Deepa Kylasam Iyer

This article examines how digital platforms focused on citizen engagement affect urban transformation based on multiple case studies from Bengaluru, India. The research question is: What type of initiatives and designs of digital citizen platforms enable co-production? Co-production is defined as the use of assets and resources between the public sector and citizens to produce better outcomes and improve the efficiency of urban services. The study uses qualitative and quantitative approaches. Evaluative metrics of citizen engagement in digital platforms are done at two levels: platform metrics and initiative metrics. Each platform is evaluated under several variables that indicate the type of ownership, period of operation, aims and types of initiatives, and impact and levels of engagement. Then, the digital platforms are mapped for the extent of digital co-production that matches the type of digital interaction with a form of citizen-government relationship. The findings indicate that the orientation of digital co-production, where it exists, seems to be around the dimensions of co-testing and co-evaluation rather than co-design and co-financing. Furthermore, the digital platforms under study primarily view citizens as users rather than collaborators, limiting the scope of digital co-production. The involvement of urban local governments and private partners in a single platform strengthens the degree of citizen engagement, including the scope for co-production. Finally, there is a strong offline counterpart to citizen engagement through digital platforms where true co-production exists.

The objective of this study is to analyse the correlation between initial conditions and cross-country macroeconomic impact of Covid-19 on OECD economies. The study uses group-wise multivariate linear regression modelling to examine the link between macroeconomic variables of interest and the duration of the pandemic, severity of its impact, and annual investment growth rate. The main result from the study shows that variables related to debt such as domestic credit to private sector, private sector debt and debt-to-GDP ratio had significant relationship with the duration and severity of the crisis as well as the investment growth rate during Covid-19. The original contribution of the study is in bringing out the correlation between initial conditions and first order effects of the pandemic on the economy. The policy implications of the results indicate short, medium and long-term measures required to mitigate the systematic risk posed by the pandemic.

The covid-19 pandemic turned into a question of access to safety and security for millions worldwide. This study examines how the narratives of pandemic citizenship unfolded for India's internal migrant workers who lost their livelihood and housing during the lockdown and were forced to return to their native villages. Using the framework of Legacy Russell's glitch politics, this paper illustrates two instances of glitchy encounters that relayed migrant worker stories during the first national lockdown between March and June 2020. The first instance was the long walk home that became a collective act of refusal to be rendered invisible in the pandemic narratives. The second example was citizen journalism that used mainstream media as amplifiers of migrant worker voices. The main argument of the study is that glitches enabled seemingly marginal narratives to momentarily overcome structural inequalities and become powerful chroniclers of the pandemic.

This article examines how technopolitical response to covid-19 resulted in differentiated urban citizenship regimes in India’s smart cities. Using Isin and Ruppert’s framework, we argue that India’s digital citizens enacted their subjectivities in response to acts of calling, closing and opening in the cyberspace. Acts of calling encouraged citizens to participate and engage with the state online, systematically excluding those who did not have access to digital infrastructures. Acts of closing were implemented through the technologies of the surveillance state diminishing rights of freedom and privacy. In response, digital citizens enacted their political subjectivities through acts of opening by means of online campaigns, petitions and citizen journalism. Although the risk of technocracy remains real, we argue that the interplay of calling, closing and opening digital acts enabled the enactment of digital citizenship in India by raising the old questions of social citizenship rights and new forms of data and digital rights.

This study aims to understand the underlying structures and processes that make innovation ecosystems and classify them using a typological approach. A nested typology approach is used to classify innovation ecosystems based on two underlying dimensions, technology and organization. It brings out four types of innovation ecosystems namely focal, modular, shared and integrated based on the structures and processes of their technology and organization. This paper advances the understanding of innovation ecosystems beyond the structural approach to an integrated model that connects structures and processes of institutions, formal and informal channels of technology diffusion, and individual and collective efforts at innovation.

