From the Maistry to the Computer Operator: Politics of Skilling and Development in Global India

• In Event: The Politics of Science and Technology in International Development 1

Abstract

As India has emerged as a poster-child for ICT for Development (ICTD) initiatives in the global South, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi government is aggressively promoting ICT-led skills training initiatives for India’s marginalized youth in global India. Under the Modi government, the largest state-run and supported network of vocational training schools, the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), are slated to be the most important sites for transforming subaltern youth into appropriate global workers for the IT-ITES sectors. Based on historical, archival research and sustained, ethnographic work in New Delhi, my paper studies Industrial Training Institutes as significant sites of producing modern subjects through access to technology. Drawing on debates in postcolonial, feminist, and STS studies, my research traces the linkages between communication technologies, industrial training, and Empire in India. I ask if there are consistencies and disjunctures in the introduction of communication technologies and the state’s attempt to train the “Maistry” or “a higher type of artisan” in the nineteenth century in colonial India to the figure of the computer operator in the contemporary, “new’ economy. Further, I examine media technologies as sites of pedagogical encounters between the elite and subaltern. I argue that both colonial and contemporary industrial training students critically interpret development messages in the context of their everyday lives in demanding an “education” versus “training” and in holding the state responsible for their welfare. Historical and ethnographic research on lived experiences is vital to critically examine the promise of the information economy for inclusion of marginalized communities.

Author

• Sreela Sarkar, Santa Clara University