2 - Living in a Technological Utopia

Summary

Abstract The chapter examines the Digital India initiative rolled out by the Government of India in 2015. The proliferation of the Digital India initiative in the slums of India highlights the ubiquity of the development/empowerment paradigm at the heart of tech projects and programmes designed for poor and marginalised communities. The initiative serves as a placeholder for understanding the different processes, mentalities, and actions that bracket poor children's complex aspirations and desires and consider them empowered neoliberal subjects. The chapter makes a case that children sometimes marshal their digital practices to align with the dominant expectation to function and aspire like a neoliberal subject. However, they continue to ascribe novel meanings to their digital engagements in covert and implicit ways.

Keywords: Digital India, Reliance Jio, working children, prosumer, privatised risk, jugaad

In this chapter, I unpack the connections between technology-centred narratives sponsored by both states/governments and corporations in India and the resulting policies, market conditions, and children's digital experiences in the country. Accordingly, I have examined the role of two macro institutions of power: the Indian state and telecommunication companies, in reinforcing the neoliberal and technology-centred narratives among children in low-income settlements of Azad Nagar, Munnekolala, and Seemapuri. The nexus of state, companies, and users constitutes the popular narratives on digital technologies and their role in these low-income settlements. To study this nexus, I trace the implications of two significant initiatives related to digital technologies in India—the launch of the Digital India initiative and Reliance Jio—on the lives of children and residents from poor neighbourhoods in Bangalore, Delhi, and Mumbai.

As discussed in the introduction, children's engagements with digital technologies are influenced by a broader assemblage of social identities, cultural conditions, and existing power structures in their communities. I will demonstrate how macro structures of power defining the role of digital technologies in societies dovetail into children's everyday experiences with digital technologies. I identify government discourse, the role of telecom corporations, large not-for-profit organisations working on digital inclusion and equity issues, and the existing national and local policies related to children's access to digital technologies, especially for educational and development purposes, as collectively constituting the macro structures of power. These power relations coalesce with children's social identities, cultural norms, and quotidian digital practices, giving rise to popular narratives about digital technologies at the community and national levels.