The Politics of Digital India

Description

Transforming India into a digital state has been an objective of successive governments in India. However, the digital, by its very nature, is a capricious, multi-dimensional entity. Its operationalization across multiple sectors in India has highlighted the fact that the digital compact with publics in India is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, devices such as mobile phones have enabled access and efficiencies, and on the other, they have increased the scope for surveillance capitalism and the expansion of governmentality. The digital is at the same time a resource, commodity, and process that is absolutely fundamental to most if not all productive forces across multiple sectors.

As a part of the Media Dynamics in South Asia series, this volume explores the making of digital India and specifically deals with the contradictions of an imperfect democracy, internal compulsions, and external pressures that continue to play crucial roles in the shaping of the same. Mindful of the key roles played by political economy and context and based on conversations with theory and practice, it makes a case for critical understanding of the digital embrace in India.

About the Author

Pradip Ninan Thomas teaches at the School of Communication and Arts, the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

Series Editors:

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.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Observations on the Politics of Digital India

Section I: The Control State

1. The Expansion of Politics as Control: Surveillance in India
2. Leisure, Surveillance, and the Private Sector in India
3. Software Patent Manoeuvres

Section II: The Sovereign/Ambivalent State?

4. Digital (Transgenic) Seed and Its Copy
5. The Politics and Geopolitics of Internet Governance
6. The WIPO Treaty for the Visually Impaired as a Double Movement

Conclusion: Digital India and the Politics and Geopolitics of Information

Index

About the Author