"To understand why this welfare system persists, we need to acknowledge that at its root, targeting and its attendant exclusions are ultimately also justified and sustained by a sense of suspicion that implicates both the public and the state’s own functionaries. So, delivery is designed on the assumption that dominant local elites and intermediaries — who will otherwise use every opportunity to exploit the poor and while diverting and extracting entitlements and benefits — must be, at least in theory, excluded and bypassed. The poor themselves, even if materially deprived, are often cast as morally undeserving, susceptible to manipulation, expedient, and irresponsible (one only had to witness the discourse around Monday’s nationwide run on liquor stores for proof). And finally, that corrupt and rent-seeking bureaucrats and who only work the system rather than keep it working must have their discretion clipped. The result is a welfare architecture that is so invested in minimising errors of inclusion that it continuously chooses fiscal, bureaucratic and technological ‘solutions’ that systematically enable ‘errors of exclusion’ to multiply."