. Respondent (5), a 30-old male university student, deleted the app on the basis of his previous experience with Aadhar in India and said,

I deleted the app after glancing through it once as I do not trust it with my data security[…] I deleted remembering the case with Aadhar as it was initially very popular for providing service benefits, and then news regarding data leaks and Aadhar became common.

This practice of early deletion for respondent (5) was shaped by the experience in which the state reacted to previous technologies. This determined citizens’ “institutional trust as well as confidence in the competence of the institutions” (You 2018, 474). In the Indian context, the issues of technological mediation through Aadhar have been extensively discussed (Ramanathan 2010; Bhatia and Bhabha 2017; Chaudhuri and König 2017; Masiero 2018; Rao 2018; Khera 2019; Cohen 2019) and this form of repeated interaction with the state-led technological solutionism aided in responding with the practice of early deletion for the user of Aarogya Setu app.

6.2 Resistance by Selective Adoption

The second practice of resistance by selective adoption became apparent, with respondents explaining how they selectively used features inscribed in Aarogya Setu. This came through the affordance of real-time monitoring, which entails prerequisite access to both Bluetooth and GPS locations in Aarogya Setu. The design choice to instate restrictions through the requirement of switching on both front-end features of Bluetooth and GPS location impeded voluntary management of using the mobile phone in general. A 41-year-old male (respondent 6), a driver in a private publishing house in New Delhi, shared his experience and said, “I downloaded the app as the office guard was not letting me enter without it. I deleted and reinstalled the app several times since the GPS and Bluetooth used to drain my mobile’s battery.”

Similarly, a 29-year-old civil society worker (respondent 7) said,

More than half of the people coming to us during the pandemic to collect food tokens found the app to be very technical and complained that their phone batteries were always drained because of the constant GPS and Bluetooth requirement of the app to work.

In both the accounts stated above, the app’s usage not only shows the inconvenience inflicted due to the specificity of the app design but also considers the relational nature of the affordances encompassing users’ abilities and intent. This significantly abandons the idea of viewing the technology as a mere “bundle of features” (Faraj and Azad 2013, 255) and becomes visible when such affordances become a criterion for preconditioned access to private and public spaces. The users view these as’ disaffordances’ (Locktown 2006) that are defined as products shaped through a deliberately removed or obscured functionality that ultimately constrains the user.

Such disaffordances were further fortified through institutional guidelines in different spaces of interaction. Respondent (8), a 35-year-old male working as an operations manager in an e-commerce company in New Delhi, shared an account of using the Aarogya Setu app selectively and expressed,

I was a bit finicky about the Bluetooth feature of the app and did not download the app. However, I was asked to show the app before entering a local retail clothing store, and therefore, I downloaded the app just to enter the store.

Similarly, other instances of selective and immediate downloads were detailed as contrary to the intended usage of keeping both front-end features constantly “on” in the phone. Like respondent (9), a 28-year-old male working as an engineer in a fintech firm travelled to the office to collect his laptop and work desk for his work-from-home setup. He explained that he deleted and reinstalled the app many times as the app was required to enter the office premises. He said, “The security guard showed me how to download and use the app for the first time.”

In the above accounts, the affordance of real-time monitoring ensued in the form of disaffordance for the users, who resisted through the practice of inconsistent downloads and deletion of the app. While some users had verbal instructions given by institutional staff or police personnel to use the app, food delivery executives were given partial access to the app within their context of limited technical know-how and thus lost complete individual autonomy. Such an experience came through an interview with a 33-year-old male delivery executive (respondent 10) of a renowned food delivery platform who, contrary to the two respondents above, used the Aarogya Setu app regularly. He opined that the app was helpful as it warned him before entering unsafe COVID zones in the city. He also informed of the automatic link between the Aarogya Setu app and the food delivery platform’s app by conveying his experience of incomplete control of the app. He elucidated,

At the beginning of the lockdown, the company called us to the office and installed the Aarogya Setu app on our phones. Now, we use the Aarogya Setu app constantly as the company app does not work without Aarogya Setu. We first switch on the Aarogya Setu app, and then the company app starts working on our phones. We do not update anything; the company fixes the app if any problem occurs. I do not fill in any details or update the app but only switch off my internet when reaching home.

To sum up, the above responses show that the usefulness of the contact-tracing app depends on the affordance of real-time monitoring to ensure safety. However, the goal of ensuring real-time safety as an intended consequence is further materialized through state and non-state institutional mandates that link contiguous social affordances of mobility and access to goods and services. Evidently, in the case of the food delivery executive, the adoption and use of the Aarogya Setu app in the workflow of everyday life intertwine with the crucial social affordance of earning a livelihood. Consequently, this necessitates a meaningful engagement with the app by enabling the user not only to react but “imaginatively reconfigure” (Scott et al. 2017, 501) through informed usage. The following section goes beyond the negotiated usage of resistance by selective adoption or early deletion and puts forth practices of constrained adoption of Aarogya Setu.

