TGC abstracts
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Tsunami: ICT in NGO - Government Coordination
Amarnath Raja (InApp)
The paper I would be presenting is a little known story of how the Government Relief and Rehabilitation system changed dramatically with the help of NGOs and ICT. This is also a case where the Government had guts to hand over the some of its responsibilities to NGOs. An organisation called NCRC came into being and has a 170 Km streach of sea-coast in Nagapattinam accessible by Wifi today and linked the Nagapattinam District Collectorate to Villages all along the coast
DNA and the Politics of Belonging
Banu Subramaniam
Recent genetic studies on human migrations and diversity suggest global genealogical relationships often unacknowledged within national histories. How should we understand these relationships within the confines of nation states? How do these new genealogical understandings support or disrupt national histories? In this paper, I explore the contentious history of race, caste and science in India and how genetic studies complicate and obfuscate the relationships of our understandings of our “genetic” natures and cultures. How then should we view the liberal subject that transmutates through genetic and cultural migrations?
Technology as a Bridge? The Importance of the First and Last Planks.
Jessica Wallack
The talk discusses various challenges in designing technology systems that effectively convey voice across organizational, geographic, or existing implicit social distances. It would focus on ongoing research on e-governance public grievance systems, but also delve into more general issues related to technology and community creation.
Accounting Reforms Towards E-Governance - Migration Issues
Shri R.S. Murali and Ashok Rao
The authors have a vast experience in conceptualization and implementation of e-Governance initiatives in Government organizations. This note in particular talks about the implementation of a modern accounting system in the Bangalore City Corporation (BCC). This note focuses on the various issues that came up during the course of the project and the strategies adopted to overcome the same. [there is a three page synopsis of the talk on the servelots workshop email account.]
Science, caste, and governance
Abha Sur
Dr Sur is a historian who has worked extensively on the history of physics in India, and issues of inequality relating to caste, gender, race, and nationality, in the practice of science. This paper presents some findings on how caste functions in science as well as in governance.
Violence on the human and non-human Other in techno-scientific cultures
Sainath Suryanarayanan
Sai is a PhD student in Zoology. This note will present work bridging this work with Sai's recent training in Science and Technology Studies.
Upon Opening.....and Finding it Empty? Politics and STS in India
Esha Shah
Several political controversies in India, especially in the last two decades, have been about science and technology, such as: social and environmental desirability of large dams and nuclear power, social impact of green revolution technology, industrial accidents like Bhopal disaster and more recently biotechnology. Still, it is not uncommon that STS is considered a case of “a missing discipline” in India, including by one of the leading STS scholars from India. In this paper I intend to reinvent some of the prominent debates on politics of development in India as STS debates. I hope to show that STS in the west is overly occupied with methodological (and philosophical) debates, which is now faced with new challenges. Existing methods are no more useful in understanding and solving new problems thrown by the debates on risk and uncertainty, when at the same time STS is often accused of normatively deficient. Whereas social studies of S&T in India (more technology than science) are fundamentally about politics of development. I ultimately intend to push the boundaries of STS scholarship internationally to create a dialogue between methodological and philosophical debates in STS and politics of development.
Modern Temples’ for Nation-Building: Debating India’s Experience with the Bhakra-Nangal
Rohan D'Souza
Through multipurpose large dams, formerly raging wild flood torrents could be contained in a set of sequenced mammoth reservoirs to be then released as calibrated flows for driving turbines and producing electricity. These ‘tamed waters’ as they emerged from the reservoir could, furthermore, be steered into a plexus of canals and distributaries for irrigating parched fields. Rationalising thus the river’s raw and colossal fluvial energy inevitably spurred the shaping of new economies, social logics and production possibilities.
Who can you trust?
Rene Ejury
eSolutions are claiming to improve the efficiency of modern governments and institutions. But while (often) changing the work flow, the new technologies are quiet often changing the established trust chains and this way creating new dependencies. The talk will reflect some trust-related issues in common eSolutions and will show opportunities and limits of different attempts in using IT.
