Adrian Athique, Vibodh Parthasarathi, and S.V. Srinivas
The centrality of mediation to social, economic, and political processes in South Asia has become increasingly evident in recent years. The media has become a substantial economic sector, with considerable strategic and symbolic importance for career decisions and for the fortunes of South Asia in the global economy. The intense mediation of the political arena has seen a wide range of media formats taking on the role of actors in the day-to-day operation of the democratic process and in the conduct of international relations. The use of media technologies for enabling the interlocking fields of education, employment, and consumption makes their functions and potentials a necessary concern for the social sciences and humanities. Beyond their utility, the expressive content of the media requires a deep engagement with cultural reproduction across the region.
Media Dynamics in South Asia curates an interdisciplinary approach that addresses media studies as a field of interlocking interests in politics, economics, culture, technology, gender, and education. Our imperative for expanding the breadth of media studies in this way serves the larger task of uncovering the various relationships, transactions, and interactions that characterize social change as a dynamic process. At the same time, our broad sociological approach to different aspects of the media requires us to account in depth for the conditions, concerns, and challenges specific to the region. It is no longer sufficient to maintain a paradigm for media analysis conceived elsewhere and transplanted, often uncomfortably, to various locations in the subcontinent.
Rather, the presence of a large, sophisticated, and fast-moving media environment in South Asia promises sufficient depth to support original and innovative research approaches and the production of a future teaching curriculum grounded in the regional experience. The series seeks to play a critical role in establishing the necessary resources for supporting the growth of media studies in South Asia.
Adrian Athique is associate professor of cultural studies at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
Vibodh Parthasarathi is a founding faculty and associate professor at the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India.
S.V. Srinivas is professor at the School of Liberal Studies, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, India.
editorial board
Gregory D. Booth, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Paula Chakravartty, New York University, USA
William Crawley, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, UK
Biswajit Das, Jamia Millia Islamia, India
Douglas Hill, University of Otago, New Zealand
Stephen Hughes, SOAS, UK
M. Madhava Prasad, English and Foreign Languages University, India
Aswin Punathambekar, University of Michigan, USA
Din Mohamed Rahman, University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh
Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, India
Brian Stoddart, University of Melbourne, Australia
Pradip Ninan Thomas, The University of Queensland, Australia
Ravi Vasudevan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, India
Chris Verschooten, KU Leuven, Belgium
media dynamics in south asia
The Politics of Digital India
Between Local Compulsions and Transnational Pressures
Pradip Ninan
Thomas
1
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To friends and friendships: Zaharom Nain (Rom), Ramesh Ramanathan (Zamby), and Philip Lee
Acknowledgements
There are numerous critical scholars in the political economy tradition who have influenced my work and provided me with insights into the politics of the digital, such as Peter Golding, Graham Murdock, and Adrian Athique, who played no small part in the shaping of this manuscript, along with Vibodh Parthasarathi, Dan Schiller, Nic Carah, Tom O’Regan, and Zaharom Nain, among many others.
May your tribe increase!
I would also like to thank the editorial team at Oxford University Press for its help.
