Event: STS Circle, CGIS South S050, 1730 Cambridge St
Date and Time: Monday, October 7 from 12:15-2 PM
Title: The moral politics of the e-conomy in India: Digitization, populism and informal workers
Abstract: The technological promises of Digital India, a flagship policy to improve governance and economic opportunities, remain largely unrealized in the lives of the urban poor. New forms of fraud and corruption have emerged, women and the elderly experience exclusion, and illiteracy and poor internet connections continue to pose problems. Nevertheless, urban street vendors in Delhi see the technology as progressive for the nation and themselves. How are citizens appeased despite the experiential failures of techno-economic promises? I explore this question through ethnographic research with street vendors in New Delhi and their uptake of Aadhaar, digital biometric identification, and real time mobile payments. My project builds on theory in Science and Technology Studies (STS) to show that the creation of new economic subjects through technology is simultaneously the creation of new political subjects. Digitization enables a shift from visible to invisible surveillance of the poor, creates direct connections between welfare recipients and political leaders, and enrolls the poor as nation-builders. I show how technology policy that promises to liberate the poor in India is being used to gain populist support and centralize surveillance. While economic growth and formalization remains elusive, poor street vendors feel morally addressed and incorporated into the project of nation-building.
Bio: Pariroo Rattan is a sixth year PhD candidate in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in the Science, Technology and Policy Studies track. She is also completing a Secondary Field (minor) in Music. Her dissertation studies digitization of the informal economy in India and its role in the rise of autocratic populism, through her ethnography with street vendors in New Delhi. Pariroo also works comparatively, and writes on citizen resistance and protest to digital regimes across China, India, the EU and the US. Additionally, she is working on the politics of evidence in the Harvard affirmative action lawsuit and the acoustics and sound politics of the urban economy. In 2024-25, Pariroo is a Fellow at the HKS Program on Science, Technology and Society (STS), Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Institute for Internet and Society, the Carr Center for Human Rights at HKS, and is a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Her research has been supported by many Harvard programs, including the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs Dissertation Writing Grant, the Vicki Norberg-Bohm Fellowship, the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative and the Harvard Fellowship for Students from India (in honour of Amartya Sen). She is a co-organizer and co-founder of the Graduate Research in STS (GRiSTS) network, which will host its fifth annual convening in November 2024.