https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9197-207X
![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
How does data visibility affect vulnerable communities that face uncertainty over land tenure? Can data justice be realised in settings of acute resource injustice? These are the overarching questions that our case study interrogates by opening up the black box of the community in the volatile and fast-transforming peri-urban fringe of Hyderabad, India. We examine the unfolding of data and information processes through the lens of enumeration and community mapping exercises conducted in a low-income neighbourhood. We argue that the realisation of data justice is mediated by ‘information politics’, i.e., the ways in which informational resources, as well as the risks and rewards associated with them, are distributed across individual actors and identity groups within the community. The democratising potential of emerging digital technologies is severely constrained by structural inequities across gender, caste, class, and even linguistic lines. Our case study underlines the importance of such a structural understanding of data justice and also suggests directions for embedding justice in data processes. Our findings reveal an arena of stark informational disparities between vulnerable, indigent populations and the increasingly sophisticated digital data apparatuses used to encode them. Efforts to promote data justice must take explicit cognisance of these disparities and fragmentation and recognise the internal structural differentiation of vulnerable communities. We argue for an explicit mapping of the information flows and associated information politics that characterise such settings.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge their gratitude to Rajkumar Passedula and Ravi Teja Sangeetha, who assisted with the enumeration and interviews. Their deep knowledge of the field and sharp insights contributed in multiple ways to our understanding of this case. This research received support from the ‘Urban Data, Inequality and Justice in the Global South’ Senior Research Fellowship funded by the University of Manchester’s Sustainable Consumption Institute with additional financial support from Canada’s International Development Research Centre and France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. The authors are especially grateful to Richard Heeks for organising the support and for his detailed and constructive comments on previous versions of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 An early version of this paper appeared in the Development Informatics working paper series, Paper No. 78. University of Manchester: Global Development Institute. URL: https://www.gdi.manchester.ac.uk/research/publications/di/di-wp78/
2 The name of the basti and surrounding place names have been anonymised to protect vulnerable residents in line with the ethical principle of non-maleficence (see e.g., Hay, Citation2010).
3 According to the 2011 Census of India and National Sample Survey 69th Round, 2012, 65.49 million slum inhabitants live in 13.92 million households. The slum population is 5.4% of the country’s total population and 17.4% of the total urban population.
4 Andhra Pradesh was divided in 2014 to form Telangana and Andhra State. Hyderabad is located in the territory of Telangana, and is the state’s capital city.
5 Acronym for Hyderabad Information Technology and Engineering Consultancy City.
6 The term ‘information politics’ has been used in various bodies of literature, with different meanings. Rogers (Citation2004) focuses on the “politics of information devices on the Web … [i.e., the] politics behind how a search engine or portal selects or indexes its information.” In the context of transnational NGOs, Ron et al. (Citation2005, p. 561) note that “To be effective, activists must deploy information strategically.” In the strategic management literature, Davenport et al. (Citation2009) argue that if “information is the primary unit of organisational currency, we should not expect its owners to give it away.” Our conceptual framing is quite distinct from these studies.
7 Dalit (‘oppressed’) is the term used to designate various groups who have suffered institutionalized discrimination because of their position at the bottom of the ritual hierarchy in orthodox Hinduism.
8 This is in sharp contrast to the Hyderabad neighbourhoods described by Pierce (Citation2020).
9 The Basti Development Committee president claimed that the basti land was allotted to them by a previous chief minister but he had no knowledge of any official document to that effect. Interview, 25 February 2019.
10 Recorded during the focus group discussion with evicted residents at the PHC on 24 February 2019.
11 “Backward” is a category used by the Indian government to designate educationally or socially disadvantaged castes.
12 Interaction, 4 March 2019.
13 In particular, the Mandal Revenue Office, which is responsible for land management.
14 Interview with a resident (daily wage worker) living in Gachi Basti on 23 February 2019.
15 This information and the data from the survey were collected from the anganwadi supervisor, her assistant, as well as from ICDS officials.
16 Interview with the anganwadi supervisor, 8 April 2019.
17 Interview with the anganwadi supervisor, 4 June 2019.
18 This refers to the idea that digital technologies can improve lives by increasing the power and capabilities of users. This is a common assumption for instance in the field of study and practice called Information and Communications Technology for Development or IT4D.
19 A similar observation was made by Kumar et al. (Citation2018) about development interventions in Bangalore that fail to take account of internal gender dynamics. Like in our case, slum households often have only one cell phone and it is mainly kept by men.
20 Focus group discussion with evicted residents at the PHC on 24 February 2019.
21 Interview with Basti Development Committee General Secretary on 17 February 2019 and interview with President on 29 February 2019.
22 Interview with PHC church pastor on 31st March 2019.
23 Since 2014, the BJP is the ruling party at the national level in India.
24 Focus group discussion with evicted residents at the PHC on 24 February 2019.
25 Focus group discussion with evicted residents at the PHC on 24 February 2019.
26 Focus group discussion with evicted residents at the PHC on 24 February 2019.
27 A patta is a document granting land tenure rights issued by the government.
28 Using Google Maps, we could see that the polygon of the evicted site measures exactly the area that officials had claimed was encroached or illegally occupied prior to the eviction.
29 Recorded during our enumeration survey, 3 March 2019.
30 Information collected from the local HMWS&SB office, Hyderabad, 31 March 2019.
31 We did not record data about the ownership of smartphones (as opposed to basic mobile phones) because of the reluctance expressed by some respondents to the question.
32 Interviews and focus group discussions, 24 February and 5 March 2018.
33 Interviews with migrants residing in the basti and the focus group with the fire victim families in the PHC, respectively 24 February 2019 and 9 March 2019.
34 While most of the interviewed migrant women did not have smartphones, they did possess mobile phones that they used to communicate with their distant families. Interviews, 10 March 2019.
35 Interview with the local municipal councillor and his staff, 26 February 2019.
36 Field visit, 24 February 2019.
37 Interview with a woman from Gachi Basti on 25 February 2019 and women in PHC during a focus group discussion on 29 February 2019.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Loraine Kennedy
Loraine Kennedy is socio-economist and CNRS Research Director at the Centre for South Asian Studies (CEIAS), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Her research, at the crossroads of political economy and political geography, focuses on contemporary India and engages with state spatial rescaling, the politics of urban development and metropolitan governance. She is currently serving as a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation.
Ashima Sood
Ashima Sood is an economist by training and Associate Professor and Deputy Chair, Research Committee at Anant National University. Her research lies at the intersection of institutional economics and urban and development studies. It combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine privatized forms of urban governance and informal public spaces in India.
Debdatta Chakraborty
Debdatta Chakraborty is a social science student and independent researcher. She is currently engaged in a research project entitled ‘Transformation as Praxis: Exploring Socially Just and Transdisciplinary Pathways to Sustainability in Marginal Environments- TAPESTRY’, in the framework of a transnational and transdisciplinary consortium with members from the UK, India, Bangladesh, Norway and Japan. Her research interests include urban informality, labour, local governance, environmental change and sustainable livelihoods.
Ram Mohan Chitta
Ram Mohan Chitta has an MA in Sociology from the University of Hyderabad and is currently an independent scholar. His research is focused on the politics of urban development, with a particular interest in housing, governance and socio-spatial marginality.
![Supercharge Your Next Research Paper: Research and write your next paper with Jenni AI.]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/112444/Skyscraper-humanities.png"})