Abbreviations
A2K Access to Knowledge (movement)
AATP Agricultural Advanced Technology Park
ABD accumulation by dispossession
AEBPR Advanced eBook Processor
AFTI Alliance for Fair Trade with India
AIDS acquired immune deficiency syndrome
ALAC At-Large Advisory Committee
AP Andhra Pradesh
ASSOCHAM Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India
ATM automated teller machine
BJP Bharatiya Janata Party
BKS Bharatiya Kisan Sangh
BOO build–own–operate
BOSS Bharat Operating System Solutions
BOT build–operate–transfer
BPO business process outsourcing
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
C-DAC Centre for Development of Advanced Computing
ccTLD country code top-level domain
CCTNS Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems
CCTV closed-circuit television
CEO chief executive officer
CERT Computer Emergency Response Team
CIDR Central Identities Data Repository
CII computer-implemented inventions
CIRP Committee for Internet Related Policies
CIS The Centre for Internet & Society
CMS Central Monitoring System
CRIS Communication Rights in the Information Society
CRUSH Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History
CSC Computer Science Corporation
CSTD Commission on Science and Technology for Development
DAISY Digital Accessible Information System
DeitY Department of Electronics and Information Technology
DIY do it yourself
DMCA Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DNA deoxyribonucleic acid
DNS Domain Name System
DRM Digital Rights Management
DSCI Data Security Council of India
DTTI Defense Technology and Trade Initiative
ECIL Electronics Corporation of India
EDS Electronic Data Systems
EICTIA European Information and Communication Technology Industry Association
EU European Union
4G fourth generation
FDI foreign direct investment
FICCI Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
FOSS free and open source software
GAC Government Advisory Committee
GATT General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs
GDP gross domestic product
GEAC Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee
GIFT City Gujarat International Finance Tec-City
GIS geographical information systems
GM genetically modified
GoI Government of India
GPS geographical positioning systems
GSLV Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle
GSTN Goods and Services Tax Network
gTLD generic top-level domain
HIV human immunodeficiency virus
IAB Internet Architecture Board
IADC International Ad Hoc Committee
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
IBSA India–Brazil–South Africa
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
ICT information and communications technology
ID identity [related to identification schemes]
IDN internationalized domain name
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
IFSEC International Fire and Security Exhibition and Conference
IFWP International Forum on the White Paper
IG Internet governance
IGF Internet Governance Forum
IIGF India Internet Governance Forum
IIM Indian Institute of Management
IIT Indian Institute of Technology
IMF International Monetary Fund
IP intellectual property
IPC Intellectual Property Committee
IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6
ISPs Internet service providers
ISPAI Internet Service Providers Association of India
ISRO Indian Space Research Organisation
IT information technology
ITRs International Telecommunications Regulations
ITU International Telecommunication Union
KIA Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture
KRRS Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha
MEA Ministry of External Affairs
MMP Mission Mode Project
MNC multinational corporation
Abbreviations
MoU memorandum of understanding
MSH multistakeholderism
NAM National Association for Manufacturers
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Association
NASSCOM National Association of Software and Services Companies
NATGRID National Intelligence Grid
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCTC National Counter-Terrorism Centre
NETRA Network Traffic Analysis Initiative
NGO non-governmental organization
NIS National Identity Scheme (UK)
NITI Aayog
National Institute for Transforming India Aayog
NIXI National Internet Exchange of India
NPR National Population Register
NRCFOSS National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software
NSA National Security Agency
NTIA National Telecommunications and Information Administration
NWEO New World Economic Order
NWICO New World Information and Communication Order
NWIO New World Information Order
OADA Open Ag Data Alliance
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OSDD Open Source Drug Discovery
OSSI Open Source Seed Initiative
PDS public distribution system
PIL public interest litigation
PM prime minister
PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
POTA Prevention of Terrorism Act
PPP public–private partnership
PPV Protection of Plant Varieties
PPVFRA Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act
PSLV Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle
Abbreviations
PTLB Perry4Law Techno Legal Base
PUCL People’s Union for Civil Liberties
PwC PricewaterhouseCoopers
R&D research and development
RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
RTI Right to Information [Act]
SCoF Standing Committee on Finance
SEZs special economic zones
SFLC Software Freedom Law Centre
SITE Satellite Instructional Television Experiment
SJM Swadeshi Jagran Manch
SMS short message service
SPACE Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment
STPI Software Technology Parks of India
3G third generation
TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TCS Tata Consultancy Services/TeleCommunication Systems, Inc.