This chapter examines the impact of mega-events on social citizenship using the lens of critical urbanism. Mega-events are situated within neoliberal regimes of citizenship that are consumerist and entrepreneurial. These regimes exclude communities based on their purchasing power, and robs them of their political subjectivities and social citizenship. The excluded citizens have confronted the legacy of mega-events with questions of social impact through aggregate spending, value-added employment creation, social housing, use of public infrastructure and social services, and power of cultural self-determination. This chapter explores the possibilities of urban regeneration open to active social citizenship through mega-events. The main conclusion is that active social citizenship has to leverage mega-events by means of participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, research and knowledge production, community mobilization, and demand for direct urban policy, in order to facilitate urban development.

Platform capitalism has enabled digital platforms to bring producers, consumers, and workers in a multisided marketplace with the purpose of collecting data. The resulting commodification of materiality and sociality in the digital sphere and the proprietary control of data open opportunities for value creation and realization, quite distinct from the value propositions of industrial manufacturing. As the relationship between value generation and human labor becomes tenuous or invisible, management strategies to appropriate value extends beyond labor control to direct appropriation. This article explores how labor responds to such devices of control and appropriation by digital platforms. Using the typological approach, the study argues that labor resistance emerges as a direct response to the management strategies of platforms in the form of granular resistance, data activism, trade unions and workers’ organization, and collective ownership.

This article examines how COVID-19 impacts migrant workers and what can be done for their equitable transition after the pandemic is subdued. The immediate policy response to the pandemic was closing of national borders that resulted in a state of emergency on a global scale. The need for continuous and safe passage of goods, services, and workers was acknowledged by laws and policies that were an 'exception' to the rule, and deemed 'essential'. This approach resulted in five distinct types of impact on the migrant worker in the spheres of employment, health, movement, social protection, and opportunities. This study uses the framework of 'just' transition from sustainability discourse to imagine a labor-centered long-term policy for the migrant worker.

The legalist approach taken so far with respect to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement has marginalised more radical possibilities of resistance by rendering diverse identities and intersectionality invisible. In this context, the historical examination of the LGBT movement in comparison with the civil rights movement and local case studies gives the trajectories of "lost" possibilities a new context and significance. These possibilities are explored here.

Automation impacts wage levels at the micro-level, and the structure of employment at the macro-level. Job polarisation is defined as the automation of ‘middle-skill’ jobs that require routine cognitive and manual applications while high and low-skill occupations are preserved. This paper examines the nature of job polarisation in India during the period 1983-2012 when Indian manufacturing sector was being automated. The research uses disaggregated data from National Sample Survey Office and examines the impact of supply-side factors such as nature of employment and presence of educated labour force. The study has three observations. First, the increased demand for high-skilled workers in the formal manufacturing sector is due to skill-bias of technology and conforms to theoretical expectation. Second, the transition of agricultural labourers to low-skill manufacturing sectors such as construction and textiles signals distress in traditional manufacturing sector to provide employment to these groups. Third, the over-supply of secondary and tertiary educated labour force has resulted in the squeezing out of middle-skilled workers from middle-skill jobs to relatively low-skill manufacturing and service occupations. This explains the persistence of routine occupations even after automation. The study concludes that in the Indian manufacturing sector, increased demand for high and low-skill jobs has co-existed with the middle-skill jobs due to supply-side factors.

Ethical approach to human rights conceives and evaluates law through the underlying value concerns. This paper examines human rights after the introduction of big data using an ethical approach to rights. First, the central value concerns such as equity, equality, sustainability and security are derived from the history of digital technological revolution. Then, the properties and characteristics of big data are analyzed to understand emerging value concerns such as accountability, transparency, tracability, explainability and disprovability. Using these value points, this paper argues that big data calls for two types of evaluations regarding human rights. The first is the reassessment of existing human rights in the digital sphere predominantly through right to equality and right to work. The second is the conceptualization of new digital rights such as right to privacy and right against propensity-based discrimination. The paper concludes that as we increasingly share the world with intelligence systems, these new values expand and modify the existing human rights paradigm.

