Digital India and the Poor

Policy, Technology and Society

Suman Gupta

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000069051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Economics

Digital India and The Poor examines how the poor are evoked in contemporary Indian political discourse. It studies the ways in which the disadvantaged are accounted for in the increasingly digitised political economy, commercial and public policy, media, and academic research.

This book:

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• Interrogates the category of the poor in India and how they have come to be classified in economic and policy documents over the past few decades

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• Explores the influential digital education technology 'experiments' conducted in Indian slums from the late 1990s, now popularly known as the 'hole-in-the-wall experiments'

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• Discusses financial inclusion initiatives, predominantly as they converged between 2014 and 2017, such as the Jan Dhan Yojana, the Aadhaar Project, and the banknote demonetisation

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• Presents an in-depth study of the bearing of technology on domestic employment in India

The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian studies, politics, political science and sociology, technology studies, linguistics, and development studies.

1 Introduction

Theme, method, terms, structure

The theme

The phrase ‘Digital India’ in the title of this study refers to an aspiration for progressive social development through technological means, particularly post-2000.

This aspiration has been espoused variously by the political state of India, that is, by the central government, state governments and their agencies. The phrase appears as a brand name for bullish schemes, most ambitiously in the campaign launched by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government in July 2015, ratified by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet in August 2014 (PIB 2014). The campaign incorporated a series of programmes ‘with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy’ (Digital India Website/ ‘About’ 2015), including setting up comprehensive e-governance structures, upgrading the digital infrastructure (broadband speeds, access to internet, etc.) to the highest global standards, and fostering universal digital literacy. This imperious ambition gave the phrase renewed verve. Numerous reports have been published about those aims, both upbeat and circumspect. This study is, however, not contextualised by that campaign. The phrase ‘Digital India’ is of wider import here. Despite the strong claims made in the government’s campaign, it would be inaccurate to consider aspirations pinned on the phrase as merely driven by government. Numerous commercial and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are involved in the programmes, both Indian and international (the distinction is now an extremely fluid one, often no more than nomenclatural). To facilitate those involvements, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology set up the Digital India Corporation as a non-governmental non-profit company in 2017 (PIB 2017). Though seemingly new, this was effectively a renaming of the research body Media Lab Asia, which had been set up in 2001 by the same ministry in association with, initially, the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab.

In fact, through its career the phrase ‘Digital India’ has united governments, corporations, NGOs and academia behind such aspirations. As a brand name ‘Digital India’ used to be owned by the Indian subsidiary of the US-based Digital Equipment Corporation from 1987, and went out of circulation as such around 2003, when Digital merged with Compaq and that in turn merged with Hewlett-Packard. Having started life as a commercial brand name, the phrase then passed into the vocabulary of various governmental initiatives on e-governance from 2006 onwards (notably the Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme from 2008), and of NGOs trying to bring information technology resources to the marginalised (such as the Digital Empowerment Foundation established in 2002). The phrase has also been popular among academics surveying Indian digital systems and prospects (such as Ghosh 2006; Thomas 2012; Athique 2012, Chapter 5). All of these accruals of connotations and associations of the phrase are relevant for this study.

This study focuses on a broad but delimited area on which the aspirations of Digital India are frequently pinned: the poor. I have deliberately foregrounded the relative informality of the term ‘poor’ rather than the comparatively formal ‘poverty’. In academic circles, the term ‘poverty’ under the rubric of Poverty Studies is strongly associated with particular socio-economic methods, which are usually referred to as a canon of key specialists and theories (for accessible overviews see Lister 2004; Haughton and Khandker 2009; Ravallion 2016). As such, ‘poverty’ is understood immediately as a cohesive phenomenon or condition which calls for precise definition, numerate methods of measurement, data collection in specific contexts, and ultimately the determination thereby of the causes of and strategies for alleviating poverty. The obviously distinct connotations of ‘inequality’ are subject to a similar scholarly approach, and often feature alongside or at least within the ambit of Poverty Studies. Particular social factors – inadequate nutrition, housing, income, education, etc. – and the attendant distresses appear as symptoms of a precedent malaise, ‘poverty’ or ‘inequality’, which needs to be tracked to its roots. Differing definitions and methods for studying both ‘poverty’ and ‘inequality’ are subscribed, all of which are variously contested or championed. Amidst differences, however, the disciplinary territory is fairly rigidly structured and territorialised. Analytical methods associated with anthropology, media studies, linguistics, philosophy, politics, history and so on have a conditional purchase in the academic study of ‘poverty’, and appear as ancillary to this core structure of Poverty Studies. In writing this, and choosing to foreground the loose signification ‘poor’ here, I do not mean to disregard that valuable academic approach to ‘poverty’, only to clarify the distinct perspective taken here. The materials of Poverty Studies are often and necessarily referred to in the following chapters, but this study is not a contribution in quite that mould.