TLD top-level domain
TPMs technological protection measures
TRAI Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
TRIPS Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
TV television
UAV unmanned aerial vehicle
UID Unique Identity (project)
UIDAI Unique Identification Authority of India
UK United Kingdom
ULBs urban local bodies
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UPOV
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants
URLs Uniform Resource Locators
USA United States of America
USAID
United States Agency for International Development
USDA
USPTO
United States Department of Agriculture
United States Patent and Trademark Office
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
USTR Office of the United States Trade Representative
VHP Vishva Hindu Parishad
VIPs visually impaired persons
W3C
WBU
WCIT
WIPO
WSIS
WTO
World Wide Web Consortium
World Blind Union
World Conference on International Telecommunication
World Intellectual Property Organization
World Summit on the Information Society
World Trade Organization
Introduction
Observations on the Politics of
Digital India
This book explores the politics and geopolitics of digital India. While the politics of digital India can be explored from a variety of vantage points, I seek to highlight a range of critical, current ‘information’ issues that are being shaped by both internal and external political and geopolitical imperatives. In considering the consequences of the shaping of the knowledge economy in India, I attempt to address current issues such as surveillance, software patenting, algorithmic power, the political economy of seed, biotechnology and the digital, and Internet governance, along with the ways in which these issues are currently being negotiated, contested, and/or resolved both nationally and with international institutions such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and countries such as the United States of America (USA). Why are these specific areas related to the digital highlighted in this text? It is because these are the areas that are key to India’s strategic interests and reflect its ambition to become a knowledge superpower. I consider seed and precision agriculture precisely because the digital footprint has progressively claimed every productive sector within its ambit. The politics and geopolitics of the digital, as dealt with in this book, have two dimensions:
1. Geopolitics, and especially the relationship between India and the USA, and the ways in which policies and practices related to the digital are shaped in India as a consequence of this relationship; and 2. The internal/domestic consequences of digital policy and practice that are contested and shaped as much by local contingencies as by global fiat.
I highlight the fact that the particularities of the Indian context simply have not been accounted for in policymaking related to digital India—a context in which the agricultural economy continues to account for more than half of the workforce. In 2017, less than 4 million out of the 450 million workforce were employed in information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services, and very modest numbers were involved in offering services to these industries as drivers, caterers, guards, domestic workers, and so on.1
The political dimensions of digital India clearly indicate the fact that the role of the State is key to understanding the nature of both public and private platforms in India. There are, however, formidable interested parties and trade partners, such as the USA, who leverage their power to shape India’s digital future. While the Indian government has made numerous attempts to shape the specific contours of the digital knowledge economy in India, most recently through the ‘Digital India’ initiative that was launched in 2015, the US government has attempted to leverage its power to shape cross-sectoral informational futures in India through the means of bilateral trade and Section 301 provisions. As such, the shaping of India’s knowledge futures is deeply contested from both within and without, and this book explores some of these contestations. Using insights from both Karl Polanyi and David Harvey to understand the nature of the neo-liberal state, its contradictions and contestations, I argue that the reform and redistributive agenda related to the digital emerges from within the State and from outside it, specifically communities, such as farmers and social movements. To date, this larger context is scarcely acknowledged in official initiatives such as Digital India. Rather, the heady language of Digital India tends to elide these divides in favour of a discourse that views the digital as a benign force that is autonomous and disembedded from the social, but which has the intrinsic power to
1 For a critique of official employment figures in this sector, see Barnes, T. 2015. ‘The IT Industry, Employment and Informality in India: Challenging the Conventional Narrative’, The Economic and Labour Relations Review 26(1): 82–9. See also Preetha, S. and A.J. Solanki. 2017. ‘India: A New Challenge for India’s Technology Sector: Trade Union Registered in Bangalore’, Mondaq, 17 November, available at http://www.mondaq.com/india/x/647374/employee+r ights+labour+relations/A+new+challenge+for+Indias+technology+sector+T rade+union+registered+in+Bangalore; accessed on 23 May 2018.
transform the country into a modern, digital nation and its millions of people into ‘digital natives’.
