Surveillance Developmentalism Redefines Citizenship

State‑built digital infrastructures (biometric IDs, interoperable databases, real‑time payment rails) constitute a governance model that differs from surveillance capitalism and algorithmic authoritarianism by making legal and social rights contingent on machine legibility. When authentication fails—due to degraded fingerprints, connectivity outages, or device errors—people are materially excluded from public goods, converting bodies into protocol dependencies rather than holders of intrinsic rights. — This reframes debates about digital identity, welfare delivery, and human rights in developing democracies: regulation must address not only privacy and surveillance but also procedural exclusion, accountability, and fallback guarantees for those who cannot authenticate.