The anti-colonial movement in French India has invoked much less scholarly interest than that of British India. In French India, anti-colonial resistance came out through the trade union movement of handloom and textile workers under the leadership of V. Subbiah. Later, the trade union movement coalesced with students, women and peasants’ movements to form a political party which contested in the municipal elections with specific political demands.  The focus of this paper is to bring out how trade unionism under V. Subbiah generated workers’ movement and led to political resistance in French India between 1928 and 1946. The primary source of reference is the memoir of Subbiah, media reportage and colonial laws and documents in French India.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s journey from the west coast of India to a diasporic leader, spiritual father of the Indian freedom struggle and conscience keeper of the twentieth century is extra-ordinary. To his ardent supporters he introduced humane patriotism, moral leadership and a political alternative to violence; to his spirited critics he was anti-modern, puritanical and pro-bourgeois. Thus, contemporary evocations often adopt a simplistic notion. Gandhi’s life transcended various dominant themes and multiple agendas and to unravel his complexity is to understand his weakness and failures, intentions and strategies. Gandhi was a creative thinker, political leader, social reformer, religious ecumenist and an economist. His life was an earnest attempt to live out an elevated form of existence in which a remarkable vitality of experiment and transparency of thinking pervades. His original concept of Satyagraha, his contribution in deepening and democratising the base of Indian National Movement is unparalleled. His deep commitment to the Indian cause made him endure severe hardship compounded by his simple living, meagre wants and minimal needs. His suffering and sacrifice, industry and accessibility, equal ease with the princeling and the peasant endeared him to the Indian masses. He strove for the equality of all human beings, sought ethical answers to political and religious conundrums, won adversaries by frank admittance of his mistakes and open appreciation of their merits and put the weakest man at the heart of Indian public policy making. This paper analyses Gandhi’s leadership using transformative theory of leadership. Liberating Gandhi from myths and metaphors can begin only when his life and leadership is dissected ‘on the anvil of truth with the hammer of compassion’.

Acid violence is embedded in larger macro political and economic structures that sustain gender domination and perpetuate new forms of gender inequality. This article argues that increasing incidences of acid violence in South Asia and especially in India would benefit from the structural analysis that takes into account impacts from socio-economic structures that reinforce gender inequality. In contemplating a systemic redress mechanism, structural analysis is used to enlarge legal norms. The article proposes a model of transformative justice that involves centrality of State responsibility as a catalyst for social change.

Planning boards are autonomous institutions constituted at the sub-national level (called states) in India to aid and advise the government on preparing five year plans, annual plans and undertaking expert-based studies to examine the feasibility of plan projects at the local level. In addition to this, some planning boards are also entrusted with monitoring and evaluation of plan projects. Planning boards have an important part to play in formulating and implementing development plans. However, there is no uniform structure or functional mandate of planning boards in India. As a result, the actual mandate and performance of state planning boards are largely influenced by local contexts, government’s priorities and the perception of bureaucrats about planning boards. This paper comparatively examines the ideas of structure and function of planning boards in the southern states of India through the perspective of bureaucrats about their functional mandate. The theoretical framework used is Lowe’s theory of instrumental inference of planning institutions. Elite interview method is used to compare variables of performance. The paper argues that planning boards with well-defined functional mandate, autonomy from state government, presence of experts and involvement of local governments perform better than the others in development planning. Two distinct trajectories of development are evolving in the institutional context of planning boards - type I that resembles think tank mode of development and type II that looks for reforms within the traditional structures.

Classical economics works on the principle that individuals are rational and make decisions to maximize their self interest. However in real situations, individuals face a conflict between rational and irrational selves leading to decision making that does not leave them better off. Libertarian paternalism proposes a solution to this rationality problem in an individual by conceiving a choice architect. Choice architect is a third party capable of arriving at what a perfectly rational choice would be and 'nudges' an individual towards making that choice. Libertarian paternalists claim that choice architect does not interfere with the freedom of an individual because the choices he offers are easily reversible, i.e, an individual can reject it at any given point in time. Libertarian Paternalism seems to offer the third way between absolute autonomy of individual choice (libertarianism) and third party intervention (paternalism). This paper argues that the conception of a choice architect comes out of a hasty commitment to reconciling libertarianism and paternalism by placing perfect rationality and autonomy in two separate individuals in the case of a single decision making process. The paper proposes alternatives to confront the rationality problem.

