Shaping the digital world: views on the internet in India in Prime Ministerial speeches (1998–2019)

Abstract

Despite the key role played by political elites in enacting and justifying policies related to the internet in India over the past few decades, the manner in which they viewed digital technologies has received relatively little attention. Using Charles Taylor’s notion of social imaginaries, this work attempts to help address this gap by examining the key values espoused within the narratives put forward by high-ranking government functionaries to understand the perspectives of this small yet powerful group. Through a thematic analysis of Prime Ministerial speeches from 1998 onwards it explores their visions in terms of the kind of internet users these were centred on, the role such technologies could play in pursuing development agendas, and how they addressed major issues such as private enterprise, the rural-urban divide and infrastructural gaps. Augmenting this with data on the growing accessibility of the internet itself during this period and major legislative acts passed, it offers a glimpse at the on-going process of shaping the internet by elite groups through the narratives they represent it by.