Network Book Forum: Patching Development

Event ⋅ March 3 2022

Network Book Forum: Patching Development

Information Politics and Social Change in India

Rajesh Veeraraghavan
Rajendran Narayanan
Silvia Masiero

Hosted by Ranjit Singh

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How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms?

On Thursday, March 3rd, 2022, Dr. Rajesh Veeraraghavan discussed his new book “Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India” (Oxford University Press) hosted by AIGI Researcher, Ranjit Singh. Panelists for this talk included Silvia Masiero, Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics at Oslo University, and Rajendran Narayanan, Professor at Azim Premji Foundation.

Diving into an original and unusually positive case study from India, Patching Development shows how development programs can be designed to work. Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local power systems.

RESOURCES

Readings

Towards a Mindful Digital Welfare State Series by Ranjit Singh and Emnet Tafesse
Good Welfare, Bad Platforms? The Risks of Centralized Digital Identity Systems by Silvia Masiero
Code as Policy: The Political Process of Patching Development by Rajesh Veeraraghavan

Relevant Content

Seeing Like an Infrastructure. Ranjit Singh speaks at the University of Oslo, Department of Informatics

References

Aiyar, Yamini. 2022. How India’s centralised bureaucracy undermines its federalism.
Buddha, Chakradhar; Dhorajiwala, Sakina; and Narayanan, Rajendran. 2021. “Can a machine learn democracy?“. AMCIS 2021 Proceedings. 8.
Masiero, Silvia. 2022. Should we still be doing ICT4D research? The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, e12215.
Masiero, Silvia., & Maiorano, Diego. 2018. MGNREGA, power politics, and computerization in Andhra Pradesh. In Forum for Development Studies (Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 1-24).
Milan, Stefania., & Treré, Emiliano. 2019. Big data from the South (s): Beyond data universalism. Television & New Media, 20(4), 319-335.
Taylor, Linnet, Sharma, Gargi, Martin, Aaron, & Jameson, Shazade. 2020. Data justice and COVID-19: Global Perspectives. London, Meatspace Press.
Veeraraghavan, Rajesh. 2021. Patching Development: Informational Politics and Social Change in India. Oxford University Press, Modern South Asia Series. December 2021
Veeraraghavan, Rajesh. 2021. Cat and Mouse Game: Patching Bureaucratic Work Relations by PatchingTechnologies. In PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 5, No. CSCW1, Article #186, April 2021. ACM, New York, NY, USA.
Veeraraghavan, Rajesh. Strategies for Synergy in a High Modernist Project: Two Community Responses to India’s NREGA Rural Work Program. November, 2017. World Development Volume 99, Pages 203-213.

CREDITS

Producers: Rigoberto Lara Guzmán, Nazelie Doghramadjian
Website, Design, and Communications: Veronica Eghdami, Ji Eun Yang, Alessa Erawan

Thank you to Ranjit Singh for curatorial and engagement support. Additional support provided by Data & Society’s Communications, Engagement, Accounting, Strategy, and Policy teams.

Speakers

Rajesh Veeraraghavan

Rajendran Narayanan

Silvia Masiero

Ranjit Singh