The mind of a criminal works in very specific ways. A crime is a manifestation of the working of a criminal mind. Crime is therefore, a ‘trace’ of a criminal mind. During the planning of a criminal act, the mind of a criminal offender is subject to several types of logical fallacies like over generalization, tunnel vision and dichotomy of perspectives and these fallacies reflect in the crime scene. A criminal offender leaves two kinds of traces in a crime scene - (i) expressive traits that reveal dimensions of his personality and (ii) instrumental traits that bring out his motive for committing the crime. Both these traces are left while the criminal interacts with the victim and the environment of crime. This paper argues that by examining these traces back to the criminal, crimes can be prevented. Criminal linkage is a domain of crime investigation that works with behavioural dimensions of the criminal with laws of probability to link previously random criminal events. Crime linkage works on two theoretical assumptions related to behaviour dimensions - consistency and inter-individual variation. Assumption of consistency states that dimensions of behaviour of an offender across crime scenes is consistent, i.e., in a given circumstance offender behaviour is predictable. Assumption of inter-individual variation suggests that behaviour of one offender is different from another. The advantage of crime linkage is that information from various crime files can be pooled together for fresh analysis and interpretation. A number of variables like signature traces of the offender, modus operandi and temporal distance between two crimes can be used as indications of crime linkages. In recent times, Bayesian reasoning from statistics has been used to aid criminal linkage with productive results. Bayesian method of probability testing differs from other traditional approaches called frequentist methods. In traditional frequentist method, future probability of an event is determined using its ratio of repeatability. However, there are many instances where an event is not repeatable, for instance, a terrorist attack.  According to Bayes’ rule, future probability of an event is a degree of belief dependent on prior information and conditional evidence. Bayesian reasoning is a process by which observations (new conditional evidence) are used to update the probability that a hypothesis is true given ‘a priori’ characterization of its plausibility (prior information). There are several strengths to this method - it allows for honest representation of uncertainty, initiating investigation from expert knowledge (solved crime data base), linking non-obvious patterns and handling missing data. This paper examines the application of Bayesian reasoning to criminal linkage for specific types of crimes. The major conclusion of the paper is that crime investigation has become more effective with interdisciplinary applications of behavioural science and statistics. This is because of the advantage of pooling previously unrelated information and building systematic representation of the offender and working out probability. ‘Probability and proof’ are intimately interlinked.  Bayesian reasoning in crime linkage goes beyond attribution, correlation and prediction to bring out biographical, motivational and psychological profile of the offender. It is a systematic approach and a mathematical representation of behaviour model of a criminal offender.

The paper discusses a budget proposal to tax food items from branded restaurants in Kerala from a public health perspective. The authors argue that a portfolio of interventions to nudge consumer choices in diet and nutritional preference along with tax is likely to yield better results.

In this two-part series, we discuss problems specific to digital platforms in India and the type of regulatory framework required to ensure labor rights. In the first part, we flag three main structural problems Indian platform workers face. The second part explores the role of institutions in creating a regulatory framework for digital platforms so that an expanded set of worker rights, including data rights, are available to platform workers.

Transformative care policies have recently been debated at the ILO to meet SDG targets on employment generation and decent work, gender equality, and poverty reduction through state-funded social security policies. South Asia, which houses a large proportion of unpaid care work burden, is a region of special interest. The article explores how investment in care economy can be routed through restructuring labor, gender mainstreaming macroeconomics and introducing transformative care policies. This approach closely ties with the investment in physical infrastructure that governments of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have begun, which has a potential to augment care infrastructure.

Child labour has persisted through many decades despite national and international legal frameworks of prohibition world over. In South Asia, this issue has been specially compounded by concerns of poor implementation and the linkage of debt bondage and intergenerational labor. This article examines the traditional systems of bonded child labour prevalent in South Asia and anticipates the manner in which technological applications could aid in anti-child labour policy implementation. The authors suggest that automation, physical mapping and supply chain tracing that technology brings in, has the potential to reduce prevalence of child labour in South Asia.