UC San Diego UC San Diego Previously Published Works Title Chasing Innovation Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3239b1qv ISBN 9780691189444 Author Irani, Lilly Publication Date 2019-03-12 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ 4.0 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 1 19/11/2018 17:55:23 Tom Boellstor and Bill Maurer, Series Editors is series presents innovative work that extends classic ethnographic methods and questions into areas of pressing interest in technology and economics. It explores the varied ways new technologies combine with older technologies and cultural understandings to shape novel forms of subjectivity, embodiment, knowledge, place, and community. By doing so, the series demonstrates the relevance of anthropological inquiry to emerging forms of digital culture in the broadest sense. 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Taylor Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India by Lilly Irani 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 2 19/11/2018 17:55:23 Chasing Innovation 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 3 19/11/2018 17:55:23 Copyright © by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press William Street, Princeton, New Jersey Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX TR press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Control Number Cloth ISBN ­-- -­- Paperback ISBN ­-- -­- British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Editorial: Fred Appel and alia Leaf Production Editorial: Jill Harris Jacket/Cover Design: Layla Mac Rory Jacket/Cover Credit: Cover illustration: Design for a lota, based on original art by Avnish Mehta Production: Erin Suydam Publicity: Tayler Lord Copyeditor: Anita O’Brien is book has been composed in Arno Pro. Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America ­ 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 4 19/11/2018 17:55:23 Of course, no one man could have possibly designed the Lota. e number of combinations of factors to be considered gets to be astronomicalno one man designed the Lota, but many men over many generations. e hope for and the reason for such an institute as we describe is that it will hasten the production of the “Lotas” of our time. , A lota and water bottle re-engineered as cooling vessels in rural Andhra Pradesh. 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 5 19/11/2018 17:55:24 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 6 19/11/2018 17:55:24 . Red Hat Linux, Delhi launch event, December , . (Photograph by author) 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 7 19/11/2018 17:55:24 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 8 19/11/2018 17:55:24 If the subject does not dream of controlling the agency of capital, capital does not move. , “ ” 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 9 19/11/2018 17:55:24 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 10 19/11/2018 17:55:24 List of Figures xiii Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Innovators and eir Others Remaking Development: From Responsibility to Opportunity Teaching Citizenship, Liberalizing Community Learning to Add Value at the Studio Entrepreneurial Time and the Bounding of Politics Seeing Like an Entrepreneur, Feeling Out Opportunity ­ Can the Subaltern Innovate? ­ Conclusion: e Cultivation and Subsumption of Hope Notes References Index ­ xi 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 11 19/11/2018 17:55:24 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 12 19/11/2018 17:55:24 Figure . Red Hat Linux, Delhi launch event, December , vii Figure . State Bank of India advertisement Figure . Cover of “Creating a Vibrant Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in India” (Planning Commission, ) Figure . Innovation Space at Delhi Science Center, Figure . “Idea to Product: Process of Patenting Your Ideas,” Delhi Science Center Figure . Stills from National Institute of Design student lm Unni (­) ­ Figure ­. Nehru quote outside Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi ­ Figure . Sieve tucked between a beam made of branches and a woven roof Figure . Lota and reused plastic bole wrapped in wet cloth and secured with wire Figure . Advertisement for winners of Rolex’s Awards for Enterprise xiii 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 13 19/11/2018 17:55:24 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 14 19/11/2018 17:55:24 owes its development to so many places, people, and institutions. Paul Dourish was the rst to brave the whole manuscript dra, cover to cover. He models intellectual fearlessness, having tread paths from computer science to social theory long before I did. He gives his students a long rope, even to critique, historicize, and challenge the values and assumptions of human-computer interaction and information studies. Kavita Philip and Keith Murphy have been generous and rigorous interdisciplinarians. From Keith by way of Garnkel, I learned that cultural imaginaries do not simply have agency; people are not cultural dopes. From Kavita Philip, I learned to see capitalism, socialism, gender, race, and sexuality as analytics for understanding the workings of contemporary technology, its subjects, and our methodolo- gies for representing and intervening. Gillian Hayes, Judith Gregory, Melissa Mazmanian, and Bonnie Nardi generously oered mentorship and support. I am grateful to UCI’s rich interdisciplinary programs in critical theory, women’s studies, and arts, computation, and engineering for creating radically interdis- ciplinary space for reworking research practice as worldly intervention. Geof Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, Lucy Suchman, Fred Turner, and Erica Robles-Anderson were particularly inuential throughout the development of this work. Leigh Star passed suddenly and far too soon, but, through her writ- ing and friends, her energy and critical generosity stay with many of us still. Laura Portwood-Stacer was an ideal development editor and reader. She helped translate my arguments and data into stories with momentum. Tom Boellstor, Bill Maurer, and Fred Appel oered encouragement and thoughtful questions as series and acquisition editors at Princeton. I thank Anita O’Brien for editing the copy. Librarians at UC Irvine and UC San Diego, especially Gayatri Singh, provided invaluable assistance locating historical documents. At UC San Diego, Chandra Mukerji, Fernando Dominguez Rubio, Christo Sims, Angela Booker, Kelly Gates, and Shawna Kidman contributed ongoing support and comments. Chandra deserves special appreciation for creating the writing circle that kept us developing our work in collaboration. Saiba Varma and Kalindi Vora oered extended conversations on labor, development, and xv 310529VHP_IRANI_CS6_PC.indd 15 19/11/2018 17:55:24 xvi South Asia. Peter Gourevitch and Latha Varadarjan put forward key provoca- tions on political science questions. Vijayendra Rao deserves special thanks for reading the whole manuscript and pointing me to rich policy work on participation and democracy. e Science Studies Colloquium audience, espe- cially David Pedersen and Kamala Visweswaran, posed challenging questions that forced me to draw my claims into higher relief. Networked collectives also oered intellectual energy and input on the manuscript along the way. Labor-tech, sustained by Winifred Poster, oered fertile video-mediated collaboration with Itty Abraham, Sareeta Amrute, Aneesh Aneesh, Tom Boellstor, Megan Finn, Ellie Harmon, Karl Mendonca, Anil Menon, Geeta Patel, Sreela Sarkar, Luke Stark, and Stephanie Steinhardt and so many others. e Clouds and Crowds Working Group, supported by the University of California, reinforced my interest in questions of subjects, objects, and collective kinds. I am especially indebted to comments and fram- ings by Tim Choy, Cori Hayden, Chris Kelty, and Lawrence Cohen. Advice and commiseration through my online writing communitycoaches and comrades include Nicholas D’Avella, Lisbeth Fuisz, Laura Forlano, Alan Klima, and Sarah McCullough, and others thanked belowwere essential in developing a healthy relationship to writing. At the Spaces of Technoscience Workshop organized by Iy Abraham at National University of Singapore, Priti Ramamurthy and Amit Prasad made particularly helpful comments. e Digital South Asia workshop at the Uni- versity of Michigan, especially Ma Hull, Purnima Mankekar, Aswin Punat- ambekar, gave helpful comments on an early sketch of the book argument. At the Digital Cultures Research Lab, comments by Armin van Beverungen and Wendy Chun encouraged my emphasis on infrastructure and time. At the Soci- ety for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, Lily Chumley dissected with me the ways political economy and political desire condition creative future making. Tom Rodden, in a eeting comment at the SIGCHI Doctoral Consortium in , asked me to pay aention to ethnomethods of drawing others close or keeping them far; this inuenced my analysis of consultancy, labor infrastruc- ture, and lm. Steven Jackson raised the persistent question