Lilly Irani - Chasing Innovation

Lekh

In the third episode of Lekh, I speak to Lilly Irani, Associate Professor of Communication & Science Studies at University of California, San Diego on her recent book Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India. The book weaves together history, ethnography, and critique of a seductive vision of entrepreneurial citizenship that cogently illustrates how discourses of innovation were articulated and used to drive development policies in an India that was rapidly liberalising. The book asks us to rethink the 'subsumption of hope’ by innovation and look at mass politics, despite its inefficiencies and infirmities, to drive and achieve sustainable political and economic change. To do this, the book draws on immersive ethnographic fieldwork in the design and development worlds around New Delhi to see if vaunted notions of innovation were reflected in the everyday routines of these hubs. The conversation begins with some background on Lilly’s eclectic background spanning nearly half dozen disciplines that shaped the book’s approach and core before moving to discuss how the Indian state and entrepreneurs sought to ‘make' entrepreneurial citizens to advance developmental objectives. In an era of techno-solutionism where technology is seemingly replacing or subsuming politics, the conversation concludes by asking how we can recover a collective sense of politics to to limit the impact of technology on our lives and livelihoods.