6.3 Constrained Adoption

During the fieldwork, 25 out of the 30 respondents could not understand how the app works. The constrained adoption of the idea of the app transpired in the worse situated case of the digitally illiterate users, such as respondent (11), a 44-year-old ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)³ worker in Delhi, whose failure to understand the app is attributable to her low technological know-how. She said,

I have used a keypad phone all my life and do not know how to use the Aarogya Setu app given to me by the government […], I worked throughout and during the pandemic’s peak but never felt the need to use the app. I never even looked at the app as I used to get the record of the number of COVID-positive patients in the area from the register maintained in the dispensary.

In the case of the ASHA worker, it was conspicuous from the response that the lack of knowledge about the app's workings instilled a feeling of disconnect from the need to use the contact-tracing app. On the other hand, a relatively smartphone-savvy user, a 25-year lab assistant (respondent 12) at a diagnostic center in Delhi, shared his experience with the app and said,

The app was just okay […] I did not experience the red-coloured unsafe message on the app even once. Once, I came in contact with a COVID-19-positive patient near me, but the status of my app never showed the red colour, signalling that I was unsafe.

While the limited understanding of the app may prove to be a case with only the digitally illiterate users, other digitally literate and educated respondents were contingent on their limited material interaction. They were just marginally better off comprehending the way the app works. A 29-year-old home tutor in New Delhi (respondent 13), felt a consequent disconnect from the purpose of the app. She expressed that,

I hardly used the app as it mostly showed inaccurate results. It constantly showed me as safe and was green throughout, even when I checked with a friend whose app showed that she was less safe despite living a block away in the same colony […] I did not understand the logic behind our apps’ different safety statuses.

In these accounts, the users, despite their regular smartphone usage and varying digital literacy levels, could not grasp why the apps showed them as “safe”. Regardless of being technologically savvy, the users could not make sense of the criteria of respective self-assessment tests and honest self-disclosure of health details to show their safe/unsafe status on the app. Moreover, few of the respondents who liked the experience of the app, such as respondent (14), had limited engagement with the material features of the app. Although the government propagated the app on the cornerstone of uploading personal information in the larger interest of the public good, inadequate aptitude further obfuscated the reasons for users to regularly use the app in everyday life.

Besides inadequate aptitude and lack of technological know-how, respondents from the socially and economically weaker sections of society could not even experience contact-tracing solutionism because of lack of access to a smartphone. The interviewees revealed that the underprivileged population consisted of families who had excluded users being represented by a socially dominant smartphone owner per family. For instance, a 20-year-old female respondent (14), working as a house cleaner in Delhi, expressed that,

My younger and elder brother are the only ones in our family to own a smartphone. My mother, my sister, and I do not have a smartphone, and we have to borrow it from our brothers in case we have to urgently move out […] but my brothers were the only ones who went out in the pandemic and must have downloaded the Aarogya Setu app in their phones.

This account explicitly demonstrates the privileged male smartphone owner by convoluting the debate around unequal access to a digital device. In the same way, intersections of gender and class inequality as underlying vulnerabilities surfaced in the case of a 56-year-old medicine delivery executive (respondent 15), who liked the app and shared his experience of travelling to his hometown in Uttar Pradesh, India. He shared that, “The police at the railway station asked for the app as I was travelling with my wife and two daughters[…] they were convinced with one Aarogya Setu app per family as only I own a smartphone in my house.” In this case, the respondent’s health status was checked through the app, and the safety of his other family members was assumed to be healthy based on his COVID status on the app.

Drawing from the previous sections detailing the working of the app, it is essential to reiterate the requirements of use enlisted within the Terms of services of the Aarogya Setu app. These specify that the user should agree “to keep the mobile or handheld device on which the app is installed in the possession at all times and not share or allow anyone else to use it”. Further, it states that “doing so could result in you being falsely assessed as likely to be infected with COVID-19 or not being assessed when you are such.”(Aarogya Setu Terms of Service 2020). Such terms of requirement disassociate with the on-ground practice for a large section of the population where the shared usage of smartphones or the symbolic presence of one smartphone representing the risk of infection for the entire household falls short of meeting the requirement of each citizen using the Aarogya Setu app in India.