The term ‘poor’ – and with that definite article ‘the poor’ – belongs to the area of ordinary communications rather than the scholarly. It is often loosely or suggestively used instead of being sharply defined, and works by descriptive association instead of denoting a measured understanding of the condition of poverty. In this sense, contemplating poor people may revolve predominantly around one of the social factors associated with poverty: living in congested and unsanitary conditions, doing informal work and earning beneath the income-tax threshold, having indifferent access to education, and so on. And yet, being ‘poor’ has a readily accepted bearing on the nuances of ‘poverty’ (as a well-defined condition) and vice versa, and may well be meaningfully used as such in formal applied contexts, for instance in legal and policy documents. In the next section I pause on the linguistic distinction between ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’ further.

By foregrounding ‘the poor’ I intend to draw attention to what this study is about: the ways in which poor people and the condition of being poor are discussed, represented and persuasively or purposively used in public discourses related to the aspirations of Digital India – that is, in political and policy, legal, commercial, media, and relevant academic contexts. Naturally, rigorous definitions, corollary measurements and statistical analyses have a salient, and often determinative, place within the spectrum of discursive contexts in question. Those are within the purview of this study, but in relation to a larger discursive circuit which includes popular discourses, publicity and propaganda. A necessary aspect of the theme of this study is: who talks of poor people or the condition of being poor and why? The who in this study is generally an institution or other collective alignment rather than specific persons; considering the why is where the political thrust of this study lies. In particular, the specific junctures discussed in the following chapters concern complex intertwining of governmental and commercial objectives, public and private interests, which clarify the expectations contained in the phrase ‘Digital India’. I do not begin with an ideological agenda, but hope to bring out the ideological agendas implicit in Digital India – inferences of critical political import may follow from that.

Method and words

The theme of this study stated thus, along with the attention to words and phrases already evident, suggests that the method followed here is that of social (or sociolinguistic) discourse analysis. With a bit more political edge, perhaps ‘critical discourse analysis’ (CDA) would be more apt, where the term ‘critical’ is weighted with some interrogative and emancipative commitment. In academic circles, recourse to a received discipline-defined method is usually reassuring, and this study may plausibly be regarded as such. However, instead of referring to the usual sources describing CDA methods (the numerous publications by Norman Fairclough, Teun Van Dijk, Ruth Wodak, Theo van Leeuwen and others), a more immediate, brief and comparatively limited description of the method followed here is expedient.

I think of the following as involving the analysis of social texts which converge on specific junctures (or case studies or situated contexts) relevant to the theme and question stated previously. The phrase ‘social text’ is meant to bring together records and documents which may otherwise be dispersed among different disciplinary and professional areas, and to analyse them in a combined fashion. Social texts incorporate diverse kinds of records and documents that converge on those specific junctures. Thus, legal and policy documents, news reports and documentaries, tabulations of ‘raw data’ and statistical analyses, popular-culture performances and narratives, everyday-life images and records, scholarly papers from various disciplines could all be considered social texts in bearing upon and informing a specific juncture – in constructing, so to speak, the ‘socialness’ of that juncture. Where pertinent, I try to be cognisant of the different communicative modalities (print, digital, audio/visual) involved in texts, and the mechanics of their production, reception and institutionalisation (or archived oblivion).

So, the ‘social’ is understood as structured by as well as structuring communication, which is traceable through ‘texts’. The production of the ‘social’ in communication and vice versa accrues as ‘social texts’ in repositories/archives as a collective memory. The mutual bind of communication and the ‘social’ is explored here with regard to what I dub as ‘specific junctures’. I understand the latter as involving an attribution of social relevance to particular themes or occurrences across a wide range of communications. Analysing social texts so as to both clarify particular junctures and understand their social relevance may take different directions. Such analysis may call for recovering such texts from habitual and everyday transience or dislocating them from their preconceived place in practical, expert and scholarly precincts. Here, this analytical process follows the question raised previously, and consists in tracking who, so to speak, voices the social texts – that is, not so much as individual signatories but in terms of collective positions – and why. Between the who and the why every social text presents a rationale, the intent of which may or may not be realised in the actual reception and circulation of such texts. The point of each of the following chapters is to trace the interlocking or slipping rationales for a specific juncture, from which larger patterns and overarching modes of rationalising may become apparent. Together, the chapters would effectively convey the social and political disposition of Digital India articulated around the poor.

