India’s IT sector shifted from Western outsourcing to state-backed domestic infrastructure

Evidence

India’s approach in the IT sector, meanwhile, has been to leverage cheap labor and engineering expertise to attract global investment. But in contrast with yesterday’s image of the Indian call center providing customer support for Western companies, India’s current IT sector represents a burgeoning ecosystem of start-ups, technology developers, and service providers of global reach. This infrastructure is being developed in close collaboration with the state through public–private partnerships. For instance, India’s data centers, which provide server hosting and colocation services to companies all over the world, are supported by the government through land allotments and tax rebates; furthermore, the IT sector and the government work closely on national data-management projects such as census or citizen-identification programs. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 209

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks to the Aadhaar/identity-phase debates and whether state data programs are a variant of data colonialism.