Automating Exclusions: How Digitalisation Can Lead to Exclusions in Welfare Programmes
Aspects No. 81-82
Digitalisation in India: The Class Agenda
India, according to the Government of India, is not only a global power, but a Vishwaguru (Global Teacher). This claim may not be borne out by the level of Indians’ median income, productive employment, farm output per hectare, manufacturing strength, technological base, educational status, nutrition, and health. Moreover, the distorted structure of India’s employment, the abysmal economic status of its women, and its overall lack of political and social freedoms further contradict the claims of Global Teacher status.

Nevertheless, in one sphere India’s achievement has won global recognition: its high-speed drive for digitalisation. In the view of the American billionaire Bill Gates, “No country has built a more comprehensive [digital] platform than India.” His claim is endorsed by international institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Arguing that “India’s digital journey” has brought in its train an extraordinary range of present and future benefits, a recent IMF study presents India as a development model.

However, a more careful examination reveals the class interests behind India’s digitalisation drive and its approbation. In this issue, a range of contributors, from various perspectives, look at specific aspects of that drive. Arun Kumar writes about digitalisation’s marginalising impact on India’s unorganised sector; Hussain Indorewala writes about India’s ‘Smart City’ mission; Indira Chakravarthi examines the National Digital Health Mission; Manali Chakravarti and Rahul Varman dissect the digitalisation of education; Rajendran Narayanan shows how digitalisation can lead to exclusion in welfare programmes; and Anurag Mehra describes a system that continuously generates precarity for vast numbers. At the end, RUPE comments on the overall drive and agenda of digitalisation in India and its impact on various sectors and on the people working in them.

Aspects of India’s Economy {Editor: Rajani X. Desai}

Research Unit for Political Economy

The Research Unit for Political Economy (R.U.P.E), located in Mumbai (Bombay), India, is constituted under the People’s Research Trust. R.U.P.E runs on voluntary labour and limited finances raised from personal contributions. It is not affiliated to any other body.

R.U.P.E is concerned with analysing, at the theoretical and empirical levels, various aspects of the economic life of the country and its institutions. It aims to compile, analyse and present information so as to enable people to understand the actual mechanics of their everyday economic life. And in this it aims to take the assistance and insights of people engaged in every sphere of productive work and society.

It feels that much of the research currently carried out with heavy funding is conditioned directly and indirectly by the implicit frame set by the funders.

R.U.P.E does not accept funds from foreign institutions, the corporate sector or the Government. It runs on limited finances raised from personal contributions. Contributions towards its work, either monetary or in the form of actual work, are welcome.

The R.U.P.E publishes Aspects of India’s Economy, a journal which aims to explain aspects of people’s everyday economic life in terms that can easily be understood, and to link them with the nature of the country’s political economy. It also publishes a blog at rupeindia.wordpress.com.