7 Discussion

The digital contact-tracing solutionism is here to stay amidst the upsurge in digital innovation and unforeseen health outbreaks. It has been observed that most countries relied on a mix of public-private partnerships to devise technological solutions to combat COVID-19. For instance, countries like Austria, Germany and multiple European countries engaged with potential private app developers in an “appathon” to assess possible technological innovations during this emergency phase (Lanzing et al. 2021). During the fieldwork, it was observed that despite the involvement of state and private actors in the making of the app, the citizens thought of the “state” as the sole custodian of the Aarogya Setu app. It can be established that for the citizen, the image of the state transpires through different public service roles of quarantine checks, mobility restrictions and particularly by engaging with the Aarogya Setu Digital Contact-tracing app. Such an experience sustains the phenomenon of the “state as an effect” (Mitchell 1991, 77) for the citizens.

Research has shown that the exhibition of prosocialness and trust emerge as significant factors influencing the willingness to use contact-tracing apps (Williams et al. 2021). The Indian state also mobilized support for the app by expressing collective responsibility as,“110 million plus users are already united in making India safer, join them now to make India safer” (Aarogya Setu 2020). However, the respondents’ early deletion of the app as a practice before giving personal information on Aarogya Setu reflected privacy concerns of data creep and non-consensual usage of information by the custodian of the app. Therefore, a significant finding from the fieldwork shows respondents’ practice of resisting usage of the contact-tracing app, resulting in a consequent negotiation “to become visible or not in front of the state” (Srinivasan et al. 2018, 1228).

The findings showed that the perception of trust situates in the efficacy of institutions that, in tandem, transgresses into the materiality of the self-assessment design of the app. Looking into the nuances of the perception of “trust”, there exists a difference between the trust that emanates from a feeling of calm and security and “distrust” that is based on worry, fear, and insecurity (McKnight and Chervany 2001; McKnight et al. 2004). The citizens’ perceptions revealed the fear of disclosing details on the app as reflective of distrust in the state. The basic design of a self-assessment test on a contact-tracing app also invokes the neoliberal tendency of the state to consider the user adept at self-management of the app. This has been conceptualized through the attempt to “emancipate the individual” (Lupton 2022) by pushing to use Aarogya Setu to protect themselves and indirectly placing the onus on each citizen to protect the country.

While “trust” emerges as the fundamental perception steering the app’s usage, the pandemic solutionism promoting contact-tracing apps pivots on the simultaneous entrenchment in institutional and social structures that “yield trust in authorities” (Tyler 1988). The efficacy of implementing the contact-tracing app solutionism hinges significantly on public trust, which materializes through the “expectation to convert expert knowledge into policy actions” (Jasanoff 2021). The implicit distrust of the citizens toward the state’s technological intervention is unearthed only through the method employed in this study, which involves mapping the on-ground quotidian usage of the Aarogya Setu app.

The second critical reason to resist the usage of Aarogya Setu pivots around the digital capabilities being challenged by inscribed material affordances in the app. The design-based factor incorporating the materiality of the technological artifact becomes relevant by either enabling or disabling the individual in everyday life. The situated interaction with technology and the norm of using a contact-tracing app during COVID-19 can be comprehended in tandem with the affordances offered to the human body in the form of “capacity for movement, learning, memory and sensory perception”(Lupton 2020, 11). The practice of switching “on and off” on the app and sporadic utilization of its contact-tracing functions disclosed the inconvenience experienced by the user in tandem with the material “disaffordance” (Locktown 2006). This inconvenience experienced by the citizens, coupled with the simultaneous mandate to show the app at various public places need to be accounted as design-based and institutional factors that underpin the unforeseen practice of irregular usage of Aarogya Setu. The findings reveal that the supposition of a “ideal digital user” discussed in the theoretical framework supports the designer’s and the state’s vision in shaping the affordance (features) inscribed in the app.

Correspondingly, the third practice, classified as constrained app adoption, surfaced with two underlying factors. First, with limited technological know-how and digital illiteracy and second, with the income disadvantage of inequitable access to a mobile device that unequally distributes the experience of using a contact-tracing app. The findings also revealed that culturally embedded intersections of gender and class constrained app usage in many households. In the case of India, social determinants around health, such as income, distribution, and employment, among others, become vital components to be encompassed within the ambit of the state’s health policy (Rahman 2020). Similarly, citizens’ practices also urge considering the futility of contact-tracing solutions in this case, where the on-ground deployment of the app typifies technological solutionism by ignoring culturally specific social practices and lack of public health education goals for its users. (Taylor et al. 2020)

We need to remember that in the background of the pandemic, the ideological bent towards technological solutionism is evident in the epidemiologists’ push for newer surveillance mechanisms to achieve safety in conjunction with specialists who are geared towards more accurate monitoring of the rapid spread of the virus (Kampmark 2020). However, an unsighted reliance on technological solutionism based on absolute digital deployment can easily ignore the underlying dysfunctions of society. The findings exhibiting the absence of awareness vis-à-vis Aarogya Setu and deepened socio-economic vulnerabilities for the disadvantaged acted as crucial deterrents by preventing meaningful utilization of the contact-tracing app in almost all cases. Therefore, the responses explaining the inconsistent use of the app surfaced as it remained disconnected in practice despite the formal narrative of constructing the usage of the Aarogya Setu app as legitimate in times of COVID-19.

