Date: 21/08/2025
Title: Untouchable Cellphones? Old Caste Exclusions and New Digital Divides in Peri-Urban Bangalore
About the Talk:
This talk presented a fresh perspective on the complicated relationship between digital communication technologies and historically disadvantaged castes such as Dalits in peri-urban Bangalore, India’s “Silicon Valley.” Based on interviews with Dalit household members, entrepreneurs, and political activists, the study examines whether mobile phones have been insufficiently harnessed by Dalits in the region to overcome historic deprivation, or whether they may even reinforce caste-based exclusion. Drawing on oral histories and feminist perspectives on technology, the paper argues that contemporary socio-technological outcomes among Dalits in peri-urban south Bangalore result from the convergence of three elements: the durability of caste, the social construction of ICT usage, and blind spots in conventional understandings of the digital divide in India. In doing so, it offers a new lens on caste, ICTs, and development policy, urging a re-examination of the assumption that access to technology directly translates to positive development outcomes.
Speaker Bio:
Anant Kamath is Assistant Professor with the School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. His research explores the economic-sociology of technology in India, with a focus on subaltern socio-economic groups. He has studied technological engagements among urban Dalit communities, sex workers, street cleaners, street vendors, caste weavers, and migrant construction workers. His work is shaped by concerns around inequality, urban transition, social mobility, spatiality, gender, and caste. His latest book (co-authored) is Urban Undesirables: City Transition and Street-Based Sex Work in Bangalore (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He has also authored The Social Context of Technological Experiences (Routledge, 2020) and Industrial Innovation, Networks, and Economic Development (Routledge, 2015). Before joining NIAS, he was faculty at Azim Premji University for six years.
The talk was followed by a discussion and Q&A
CITAPP’s Monthly Seminar Series is an attempt to create a forum where researchers across IIIT-B domains can meet and discuss cutting-edge research on the chosen theme of the semester. The Series hopes to explore a technology or topic for its ramifications in different realms of social activity. In particular, we are interested in understanding the specific kinds of complexity that these domains present for technological innovation and design.