E-Governance and Smart Policing in Kerala, India: Towards a Kerala Model of Algorithmic Governance?

The Kerala government, through its e-governance programme, has laid out elaborate plans for the integration of everyday state services with algorithmic infrastructures. Crucial to this project is the digitalization of policing in the state. This chapter contextualizes the ongoing integration of algorithmic infrastructures in policing in Kerala and analyses these transformations in relation to the Kerala model. Contextualizing the legacy of existing cultures of policing, overwhelmingly derived from colonial history, it analyses what the contemporary transition to e-governance wishes to modify and/or replace. Algorithmic governance under the promise of ‘efficiency’ often insulates practices from democratic pressures, which the Kerala government must find an alternative to, in its bid to incorporate algorithmic infrastructures into the Kerala model.