The future of 'civic' technologies

Such technological intervention will have lasting benefits. It will ease bottlenecks that prevent access to credit and bring SMEs within a national infrastructure programme

In 1973, the British economist Ernst Schumacher wrote his manifesto Small is Beautiful, and changed the world. Schumacher’s prescription — to use technologies that were less re­source-intensive, capable of generating employment, and “appropriate” to local circumstances — appealed to a Western audience that worried about feverish consumption by the ‘boomer’ generation. Silicon Valley soon seized the moment, presenting modern-day, personal computing as an alternative to the tyranny of IBM’s Big Machine. Meanwhile, in India too, the government asked citizens to em­brace technologies suited to the country’s socio-economic life. Both had ulterior motives: the miniaturisation of computing was inevitable given revolutions in semiconductor technology during the 60s and 70s, and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley expertly harvested the anti-IBM mood to offer themselves as messiahs. The government in New De­lhi too was struggling to mass-produce machines, and starved of funds, so asking Indians to “make do” with appropriate technology was as much a political message as it was a nod to environmentalism.

And thus, India turned its attention to mechanising bullock carts, producing fuel from bio-waste, trapping solar energy for micro-applications, and en­couraging the use of hand pumps. These were, in many respects, India’s first “civic”, or socially-relevant technologies.

The “appropriate technology” movement in India had two unfortunate conse­quences. The first has been a celebration of jugaad, or frugal innovation. Over decades, Indian universities, businesses and inventors have pursued low-cost technologies that are clearly not scaleable, but valued culturally by peers and social networks. (Sample the press coverage every year of IIT students who build “sustainable” but limited-use technologies, that generate fuel from plastic or trap solar energy for irrigation pumps.) Second, the “small is beautiful” philosophy also coloured our view of “civic technologies” as those that only mobilise the citizenry, out into farms or factory floors. Whether they took the form of a hand pump, solar stove or bullock cart, these technologies did little to augment the productivity of an individual. However, they preserved the la­rger status quo, and did not disrupt social or industrial relations as technological revolutions have historically done.

Nevertheless, there has always been a latent demand in India for technologies that don’t just mobilise individuals but also act as “playgrounds”, creating and connecting livelihoods. When management guru Peter Drucker visited post-Emergency India in 1979, Prime Minister Morarji Desai sold him hard on “appropri­ate technology”. India, Drucker wrote, had switched overnight from championing big steel plants to small bullock carts. Steel created no new jobs outside the factory, and small technologies did not im­prove livelihoods. Instead, he argued, In­dia ought to look at the automotive industry as an “efficient multiplier” of li­velihoods: beyond the manufacturing plant, automobiles would create new sectors altogether in road building and maintenance, traffic control, dealerships, service stations and repair. 

Drucker also pointed to the transistor as another such technology. Above all, transistors and au­tomobiles connected Indians to one ano­ther through information and travel. Dru­cker noted during his visit that the motor scooter and radio transistor were in great demand in even far-flung corners, a claim that is borne by statistics. These, then we­re the civic technologies that mattered, ones that created playgrounds in which many could forge their livelihoods.

The lionisation of jugaad is an attitudinal problem, and may not change im­mediately. But the task of creating a new generation of civic technologies that act as playgrounds can be addressed more readily. In fact, it is during crises such as the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic that India acutely requires such platforms.

Consider the post-lockdown task of economic reconstruction in India, which requires targeted policy interventions. Currently, the Indian government is blinkered to address only two categories of actors who need economic assistance: large corporations with their bottomlines at risk, and at the micro-level, individuals whose stand to lose livelihoods. India’s banks will bail out big business, while go­vernment agencies will train their digital public goods — Aadhaar, UPI, eKYC etc — to offer financial assistance to individuals. This formulaic approach misses out the vast category of SMEs who employ millions, account for nearly 40 per cent of India’s exports, pull in informal businesses into the supply chain, and provide critical products to the big industries.

The data to identify SMEs (Income Tax Returns/GSTN/PAN) exists, as do the digital infrastructure to effect payments and micro loans. The funds would come not only from government coffers, but al­so through philanthropic efforts that have gained steam in the wake of the pande­mic. However, the “playgrou­nd” needs to be created — a single digital platform that can provide loans, grants or subsidies to SMEs based on specific needs, salaries, utilities or other loan payments. A front-end application would provide any government official or agency information about sche­mes applied for, and funds disbursed to a given SME.

Civic technologies in India have long been understood to mean small-scale te­chnologies. This is a legacy of history and politics, which policymakers have to re­ckon with. The civic value of a technology does not lie in the extent to which it is lo­calised, but its ability to reach the most vulnerable sections of a stratified society like India’s. The Indian government, no matter how expansive its administrative machinery is, cannot do this on its own. 

It has to create “playgrounds” — involving banks, cooperative societies, regula­tors, software developers, start-ups, data fiduciaries and underwriting modellers — if it intends to make digital technolo­gies socially relevant. Although its in­tended goal may be to backstop the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, such a technological intervention will have lasting systemic benefits. It will ease bottlenecks that prevent access to credit, and bring SMEs within a larger, national in­frastructure programme that finally recognises their extraordinary contribution to Indian socio-economic life.

The author is a volunteer with non-profit think-tank, iSPIRT, and PhD candidate at Fletcher School, Tufts University. His book, Midnight’s Machines: A Political History of Technology in India, was published by Penguin RandomHouse in 2019