CONSULTANCY STATE: Government as (a) Service and the Anti-politics of Technological Expertise in Indian Cities

Abstract

This article analyses ideas of ‘good governance through technology’ in India that first emerged from the software industry, symbolizing state support for the ‘new middle-class’ values of liberalized private enterprise. We suggest that the contemporary prominence of consulting firms in government represents a second transformation that embeds private sector logics within statehood. Perceived needs for technical expertise allow consultants to supply urban governance capacity as a commercial service, encouraging further outsourcing and corporatization. This phenomenon, we argue, expresses ‘anti-political’ tendencies. Consultant writings frame urban governance as primarily technical, promoting context-free policy and private-sector involvement. Acknowledged issues with technology and participation undermine assertions of digital technology’s benefits to citizens. We argue that implicit redefinitions of ‘ordinary citizens’ as middle-class dissipate these tensions between visions of government as a platform for outsourced, monetized services and India’s democratic ideals. We illustrate some effects—and limits—of these processes through an ethnographic study of a government department which supplies digital mapping and software ‘as-a-service’ to other government agencies, displacing private actors. Despite this organization’s technical expertise, local knowledge and use of digital data ‘as a platform’ for influence, political economies of land administration limit the ability of digitalization to check powerful individual and corporate actors.