T.T. Sreekumar

Cyber kiosks and dilemmas of social inclusion in rural India

Enhanced deployment of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is considered as a major factor in eliminating vestiges of feudal social organization and hierarchies in rural Asia, and a techno-development paradigm of social change inherited from the industrial era is envisioned. South Asia has particularly witnessed massive proliferation of civil-society-based development initiatives to demonstrate ICTs’ potential to provide unprecedented social and economic opportunities for vulnerable groups such as women and marginalized communities. Social exclusion is often understood as a matter of lack of awareness and inappropriate project design, and incorporation of gender concerns ‘from the very beginning of the project design’ is suggested as a more or less universal solution for enhancing participation. This article challenges this conventional wisdom and argues that civil society’s engagement with ICTs has not been successful in bridging the social divides it attempted to address. The patterns of ICTs’ deployment and control in the rural setting tend to reinforce existing social divides and, in certain cases, create new divides. The participation of women and the underprivileged in these projects is abysmally low and this is in striking contrast to the projected image of these initiatives as being overtly sensitive to issues of gender and social divisions. The article argues that the question of inclusion is better understood when addressed as a matter of structure rather choice.

Mobile Phones and the Cultural Ecology of Fishing in Kerala, India

Studies that go beyond the ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) framework emphasize the social and cultural dimensions of mobile phones. Nevertheless, the cultural dimension, in literature pertaining to both urban and rural use patterns, typically takes an individualistic orientation. The possibility of actualizing the collectivistic logic in a communitys appropriation of new technologies is mostly overlooked. The present article explores how the fishers community in Kerala, India, use mobile phones in culturally enhancing and ecologically oriented ways that improve their working and living conditions. In the case of Kerala fishers, the impulse toward cooperation has long been ingrained in their culture, as often happens among marginalized groups. The availability of mobile technologies has allowed for the amplification of this impulse and enabled new modes of cooperation, especially in sharing of information on promising fishing spots and safety and rescue at sea.

ICTs and Development: Revisiting the Asian Experience

The technology question is inseparable from the question where technology occurs. Just as it is impossible to understand NATURE without immediately tackling the question of the LIFE-SIZE we cannot now talk about technological progress without immediately considering size, the dimensions, involved in the new technologies. (Virilio 1995: 99)

DECRYPTING E-GOVERNANCE: NARRATIVES, POWER PLAY AND PARTICIPATION IN THE GYANDOOT INTRANET

The central themes addressed in this paper relate to the critique of the notion of e‐governance as an essentially administrative innovation facilitated by ICTs. It argues the need to recognize e‐governance as a social process involving not only attitudinal change and transformation of traditional forms of governmentality, but also as a contested arena of social forces shaping the trajectory of the evolution of this technocratic innovation.

Kerala's experience of development and change

Abstract Scholars have variously described the development experience of the Indian state of Kerala as a “model” or a “paradox” or an “enigma” and posited different meanings and significance to its developmental trajectory. Rather than following the usual one-dimensional accounting of Keralas achievements and shortcomings, we present a historically informed social and political analysis to reveal the meaning and significance of the “Kerala model” of development. This article, thus, critically appraises Keralas development experience since decolonization to show how the discourse on development and the discursive practices of the dominant actors involved in governance of Kerala diverge in recent years, especially after the second round of economic liberalizations at the national level in 1991, which coincidently corresponds to the beginning of the newest phase of economic globalization. Old lessons are reviewed based on the notion of replicability of the “Kerala model” and new lessons are analyzed within the contexts of sustainability and economic globalization.

Subpolitics and Democracy: The Role of New Media in the 2011 General Elections in Singapore

Making use of the recent STS focus on the idea of subpolitics, the study seeks to understand the limited yet important implications of the rise of the political twitterati1 for liberal democracy in Singapore. The phenomenon marks a significant development not in terms of facilitating mass upheavals or radical reforms as elsewhere in the world, but in terms of contributing towards the construction of counter narratives to the historically articulated and previously uncontested discourses of progress, efficiency, productivity and success that in part have legitimated the political establishment in Singapore. By critiquing the regime’s myriad narratives of accomplishments and constructing subversive counter narratives through ‘series tweets’ that were infused with wit, sarcasm, parody and satire, the political twitterati in Singapore has expanded the vistas of democratic participation while remaining loyal to the country’s non-Western liberal democratic framework.

