Pariroo Rattan

Contemporary politics in India present a puzzle: the last decade has led to serious economic deprivations for the urban poor, like street vendors, because of demonetization, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), rise of eCommerce and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Nevertheless a majority of street vendors in the Sarojini Nagar market of New Delhi, my main ethnographic site, remain in support of the current BJP-led Modi government and claim that the nation is prospering. What explains this? Scholars of populism have attempted to explain the rise of right-wing Modi government in India through two important lines of argument: first, is the large literature on the remaking India in a Hindu nationalist identity and second, are arguments about media takeover by the ruling government, the age of misinformation and the manipulation of citizens. Relatively less work has been done on the techno-economic dimensions of the Modi government’s populism, for instance, the digital economy’s popularity despite its breakdowns on the ground. My dissertation asks: How does (digital) technology become a site of garnering popular support, especially from the urban poor? How does digital technology enroll and include otherwise marginal and poor citizens into the national economy and a project of nation-building?