The Geopolitics of Digital India
The geopolitics of India has traditionally been studied against the background of the British Empire and in the context of the Cold War. India has always maintained its strategic interest in manufacturing indigenous technologies for deployment in both development and defence. However, India’s eschewal of socialism and embracing of capitalist futures, globalization, consumerism, its traditions of democracy, and its double-digit growth rates in the IT sector have led to positive reassessments of the country as a global player. Undoubtedly, the single most important development that has contributed to the country’s newly found international status is the development of its service economy, namely, business, banking and communication, retail and wholesale trade and transport, and a variety of household-related service industries. The services sector contributed 53.8 per cent to the total gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016–17, out of which 7.7 per cent has been attributed to the IT–business process outsourcing (BPO) sectors, a fall from the steady growth experienced from 2008–9, with a peak of 9.5 per cent in 2014–15. In 2012–13, the total revenue earned through software exports was $75.8 billion, while the total revenue earned by the IT industry in 2017 was $116 billion. Indeed, the IT industry proclaimed that it employed 3 million, while 9 million were indirectly employed.2 It is evident that while employment rates in the IT and ancillary industries remain insignificant when compared to agriculture (close to 230 million) and the manufacturing industry (92 million), the share of the GDP that the IT sector brings in is significant.3
The establishment of a single, integrated, and all-encompassing knowledge economy in India that is harmoniously integrated with global expectations, norms, and rules is a fraught project as it is also shaped by a variety of ‘local’ compulsions. India’s ambition of ‘strategic autonomy’ in
2 Statista. 2017. ‘Direct and Indirect Employment of the IT-BPM Industry in India from Fiscal Year 2009 to 2017 (in Millions)’, available at http://www. statista.com/statistics/320729/india-it-industry-direct-indirect-employment/.
3 Statista. ‘Direct and Indirect Employment of the IT-BPM Industry in India from Fiscal Year 2009 to 2017 (in millions)’.
its geopolitical dealings makes it an especially interesting case given that there are many examples of the Indian government rather unambiguously supporting local interests, such as the ‘compulsory licensing’ of pharma products, which are deemed to be in the public interest but are antithetical to trade rules and counter to the expectations of international pharmaceutical companies. This book explores these global–local compulsions and the many ways in which the ‘local’ is adapting the global to its own interests. Within this narrative, the role played by the Indian state in negotiating the politics of information is rarely consistent and is based on reconciling the interests of multinational corporations (MNCs) such as Microsoft and Facebook, specific interest groups such as the IT sector (through enabling software patents), political partners such as the present government’s4 negotiations with its family of Hindu organizations that belong to the Sangh Parivar, and its citizens. The controversy related to Facebook’s stillborn Free Basics initiative is interesting precisely because the current prime minister (PM) was a vocal supporter of this initiative, although he did not envisage the nature of internal opposition within the government, notably the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and nationwide advocacy by the civil society.
This episode highlights the fact that the knowledge economy in India is being shaped by multiple compulsions and, as such, there are no guarantees that the end result will be a replica of policy blueprints or reflect the visions of assorted MNCs who have a stake in India’s digital economy. Arguably, the Government of India (GoI) has to work within a fractured consensus on the exact shaping of digital India and the need to balance the interests of various stakeholders, notably industry and its citizenry. The Indian government is, on the one hand, committed to economic liberalization and to opening India to the global market exemplified by the Digital India initiative, while it is also, at the very same time, unable to control the many local digital economies, the so-called ‘jugaad’ economies, that have sprung up and are outside the ‘formal’ digital economy. In other words, the paradoxes and contradictions of the Indian state as it negotiates the knowledge economy are many. In its avatar as a security state, it is involved in the control of its citizenry through the expansion of surveillance via its Unique Identity (UID) or Aadhaar project, although it
4 The term ‘present government’ in this volume refers to the NDA government (2014–19).
has, at a local level, also been supportive of open source software solutions in governance and education that have led to the empowerment of citizens in select states in India inclusive of Karnataka and Kerala. The GoI is beholden to the IT industry and uses the privilege of the state to acquire land for the establishment of special economic zones (SEZs). At the same time, it occasionally supports policies and initiatives that are in the public interest, such as the amendment to the copyright law that has enabled greater access to digital material for the visually impaired and global advocacy at WIPO for stronger access-based policies for the visually impaired.
