Information Infrastructures in India: The Long View - Hardcover

Ninan Thomas, Pradip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192857738 ISBN 13: 9780192857736

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2022

Synopsis

This book explores the past and present of information infrastructures in India. Grounded in infrastructure theory, it explores the historical continuities between information infrastructures in colonial and post-colonial India and the compulsions of information infrastructures in contemporary India. This volume highlights the roles played by private and public sector entities in shaping information infrastructures in India, the political economy of growth in this sector and the challenges faced by the State in regulating information platforms that are also information infrastructures. It includes separate chapters on oceanic cable infrastructures that account for more than 90 per cent of data traffic between India and the rest of the world and the political economy of India's satellite program. Taking the 'long view', it argues that the provisionings of information infrastructures are by no means straight forward, that they are always expressions that are shaped by internal and external contestations, by ideological ends and business imperatives, the needs of consumers/citizens and the State, that there is a politics of infrastructure that needs to be accounted for, and that there always are winners and losers in large infrastructural projects such as Digital India.

About this title

About the Author

Pradip Thomas is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. His previous books include Empire and Post-Empire Telecommunications in India: A History (OUP, 2019).

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192857738
• ISBN 13: 9780192857736
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182