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In
Patching Development, Rajesh Veeraraghavan reports on a relatively positive case study of developing in India, shedding new light on the challenges and benefits of using information and technology to effectively reach marginalized citizens. The book argues that holding the state accountable for achieving the goals of a program requires a continuous series of responses that react to local implementation and information, a process of patching development. This involves altering power equations through attention to small, incremental changes in institutions and technology, documents and other processes. While each patch may have only limited local significance, the cumulative impact can potentially transform state-society relations.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- Abbreviations
- Chapter 1. Introduction
- Chapter 2. The Genesis of Rights-Based Governance
- Chapter 3. Patching Technologies of Control
- Chapter 4. Patching Institutions
- Chapter 5. Public Meetings at the Last Mile
- Chapter 6. Reading and Writing the State Records
- Chapter 7. Caste, Class, and Audits
- Chapter 8. Conclusion: Patching the Power at the Last Mile
- Appendix 1. Methodology: Using Ethnography to Study Political Economy of Information
- Appendix 2. Explanatory Note on Comparing NREGA Performance across States
About the author
Rajesh Veeraraghavan is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015. He has been researching and writing about the politics of data and technology and its role in improving the lives of marginalized citizens for the last 15 years.
Summary
Diving into an original and unusually positive case study from India, Patching Development shows how development programs can be designed to work.
How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms? Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local power systems. In Patching Development, Rajesh Veeraraghavan presents an ethnography of one of the largest development programs in the world, the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and examines NREGA's implementation in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He finds that the local system of power is extremely difficult to transform, not because of inertia, but because of coercive counter strategy from actors at the last mile and their ability to exploit information asymmetries. Upper-level NREGA bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh do not possess the capacity to change the power axis through direct confrontation with local elites, but instead have relied on a continuous series of responses that react to local implementation and information, a process of patching development. "Patching development" is a top-down, fine-grained, iterative socio-technical process that makes local information about implementation visible through technology and enlists participation from marginalized citizens through social audits. These processes are neither neat nor orderly and have led to a contentious sphere where the exercise of power over documents, institutions and technology is intricate, fluid and highly situated. A highly original account with global significance, this book casts new light on the challenges and benefits of using information and technology in novel ways to implement development programs.
Additional text
Development theory needs fresh thinking to move forward. Patching Development answers the call. The multilevel contestation of public officials, local politicians, and social movements is dissected together with the possibilities and limits of information technology to create a synthetic, original vision of how the needs of the poor might be better served.