The State has also had to deal with the fact that the main political challenge to e-commerce has come from within the Hindutva family, which includes the current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), the economic advocacy unit of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—an all-India cadre-based Hindu nationalist organization—is vociferously opposed to the major e-commerce vendors currently operating in India, including the foreignfunded Indian company Flipkart and the impact of such vendors on the offline retail market.5 A brainchild of the RSS chief, Balasahib Deoras, the SJM was formed to counter the liberalization policies adopted by the Narasimha Rao government in 1991. The SJM, embarrassingly enough for the government, has launched a campaign against Paytm, a digital wallet company financially supported by Alibaba—a reflection of its growing anti-China stance following the stand-off between India and China in Doklam in 2017.6 The SJM has also been involved in a campaign against the government regulator Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee’s (GEAC) support for genetically modified (GM) mustard and the propharma policies adopted by National Institute for Transforming India, or NITI Aayog, the successor to the Planning Commission, and the Public
5 See Mathew, L. 2015. ‘An RSS Reminder: Ban e-Tail like Amazon, Flipkart’, The Indian Express, 18 January, available at http://indianexpress.com/ article/india/india-others/meanwhile-an-rss-reminder-ban-e-tail-like-amazonflipkart/; accessed on 11 May 2018.
6 PTI. 2017. ‘RSS-Affiliated Swadeshi Jagran Manch up in Arms against Paytm’, Livemint, 5 November, available at http://www.livemint.com/Politics/ vKTtPPKve86RL3OiEYuWJM/RSSaffiliated-Swadeshi-Jagran-Manch-up-inarms-against-Payt.html; accessed on 22 May 2018.
Health Foundation of India, a non-governmental organization (NGO) supported by funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.7
The multifaceted response by the State reflects Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph’s descriptor of the Indian state as ‘polymorphous’ and a ‘creature of manifold forms and orientations’ in their book, The Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. 8 While their own understanding of the Indian state as a self-determining entity was shaped by the independent ‘dirigiste’, developmentalist state in the postIndependence period, their book did not foreshadow the Indian state’s formal eschewal of socialism and its embrace of the neo-liberal model of growth that began in the 1990s and has accelerated ever since. In other words, their analysis deals with the developmentalist state before it was recalibrated by the logic of the market in the early 1990s. The recalibrated Indian state has downgraded its ideational and material support for welfarism and Garibi Hatao (‘End Poverty’, one of the Congress Party’s electoral slogans during PM Indira Gandhi’s reign) and has since focused on establishing policies and infrastructure that enable capitalist growth. In Priya Chacko’s words:
The erosion of the developmentalist state project from the 1970s laid the path for a deeper shift in the national social order from the 1990s with the recasting of statehood within a geo-economic social, wherein India’s future was thought to be best secured through policies of economic openness, growth and competitiveness, rather than through geo-political social forms of central planning and endogenous economic development. This shift in India’s state project has given rise to new forms of global and regional engagement that have served to further processes of state transformation in India.9
7 Mahajan, A.S. 2017. ‘The Battle Within: The Modi Government’s Reform Agenda Continues to Face Opposition from the RSS’, Business Today, 12 February, available at https://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/features/themodi-governments-reform-agenda-continues-to-face-opposition-from-the-rss/ story/244680.html; accessed on 11 March 2019.
8 Rudolph, L.I. and S.H. Rudolph. 1987. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, p. 400.
9 Chacko, P. 2014. ‘The New Geo-Economics of a “Rising” India: State Transformation and the Recasting of Foreign Policy’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 45(2): 341.