8 Concluding Remarks

The research aimed to map the convergence or divergence between the adoptions of Aarogya Setu as a technological solutionism vis-à-vis the actual adoption of the contact-tracing app in in the Indian context. Although mandating such measures assists in bolstering compliance to perform a public duty during a health crisis, however, the irregular usage of the app revealed in the study questions the purpose of instituting a technological solutionism reliant on regular user health updates. The study unveiled the agentic power of the “citizen” who deploys different strategies to evade consistent usage against the state mandate.

On the policy level, the case of India is unique with the element of sudden lockdowns and the introduction of contact-tracing solutions in the absence of a data protection law (Jasanoff et al. 2021); however, the particularity of the contextual reasons for inconsistent app usage were uncovered through the varied sample of the 30 interviews conducted for the study.

According to the IAMAI report (2019), the Capital Region of Delhi (fieldwork location) registered the maximum internet penetration in the country. Despite the increased level of Internet size and penetration, the adoption of the Aarogya Setu app met hindrances; of trust deficit; obduracy of material disaffordances; digital illiteracy; lack of awareness; access, and cost constraints, buttressed by design-based and institutional shortcomings of undermining overarching socio-economic inequalities in India. For future work, this research directs us to map granular practices amongst countries of the global south and within the country itself, which comprises of users belonging to varying socio-economic backgrounds, with stark levels of digital illiteracy and who look at the “state” initiated technological solutionism through existing perceptions of fear, privacy concern and distrust.

Acknowledging alterity and inequality amongst citizens becomes paramount, particularly in countries characterized by large socio-economic disparity with culturally stratified local worlds. It is imperative to ensure that a technological solutionism disconnected from the contextual needs of the citizens does not lose significance due to the desirable notion of the “ideal digital user”, representing citizens of a country in the global south.

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to the respondents for their time and willingness to participate in the study, during the difficult phase of the pandemic in India. I am thankful to Dr. Nupur Chowdhury, Dr. P Puneeth and Dr. Deepa Kansra from Jawaharlal Nehru University for their constructive comments and consistent feedbacks throughout the duration of the study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mandira Narain

Mandira Narain, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Notes

1 In 2018, the NITI Ayog proposed the National Health Stack (NHS) with an aim to converge data systems of the healthcare providers, governments, payers and citizens. The National Health stack aims to serve as the single national health registry creating an electronic national health registry, federated personal health records (PHR) framework and a claims and coverage platform among others. Issues relating to data security, confidentiality and privacy were not only evaluated by civil society experts but also became a concern at the conceptualisation stage of the NHS. In 2019, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare released the National Digital Health Blueprint (NDHB) aiding as an architecture for NHS as well as fulfilling the vision of the National Health Policy, 2017.

For details see https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/Final%20NDHB%20report_0.pdf.

2 Following are the respondent details.

Table

Participant Name	Age	Gender	Education	Occupation
Respondent (1)	28	Female	Tertiary	Marketing manager in an FMCG company
Respondent (2)	22	Female	No Education	Worker at a grocery shop
Respondent (3)	33	Male	Secondary	Teacher in a public school
Respondent (4)	28	Female	Tertiary	Homemaker
Respondent (5)	30	Male	Tertiary	University Student
Respondent (6)	41	Male	Primary	Driver
Respondent (7)	29	Male	Tertiary	NGO worker
Respondent (8)	35	Male	Tertiary	Operations manager in an MNC
Respondent (9)	28	Male	Tertiary	Engineer
Respondent (10)	33	Male	Secondary	Food Delivery executive
Respondent (11)	44	Female	Primary	ASHA worker
Respondent (12)	25	Male	Secondary	Lab assistant
Respondent (13)	29	Female	Secondary	Home tutor
Respondent (14)	29	Female	No education	House cleaner
Respondent (15)	56	Male	Secondary	Medicine delivery executive

* Primary educational level denotes classes first to fifth, secondary educational level denotes class sixth to twelfth and Tertiary educational level denotes college.

3 Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) is a crucial component under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). An ASHA worker is primarily a woman resident aged between twenty to forty-five years and can be married/divorced/widowed. An ASHA worker is chosen from a village and basically works at the interface between the public system and the community. Visit, https://nhm.gov.in/index1.php?lang=1&level=1&sublinkid=150&lid=226.

Internet and Mobile Association of India (2019) Digital in India Round 2 Report. See https://reverieinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IAMAI-Digital-in-India-2019-Round-2-Report.pdf.