Global discourse and debates on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), both academic and policy, often focus on highlighting the role of ICT4D in recalibrating the dynamics of governance and the participatory forms of citizens’ access to government services and delivery mechanisms. In India, Common Service Centers – CSCs, or telecenters – have often been the model to study practices, impact and perceptions of ICT4D initiatives; and to examine policy initiatives, institutional change and the ethnography of state governance in general. Based on an empirical study conducted at select CSCs in three field sites in Assam – Kamrup (Metro), Kamrup (Rural), and Tezpur, the paper revisits the ICT4D discourse by analyzing the digitalization of local bureaucratic work, the role of Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) as intermediaries at the CSCs, and their associated sociotechnical and articulation work of ICT4D, as an interface – which by modulating the adaptability, diffusion and promise of the ICT4D agenda – operates both as a formal and an informal trust based mechanism that continues to restructure and reposition the data-driven developmental state and its sociotechnical imaginaries. This paper examines the diffusion of this ICT4D interface through the everyday mundane practices and experiences of state-citizen interactions between citizens and intermediaries, and how that shapes perceptions and contextual interpretations of ICT4D at the last mile.

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Wiring the State Back in: Digitalization, Intermediaries, and ICT4D at the Last Mile

  • Khetrimayum Monish

摘要

Global discourse and debates on Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), both academic and policy, often focus on highlighting the role of ICT4D in recalibrating the dynamics of governance and the participatory forms of citizens’ access to government services and delivery mechanisms. In India, Common Service Centers – CSCs, or telecenters – have often been the model to study practices, impact and perceptions of ICT4D initiatives; and to examine policy initiatives, institutional change and the ethnography of state governance in general. Based on an empirical study conducted at select CSCs in three field sites in Assam – Kamrup (Metro), Kamrup (Rural), and Tezpur, the paper revisits the ICT4D discourse by analyzing the digitalization of local bureaucratic work, the role of Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLE) as intermediaries at the CSCs, and their associated sociotechnical and articulation work of ICT4D, as an interface – which by modulating the adaptability, diffusion and promise of the ICT4D agenda – operates both as a formal and an informal trust based mechanism that continues to restructure and reposition the data-driven developmental state and its sociotechnical imaginaries. This paper examines the diffusion of this ICT4D interface through the everyday mundane practices and experiences of state-citizen interactions between citizens and intermediaries, and how that shapes perceptions and contextual interpretations of ICT4D at the last mile.