This erosion of the developmentalist state is also reflected in the State’s relentless cuts in public expenditures, agricultural subsidies, rural development, investments in agriculture, in elementary education, and health, with the latter steadily undergoing privatization. India’s postIndependence commitment to capitalism, which has been accentuated in the period of economic liberalization, still remains a deeply uneven process. In D’Costa’s words: ‘capitalism in India must be seen for what it is, a market system that is evolving in an uneven way, geographically, sectorally and socially.’10
India’s embrace of the market and the knowledge economy has been accompanied by a shift in its international relations as it looks towards the West, the USA in particular—a change from its alignment with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War period. It is undoubtedly India’s relationship with the USA that is key to understanding its digital economy and geopolitics. Over the previous two decades, there has been a perceived convergence of interests between the USA and India, especially in areas of security, strengthening of democracy, and embrace of policies supportive of neo-liberal growth in India.11 Not only is the USA a key trading partner and the major destination for software exports from India, it is also home to some of the largest information and media companies that now have a substantive presence in India and which employ vast numbers of Indian employees in their industries, both within India and elsewhere. This relationship has recently become strained as a result of the USA’s increasing adoption of protectionist policies and restrictions to the issuance of H1B visas, which were issued predominantly to those of Indian origin working in the IT sector. The consequent slowdown in software exports and the general malaise in the IT sector in India have led to redundancies in key IT companies in India, including Infosys, Cognizant, and Tech Mahindra, with projected job losses in excess of 200,000 between 2017 and 2020.12
10 D’Costa, A.P. 2005. The Long March to Capitalism: Embourgeoisement, Internationalisation and Industrial Transformation in India. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 7.
11 See Chitalker, P. and D.M. Malone. 2011. ‘Democracy, Politics and India’s Foreign Policy’, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 17(1): 75–91.
12 Srivastava, S. 2017. ‘India Tech Sector Downsizes Heavily as Trump’s H-1B Policies Create Uncertainty’, CNBC, 23 May, available at https://www.
This relationship is also reflected in the shifts in the Indian state’s ‘moral’ leadership: from a country that supported pro-Independence struggles in Palestine and Tibet to one that is actively involved as an economic partner of Israel and China. The relationship with Israel is especially interesting, given India’s launch of an advanced Israeli spy satellite in 2008, Israeli involvement in providing surveillance systems to help with India’s security and monitoring operations in Kashmir, and the ongoing cooperation in other areas such as agricultural development.13 There have been major bilateral initiatives, including the India–Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund (I4F), the India–Israel CEO forum, the India–Israel Innovation Bridge, an online platform to encourage and facilitate collaboration between Israeli and Indian start-ups; the Indo-Israeli Agriculture Project; MoUs (memorandums of understanding) between the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Israel Space Agency (ISA); and MoUs on India–Israel water cooperation.14
The Indian state’s present orientation is also reflected in its continuing partnerships with the Anglo Commonwealth nations, especially in building nuclear capabilities based on cooperation with the United Kingdom (UK), Canada, and Australia.15
The State and Its Digital Entanglements
I have, in other writings, described the State in India as an ambivalent entity, torn between the imperatives of shaping India’s future along neo-liberal cnbc.com/2017/05/23/indian-tech-sector-downsizes-heavily-as-trumps-h-1bpolicy-creates-uncertainty.html; accessed on 12 May 2018.
13 Saint-Mezard, I. 2010. ‘India and Israel: An Unlikely Alliance’, Le Monde Diplomatique, November, available at https://mondediplo.com/2010/ 11/11indiaisrael; accessed on 22 May 2018.
14 Mishra, D. 2018. ‘Future Prospects of the India–Israel Defense Cooperation’, The Jerusalem Post, 1 January, available at http://www.jpost.com/ Opinion/Future-prospects-of-the-India-Israel-defense-cooperation-522586; accessed on 22 May 2018.
