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Mission Convergence: The Smart City and “Muslim women” of Seelampur

Sat, September 2, 9:00 to 10:30am, Sheraton Boston, Floor: 3, Clarendon

Abstract

In 2008, the Indian state initiated a public-private partnership, biometric program Mission Convergence in in order to transform the capital city of New Delhi into a “smart city” that would be inclusive to its millions of urban poor residents. The program aimed to converge more than thirty social service programs of the state into a single window platform that would be accessible to working class residents at designated Gender Resource Centers (GRCs). My sustained ethnographic research studies Mission Convergence at a globally acclaimed GRC in the urban periphery of Seelampur in Delhi from 2008-2014 through participant observations and interviews.

Drawing from feminist, critical, and postcolonial work on technology and modernity, I critically examine the promise of “leveling” economic and social inequities that is embedded in such smart city programs. I highlight lived experiences of minority “Muslim women” of Seelampur who experience this program in their everyday lives, and argue that gender inequalities are reproduced through technologically mediated social service programs. Further, my research highlights that minority women workers at the GRCs who are the foot soldiers for Mission Convergence form the caring face of the state in the community, a role that reinforces the hollow promise of the smart city program. Finally, I argue that the technological training under the aegis of the program was perceived by several participants to deflect focus on structural inequities in their everyday lives. In highlighting policy from “below,” my paper draws attention to the political and social imaginary of the smart city programs, and the negotiation and reinforcement of dominant power structures.

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