Exploring the Role of Technology in Fighting Corruption in the Indian Healthcare Sector

Although the health care sector is one of the most vulnerable sectors to corruption, we have only a little knowledge about it. The fight against corruption continues to be one of the key political and government rhetoric in India while the country continues to receive declining scores on corruption indices. This problem is further compounded by a severe lack of reliable government data. At the same time, the country’s healthcare policies have, in recent years, focused strongly on digitalisation of health records and reaching out to potential beneficiaries of universal healthcare through biometric records. This paper presents an early attempt to make sense of these changes, albeit in the absence of official government data. Our study presents ethnographic data collected through interviews with stakeholders in the public healthcare sector in India and field notes from a visit to a primary healthcare clinic in New Delhi. The primary data coupled with readings collected from media and national and international think tank reports show that while top-down government narratives about technology’s role to bring better transparency are optimistic, the end users, more often than not, do not share the same positive attitude. We further argue that where the role of technology is concerned in ‘improving’ the healthcare sector, most discussions are veered towards making the sector more transparent and accountable, while the mention of corruption is muted at best.