ICTs for the Rural Poor: Civil Society and Cyber-Libertarian Developmentalism in India

The convergence of development rhetoric and information society theories in discourses on the digital divide and information capitalism marks a cyber-libertarian turn in development studies. While critiquing the tendency to conflate civil society and information society, Sparks (1994) draws attention to a widely held deterministic position that the increases in productivity brought about by information and communication technologies (ICTs) would lead to a progressive weakening of the power structures that underpin the social foundation of capitalism. Sparks highlights particularly the approach of ‘new times’ theorists of the now defunct magazine Marxism Today, of advancing the argument that communication technologies can ‘undermine strong power pyramids more directly’ (Sparks, 1994, p. 38). This approach largely ignores the deep contradictions of informational capitalism characterised by increasing income inequalities reinforcing development divides, social exclusion and dependency (Parayil, 2005). The new cyber-libertarian approach to ICTs and development is characterised by two interrelated arguments on the political economy of development. First, it argues that in the advanced industrialised world wider use of ICTs would create a more equitable and democratic society, and thereby obviate the need for radical social transformation. Second, it proceeds to show that the diffusion of ICTs in less-developed countries, especially in rural areas, would help to bridge the development divide. In other words, the cyberlibertarian approach regards bridging the digital divide as the most important step to emancipate the masses from poverty, because, it is believed, new technologies like ICTs would deliver rapid economic growth.

Multiple Transcripts as Political Strategy: Social Media and Conflicting Identities of the Moro Liberation Movement in the Philippines

This article explores the engagement of online new media for political mobilization by movements of dissent from the margins based on a case study of a Muslim minority revolutionary organization in the Philippines. We find that, enabled by hybrid features of online media outlets, minorities use multiple transcripts that target diverse audiences and oscillate across multiple, fleeting representations, narratives and articulations. Our article supports the view that ‘infrapolitics’ (the politics of disguise and concealment that lies between public and hidden transcripts of subordinate groups) is crucial in understanding online dissent. The article argues that new strategies of political discourse foregrounding infrapolitics help minority groups to circumvent traditional barriers of political communication and alter the quality of debate between minorities, state and the international community, and challenge national limits and boundaries.

Indian media in a globalised world

The discipline of media studies in India has been presently revamped through a series of globalisation studies, drawing concerns and theoretical concepts from areas like anthropology, culture studies, history and postcolonial studies, disengaging ruling paradigms of modernisation and extending widely to conjecture conditions and experiences of new globalism and localisation. This new framework to understand complex global media relations has reinvigorated Indian media studies and has helped analyse emerging media forms, practices and institutions as diverse as advertisement, cinema, print media, news flow, television, internet, mobile phones and radio. Most of these works explore media as well as new media through the complex grids of modernity, post modernity, nationalism and capitalism. This volume adds to the growing literature on Indian media studies and enhances our understanding of the media scene in India by providing theoretically informed and well-articulated arguments, conceptual expositions and stimulating case studies. The book critically examines the implications of the phenomenal growth of Indian media in the post-liberalisation phase, and explores how globalisation has inclined to impact Indian media in the last two decades of unabated globalisation. The book is organised into four sections and 12 chapters. While none of the chapters are co-authored, individually Ranganathan has contributed seven essays and Rodrigues five, besides the Introduction. It must be noted that the authors have been successful in shaping the volume as an effective unit interweaving overarching themes and useful case studies. The themes discussed in the volume include ‘glocalisation’ of Indian television, the use of nationalism in marketing of media products and services, citizen journalism, Naga and Tamil nationalist assertions in regional media and internet, FM radio, the contradictions and complexities of public broadcasting services, representation of mythology in TV serials, blogging and media policies. This volume raises several important questions and addresses them effectively. The thrust is to provide more empirical richness to the debates rather than rethink theoretical contexts and frameworks. Rodrigues, in the first chapter on glocalisation of Indian Television, engages with theories of development and modernity, and analyses the growth of TV as an institution of capitalist modernity. Contrary to a growing trend in media studies to more ambitiously capture theoretical trajectories and suggest alternative frameworks, the volume typically proceeds to discuss the dynamics of paradigm change within the media industry in India in the post liberalisation period. Following the discussion on glocalisation, the next chapter focuses on the way Multi-National Companies (MNCs) Indianise themselves to find favour with the Asian Journal of Communication Vol. 22, No. 4, August 2012, 428 432