15 Davis, A.E. 2014. ‘The Identity Politics of India–US Nuclear Engagement: Problematising India as Part of the Anglosphere’, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 10(1): 81–96.
pathways on the one hand, and the redistribution of resources to large sections of the Indian population on the other.16 One of the characteristic features of the neo-liberal State in India is that it has become thoroughly ‘marketized’, perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the Digital India project is based on public–private partnership (PPP) in which private firms are closely involved in shaping India’s digital future. Furthermore, the involvement of key representatives of India’s major business houses in party politics and their election to the Rajya Sabha—for example, Rahul Bajaj (BJP/Shiv Sena and National Congress Party), Anil Ambani (Samajwadi Party), and Rajkumar Dhoot (Shiv Sena)—and lobbying for their own corporate interests, points to the systems of patronage that continue to frame State–market relationships.17 The ability of the State to regulate the market is, in the context of this close relationship, difficult to say the least, precisely because of analogous interests. The appointment of IT Secretary R.S. Sharma, a key advocate of Aadhaar and other schemes linked to Digital India, as chairperson of TRAI in 2015 has been reported as a political appointment, although he too could not prevent the setback of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’ and the cause of ‘net neutrality’ that was upheld by TRAI in 2016.18
The previous Congress-led government had also attempted to use the offices of TRAI to push through a 2G spectrum auction that was itself a major financial scam that had direct consequences for the political fortunes of that government.19 Both examples point to the fact that the power of the State to support its own extra-legal interests, and that of the market, has remained constant irrespective of the regime in power. At a macro level, this pro-market orientation is reflected in and across the various tiers
16 Thomas, P.N. 2014.‘The Ambivalent State and the Media in India: Between Elite Domination and the Public Interest’, International Journal of Communication 8: 466–82.
17 Srivastava, J. 2013. ‘Theorising State–Market Axis in a Globalizing India’, Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Bordeaux, 4–7 September, p. 12, available at https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/40d3e6fe-2f58-4459ac56-7d0871d62217.pdf; accessed on 11 July 2018.
18 Bhatia, R. 2016. ‘The Inside Story of Facebook’s Biggest Setback’, The Guardian, 12 May, available at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/ may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg; accessed on 10 July 2018.
19 Bhandari, B. 2012. Spectrum Grab: Inside Story of the 2G Grab, New Delhi: BS Books.
of the developmental state. The replacement of the Planning Commission with NITI Aayog in 2015, at least on paper, was defended as a necessary exercise that would result in the replacement of a command economy with an economy based on cooperate federalism that would strengthen India’s strategic economic interests within a competitive global economy. While there certainly is evidence of competitive federalism making a difference—for example, the success of the IT sectors in Karnataka and Telangana—the lack of federal financial support for Amaravati, the de facto capital of/smart city project in Andhra Pradesh (AP), does suggest that there are limits to cooperative federalism, one of the key principles underlying the vision and mission of NITI Aayog. Arguably, such examples of an impasse between the central government and states can lead to the expansion of competitive federalism.20 Regional disparities are exemplified by the fact that Uber, IKEA, DreamWorks, Google, Amazon, and Apple have invested in their biggest campuses outside of the USA in Telangana but not in any of the other states.
While the central government is, at least in principle, committed to an all India approach to the ‘digital’, it is clear that the digital footprint in India in terms of infrastructure, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, social capital, and so on, is massively uneven—disparities that are a direct consequence of varying state investments in education, infrastructure, and connectivity. The much-lauded growth in Internet penetration rates, the distribution of mobile phones, and digital access belies a real consideration of the fact that the epicentres of India’s knowledge economy are state and city specific. Seven states accounted for 70 per cent of FDI flows during April–December 2017 (Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and AP) totalling $35.9 billion, out of which $6.14 billion went to telecommunications, $5.16 billion to computer software and hardware, and $4.6 billion to services,21 thereby confirming trends noted previously by Lawrence Saez.22
20 Saez, L. 1999. ‘India’s Economic Liberalization, Interjurisdictional Competition and Development’, Contemporary South Asia 8(3): 323–45.
21 Kota, H.B. 2018. ‘Tackle Regional Disparity in FDI’, The Pioneer, 21 March, available at https://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/tackleregional-disparity-in-fdi.html; accessed on 10 July 2018.
