Grassroots Authoritarianism: WhatsApp, middle class boundary making and pandemic governance in New Delhi’s neighbourhoods

Keywords: digital authoritarianism, neighbourhood governance, Covid-19; borders, India
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 63

Abstract

This paper will examine how physical-digital boundaries are created and reinforced by neighbourhood community groups known as Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) in India’s capital city, New Delhi. More generally the paper focuses on the role of WhatsApp in local governance. During the COVID-19 crisis, RWA WhatsApp groups have been mobilised for: i) conducting surveillance; ii) communicating grassroots pandemic rules and; iii) disciplining participation within and across digital-physical spaces of the neighbourhood. We argue that as a communication and surveillance tool, WhatsApp is (re)configuring the digital-physical boundaries of the New Delhi neighbourhood, and facilitating the rise of grassroots authoritarianism. This argument challenges techno-utopian ideas that celebrate digital private spheres for promoting and expanding democracy. The pandemic as crisis moment has created the opportunity for an RWA-WhatsApp nexus in middle-class neighbourhoods of India’s big cities to deepen grassroots governance and accelerate the rise of an illiberal state and ethnodemocracy in contemporary India.