As noted already, the contextually specific nuances and deployment of words and phrases in social texts is central to the method followed here. It is therefore expedient to pause, at this introductory stage, on the term which is the impetus for this study and gives it coherence – ‘poor’ – and related terms – obviously ‘poverty’, but also a number of others (‘proletariat’, ‘underclass’, etc.). Here, these terms are not merely neutral signifiers in syntactical relationships with other signifiers; in social texts these come with received ideological overtones, or are loaded with normative ideas and rhetorical possibilities. Some notes follow underlining the ideological content of the terms ‘poor’ and relatedly ‘poverty’, and a range of associated terms – arranged under three subheadings.

‘Poor’ and ‘Poverty’

The word ‘poor’ seldom calls for analytical pause, and the word ‘poverty’, though more grounded in analytical registers, has also received sparse linguistic attention. They often appear together and are considered to be immediately meaningful in everyday usage, evoking certain kinds of material suffering, deprivation and privation. Both dictionary and academic definitions generally conform to their everyday connotations while qualifying or accentuating those. Put otherwise, these words appear to be transparent and instrumental: words to consensually name a condition before examining or acting upon it. However, when contemplated as words they appear to concentrate various calculations in usage.

Here’s an instance of a sociolinguist pausing briefly on the grammatical nuances of the words (in English, of course) before analysing how they featured on a single page of a British tabloid newspaper in 1991:

Poverty is something that you are in; this makes it unlike measles, for instance, or luck or hunger, which are things you can have. The place you are in when you are in poverty is an abstract place, like despair (which you are also in), a kind of mental place, an emotional state of affairs. Poverty is not active; it is something with which you have been affected, like hunger. Poverty is a state, not an event. To say ‘I am (living) in poverty’ is to say ‘I am poor’. It is a quality, a characteristic which acts as a description of a person, a classification.

This grammar is at once an explanation – not an overt, explicit explanation, but one which, being covert, is all the more potent in its effects. It tells us that poverty is something that you can be in, or get yourself into; that it is a classification of the person to whom it attaches: ‘I am poor’ is like ‘I am tall’ in that respect.

(Kress 1994, pp. 28–9)

The general point is that even the grammatical positioning of words like ‘poverty’ or ‘poor’ has social import, and already gestures towards explanations. However, ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’ seem to me even less coterminous than Kress suggests. To declare ‘I am living in poverty’ (as a declaration, ‘I am in poverty’ is rare) is not quite the same as saying ‘I am poor’. The former suggests a condition that I find myself in, ‘poverty’ is larger than me and I am within it; the latter suggests a quality which I have internalised, the quality of being ‘poor’ describes me. It is a slight difference, but perhaps a significant one. Thereby different contexts of enunciation are indicated. ‘I am living in poverty’ has an edge of considered formality in it; it comes in the voice of someone who is, despite being poor, contemplating the condition of ‘poverty’ from a distance. The condition is looked at while being owned. Appropriately, ‘poverty’ is the word that slides easily into official and analytical discourse, inviting definition and disaggregation. ‘I am poor’ is a comparatively informal and immediate declaration. It comes in the voice of one who owns to a condition in everyday intercourse. The word ‘poor’ seems a bit too informal for definition and theorising. This slight difference is also emphasised when the words are used as collective nouns with a definite article: ‘the poor’, ‘the poverty-stricken’. ‘The poor’ are simply described as being such; ‘the poverty-stricken’ are understood as afflicted with something. The explanative thrust of the latter is stronger: a call for definitions and remedies is contained in it, and the word is tilted towards formalised discourse. There’s also a matter of tone: ‘poverty’ sounds serious, where ‘poor’ is lighter. The word ‘poor’ may, for instance, be tinged by epithets of endearment for the small suffering of children, or casual expressions of sympathy. Similarly, the word ‘poverty’ might recall more abstract and highbrow (especially academic) metaphoric usage – as in, the ‘poverty of spirit/mind/philosophy/historicism/theory’.

Obviously, these slight differences between ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’ are specific to English, but may be found to not dissimilar effect with different gram...