22 See Saez. ‘India’s Economic Liberalization, Interjurisdictional Competition and Development’.
Theorizing the Indian State, both in its own right and in terms of its compact with the digital, is complex. If India can no longer be characterized as a unitary, developmental state, is it worth our effort to come to an understanding of the Indian state as a macro-entity? Is the State in India an ‘imaginary institution’, as argued by Sudipta Kaviraj?23 Or is it the case that in order to understand the contemporary State in India, we simply have to study the State as an entity that is imbricated in the lives of Indians at different levels, registers, moments, and via different strategies and processes, in spite of efforts by the State to create Indiawide centralized systems such as the Aadhaar database? In other words, should we begin from an understanding of what digital India means to ordinary Indians living in specific parts of the country, experiencing variegated levels of access and engagements with the digital? As Sailen Routray has argued:
Apart from the theoretical benefits, it is also methodologically helpful to do this, as this move makes multiple ethnographic sites available to us for studying the state, its effects and the way governmental programmes and policies get shaped on the ground. This is not merely a methodological or theoretical move unrelated to the real-life morphings of the state. What has been termed as the neo-liberal state seems to be characterised by a certain amount of institutional dispersal and contradictions.24
Another important specificity of the central state in its embrace of the digital is its continuing investments in building indigenous capacities in the digital, be it via investments at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) for the development of the free software/ Linux-based Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) that has become the basis for the development of local language-specific software and multilingual computing, or for satellite-based remote sensing, signal distribution, and monitoring technologies by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Whether this public interest dimension of the State will remain in the context of its relentless embrace of the market
23 Kaviraj, S. 2010. The Imaginary Institution of India. Hyderabad: Permanent Black/Orient Blackswan.
24 Routray, S. 2015. ‘The Post-Development Impasse and the State in India’, Third World Quarterly 36(10): 1914.
is anybody’s guess; however, it does seem that technologies that enhance security and the strategic interests of the State will continue to be supported. The fact that ISRO’s commercial arm, Antrix Corporation, has become a revenue earner in its own right, based on its transponder leasing operations and satellite launching business (Rs 275 crore [2,750 million] in 2016–17 from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle [PSLV], Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle [GSLV], and GSLV Mk-III), is a reflection of another avatar of the Indian State as a market.25 Arguably, therefore, any attempt to understand this complexity with the aid of established theoretical frameworks must contend with the kaleidoscopic terrain of activities, actionings, pressures, and interests from a multiplicity of stakeholders that are involved in shaping growth and development through both legal and extra-legal means. Unions, movements, business and corporate regimes, lobby groups, and to a lesser extent, civil society groups are involved in pressuring the State to work at their behest, in the pursuit of, as the case may be, accumulation and/or redistribution.
An excellent example of the study of the Indian state, from the bottom up as it were, is Akhil Gupta’s study of bureaucracy, structural violence, and poverty, based on the ethnographic fieldwork of two welfare projects in Mandi, Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh.26 He explores the paradoxes of how a ‘caring’ state embraces, via its bureaucracy, ‘uncaring’ as a ‘constitutive modality’ and the structural violence that is its key outcome.27 Gupta sees the State in terms of ‘congeries of institutions and agencies and agendas at different levels that are not necessarily well connected with each other’;28 in other words, a disaggregated notion of the State that has differential, uneven impacts on people divided by poverty and their ability to exercise power and control over key resources. This rather more fluid, conjunctural notion of the State experienced by people in India in their everyday lives can be contrasted with the social imaginary of the
25 The Indian Express. 2018. ‘India’s Share in Global Satellite Launch Services Goes Up’, 29 January, available at http://www.newindianexpress.com/ business/2018/jan/29/indias-share-in-glob al-satellite-launch-services-goesup-1765068.html; accessed on 10 July 2018.
26 Gupta, A. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence and Poverty in India. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan.
