Gendered Smartness: An Exploration of Women’s Experiences of Digitised Indian Cities

Like several countries in the Global South, India too has seen a recent influx of governmental and private projects with the aim to transform the urban space into a “smart” one. The Government of India has identified 100 cities under its Smart Cities Mission and several others are selected by private developers for improving economic growth and quality of life through the use of information technology and digital tools.

While most such projects exclude the urban poor and working classes – men and women – from their visions of smartening the city, middle-class women, interestingly, are not invisibilised. Rather, images of “the modern Indian woman” – entrepreneurial, adept with digital technologies, financially independent, and yet rooted in the family – are often placed at the centre of such proposals. But a slight scratching of the surface reveals the masculine ordering of the plans and their translation in the city space. Whether in terms of security and surveillance, access to housing, health and sanitation, or in terms of public discourse and celebrations, the new high-tech cities remain entrenched in traditional, patriarchal moralities. Women, are sometimes enthusiastic participants, and sometimes resist and rebel against this. Mostly however, women across classes try to find ways to negotiate with the old and new anxieties and vulnerabilities that come with living in the city, while trying to benefit from the opportunities and access that it allows.

Drawing from ethnographic and cyber-ethnographic qualitative research conducted among women in different cities in India, the paper highlights the lopsided experiences of digitised urban spaces in terms of gender and class. Through a reading of the Smart Cities Mission and other public and private projects, the study examines the space allocated to women in these developmental dreams; and its coincidence with women’s own dreams and experiences of the city.