Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE FOCUS
THE DAZZLE OF THE
DIGITAL
Unbundling India Online
Meghna Bal and Vivan Sharan
Focus
The Dazzle of the Digital
The Dazzle of the Digital is written in the context of digital
technology’s inextricable link with progress and modernity in India,
with the COVID pandemic in the backdrop. Digital technology such
as smartphones and the internet exemplify the popular ideal of a
modernity where the proliferation of data and information seamlessly
translates into knowledge and value. The authors attempt to wrestle
with this impulsive conflation of the digital with the modern, and
argue that the former can sometimes retard progress rather than foster
it. They provide examples from various spheres – ranging from public
service delivery to private markets – to unpack the pitfalls of a
blinkered view on modernity.
The book presents an objective take on the potential of digital
technology, written with the hope that it will prompt greater societal
reflection on technology as a lever for advancement, at a time when the
march of everything digital is inexorable.
Meghna Bal, Fellow, Esya Centre
Vivan Sharan, Partner, Koan Advisory Group
Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects
Series Editor: Saurabh Dube, Professor-Researcher, Distinguished
Category, El Colegio de México, Mexico City
Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects has a broad yet particular purpose. It
explores quotidian claims made on the modern – understood as idea and
image, practice and procedure – as part of everyday articulations of
modernity in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Here, the category-
entity of the subject refers not only to social actors who have been active
participants in historical processes of modernity, but as equally implying
branch of learning and area of study, topic and theme, question and
matter, and issue and business. Our effort is to explore such modern
subjects in a range of distinct yet overlaying ways.
The titles in the series address earlier understandings of the modern and
recent reconsiderations of modernity by focusing on a clutch of common
and critical questions. Indeed, our bid is to carefully query aggrandising
representations of modernity “as” the West, while prudently tracking the
place of such projections in the commonplace unravelling of the modern in
Global Souths today.
Other books in this series
Disciplines of Modernity
Archives, Histories, Anthropologies
Saurabh Dube
Fluid Modernity
The Politics of Water in the Middle East
Gilberto Conde
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Focus-on-Modern-Subjects/book-series/RFOMS
The Dazzle of the Digital
Unbundling India Online
Meghna Bal and Vivan Sharan
First published 2023
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
information business
© 2023 Meghna Bal and Vivan Sharan
The right of Vivan Sharan and Meghna Bal to be identified
as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-34303-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-38778-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32490-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429324901
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
To Rajiv, Raka, Madhav, Tripurari, and Sujata
Contents
Lists of Figures viii
List of Tables ix
Series Editor’s Foreword by Saurabh Dube x
Acknowledgements xxi
1 Introduction – The Dazzle of the Digital 1
2 A Brief History of the Politics of Technology in
India 15
3 Defaulting to e-Governance 33
4 Is Data is the New Oil? 54
5 Digital in the Time of COVID 86
6 Conclusion – Stepping Back to Leap Forward 111
Index 119
Figures
3.1 Example of Advisories Sent on Mkisan 40
4.1 Film Output (2016) versus Revenue Generation (2017) 68
4.2 Volume of Digital Transactions in 2018 ($ Billion) 69
4.3 IP and Computer Services Exports (2018) 70
Tables
1.1 Changes in Focus of Lok Sabha on Issues Linked to
Digitalisation 12
3.1 Education Levels Among Agricultural Workers (%) 37
3.2 Comparative Data Usage Per Capita (Exabytes/per
Month) 41
4.1 Square Kilometres of Land per Million Population 56
4.2 Educational Attainments of Population Aged
15–24 Years in China and India 58
4.3 Financial Development Index, 2017 59
4.4 Mobile Data Traffic (Exabyte/Months) 61
4.5 Revenue Trends in ITeS-BPO Industry (INR Crores) 65
4.6 Valuations of Top 10 Digital Economy Companies
in US, China and India 67
5.1 Taxonomy of AEPS Transaction Failures 99
