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Joyojeet Pal is an Associate Professor of Information at the School of Information at the University of Michigan. His work is on the role of technology in political outreach and polarization. He received his Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley.
Talk: Technopopulism and the Assault on Indian Democracy
Abstract: The idea of technocracy in politics, which presents rational management of policy and administration as a means of legitimacy has taken on new populist logic in the India’s digital age. In this talk, I argue that technology, and specifically the use of digital technology and its accompanying language of modernity has been presented as aspirational form of governance, and as a cover for charismatic leadership in the last three decades. I frame contemporary articulations of this Indian configuration of technopopulism within aspiration related to the technology industry and computing artifacts since the 1990s and trace its progress through the branding and public outreach of Indian politicians like Chandrababu Naidu and Narendra Modi. I propose that social media in particular has exacerbated the purchase of Indian technopopulism, in which a politician’s performance of the language of technological modernity is used to obfuscate underlying institutional capture. In conclusion, I discuss the ways in which technopopulism provides social elites normative cover for supporting a political system that works in their favor.