Technology and Society in the Global South

Research on this theme seeks to understand the nature of the interaction between technology and society and its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. This is studied by locating the relationships within larger historical and philosophical frameworks. Special attention is paid to delineate the specificities of the interface for a developing society like India where the identity question intersects economic class in shaping the impact of technology. Digital technology remains a key area of focus with an explicit goal to identify the aspects of continuity and change in the technology-society nexus in its current digital avatar. Faculty members from a variety of disciplines within HSRC including cultural studies, economics, philosophy, politics and sociology, contribute to research on this theme in collaboration with dual degree students and PhD scholars.

Understanding 'Data' in its Many Forms: In the past decade, various bottom-up civic tech and digital civic initiatives have emerged to tackle local pressing issues, such as air pollution and disaster response, often with technology-mediated data collection, curation, analysis, design, and visualisations, promoting democratic participation. Civic tech initiatives, even as they offer the potential to promote democratic participation, need to be seen in the backdrop of emerging literature on the entangling of civic data with open and/or counter data. We need to ask: how effective is civic data? What are the specific contexts (if any) where the use of civic data promotes democratic participation and better governance? How can one promote the conversion of civic data to counter data, and the concomitant inclusion of a multiplicity of voices in decision-making and governance? How will the opening up of data impact the citizen-state relationship?

Exploring the Political Ecology of AI and Big Data: Emerging literature alerts us to the fact that the digital world propelled and driven by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data is underwritten, sustained and maintained by the use of natural resources. Mainstream narratives and utopias of a revolutionary new world propelled by AI-powered solutions seldom recognise the use of fossil fuels, water, land and other natural resources which remain taken-for-granted and unaccounted for. The framework of political ecology can and should be productively used to understand the environment ramifications of the AI and Big Data powered technological solutions being proposed. This framework can be used to ask: What are the natural raw materials required for servers? Where are they located? What are the national and international linkages and engagements that underlie the resource base for AI-based systems? How are decisions related to the use of natural resources made? Who makes these decisions and under what conditions?

Faculty involved: Aakansha Natani, Anirban Dasgupta, Ashwin Jayanti, Radhika Krishnan, Rajorshi Ray, Sushmita Banerji