India runs one of the world’s largest food security programmes, which promises subsidised grains to about two-thirds of its 1.4 billion population.

Historically, government officials verified and approved welfare applicants’ eligibility through field visits and physical verifications of documents. But in 2016, Telangana’s previous government, under the Bharat Rashtra Samithi party, started arming the officials with Samagra Vedika, an algorithmic system that consolidates citizens’ data from several government databases to create comprehensive digital profiles or “360-degree views”.