| This dissertation focuses on the shifting terrain of governance and citizenship introduced by the global success of the Information Technology (IT) industry in contemporary India. The IT industry rose to national and international prominence after India embraced liberalization policies in 1991 that opened up its economy to global trade. This work draws on ethnographic research conducted in Bangalore between 2002 and 2005 with the entrepreneurs and professionals at Infosys Technologies Limited, one of the most prominent Indian IT companies. The research contends that while the success narrative of IT is in theory economic, it has significantly cascaded as an ethical and a political narrative through which a new India is considered to be emergent. Rather than locating the newness in the usual analysis of spread of computer literacy in the country, I locate it in the critique of public governance and citizenship that has been introduced by the IT entrepreneurs. I call this an ethico-political critique. It is ethical because it seeks to shift public governance along the lines of corporate governance to counter a corrupt state. It is political since it reaffirms the centrality of middle class politics where citizens correspond with the state as market stakeholders of the nation. To illustrate the social extent of this critique, I show the network the IT industry in Bangalore has established with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). While working with Janaagraha, one of the partner NGOs of Infosys, I specifically document a public water project, which is being framed along the lines of the liberal market. In bringing two otherwise unrelated domains, water and software, within the same analytical frame, I argue that post liberalization India is introducing new forms of class politics and social inequalities where the much publicized ascend of a nation in the time of globalization is once again being burdened with ethical and political anomalies. |
