Beyond the Production and Consumption of Digital Technologies: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in India’s Labour Markets

This article examines trajectories of inclusion and exclusion in India’s labour markets against the backdrop of shifting policies towards digital technologies over the past half-century. For the last decade and a half, India has been the global leader in exporting information and communication technology (ICT) services. A few decades ago, that barely seemed possible in an autarkic economy. But with India’s inclusion in the international division of labour in the ICT services industry from the 1980s, concerns about other forms of exclusion arose. The skills requirements that excluded a vast segment of the workforce from the production of ICT services were reinforced by the country’s inability to encourage the widespread consumption of ICTs to realize the developmental potential of a general-purpose technology. Since the turn of the millennium, however, the state has more actively supported domestic consumption of ICTs and the digital inclusion of its citizens. But as the case of promoting relatively low-skill gig work opportunities on digital platforms shows, in a country that continues to grapple with widespread socio-economic disparity and inadequate regulation, digital inclusion can also produce forms of adverse incorporation.