In-Tensions to Infrastructure

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Digital property databases are being developed across Indian cities. There are intentions to develop these into state-wide information infrastructure. Recently, the Delhi State Spatial Data Infrastructure was launched, which evolved from a property database. Because these efforts are recent, little research exists on the problems involved and the consequences of the development. Through a lens of information infrastructure (II) theory, my aim is to explore how the effort is currently shaping up in the case of urban Karnataka. I find that in the II development, tensions dominate that are related to the concern of aligning end goals. These tensions are manifest in competition over short-term funding, individuals’ interests with respect to computerization and problems of populating the databases through changing survey techniques. Survey techniques for property boundaries imply a stable and categorizable space aiming to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the city. This clashes with the flexibility in urban land and property regimes. While geospatial technologies are employed to eliminate flexibility, land and property regimes pose the major problem to implementation at the moment of digital recording. This implies that successful II development in the long run may change current property and land ownership regimes with the potential of closing spaces of the city to some groups of people. It becomes a question also of whose interests, or what communities, are to be served by the II development.