Thèse de discipline, préparée par VALLALA Sravya , sous la direction de QUET Mathieu. Co-encadrement : Loraine KENNEDY
École doctorale : ED 623, Université Paris Cité
Résumé
Hyderabad, Telangana is one of the fastest growing IT cities in India. Hyderabad’s ambition to emerge as a premier investment destination is accompanied by technologizing policing infrastructure and widespread biometric surveillance of the city. Despite Hyderabad being one of the lucrative markets for surveillance tech and later even a producer, its role in shaping surveillance future remains understudied, a gap that this research seeks to address.
Far from remaining a mere consumer, Hyderabad government launched several funding and mentorship programs for homegrown startups, and hosted tech expos in order to source technological solutions for a wide range of governance problems. Evolving beyond sites of infrastructure for innovation, smart cities are now consumers, experimental grounds, as well as laboratories for algorithmic governance that undermines deliberative democratic processes(León & Rosen, 2020). While state cooperation with corporate actors in developing surveillance technology is a noted phenomenon(Wilson, 2021), there hasn’t been much deliberation on state-corporation associations’ role in shaping surveillance futures in the Indian context.
To address this gap, this research will inquire into the political and economic constellations that underlie and drive the continuous innovation of the state surveillance technology. By situating itself in the smart city of Hyderabad, India, it seeks to zoom into the networking of government and private actors to grasp the subtilities of the process of surveillance innovation and adoption. While acknowledging that existing ideological and politico-economic interests inform technological innovations, it also seeks to examine the potential that surveillance technology has in influencing these interests.
Through this, this study seeks to understand how future governance is imagined by the state-corporate associations and see how they conceptualise future innovations in accordance with their perceived shortcomings in governance.
Mots-Clés
Surveillance technologies, State-corporate relationships, Innovation networks of Global South
Zone géographique
Asie, Inde
Calendrier
Début de la thèse : Septembre 2026
Date prévue de soutenance : Août 2029