Techno-Biographies: Imaginations of Citizens & Places in Governance Technologies

Course Brief

Abstract

Technologies supporting better governance, explicitly or implicitly, centre a very particular imagination of a citizen-user and aim to operationalise it scale. The first draft electoral roll for independent India was designed by the Constituent Assembly Secretariat (CAS), before even the Constitution of India was fully drafted, to operationalise the imagination of “One person, One Vote”. Understanding how its life-stages, from conceptualisation to implementation, reveals the underlying imagination of both, who is considered as a citizen, and how technology—processes, materials, practices, tools—enables them to be a citizen within the specific context of exercising adult franchise in democratic India. What the life-stages also reveal is also how specific places and practices they foster, also shape the imaginations of both the technology and the citizen, and yet the idea of place is lost in favour of scale in the discourses about governance technologies.

Nuancing the binaries of imagination-implementation, place-scale, etc. hence is crucial for a critical and generative understanding of governance technologies. Especially when these technologies stand for decades and acutely shape the lives of the citizens. What imaginations of citizens do governance technologies centre, and intend to operationalise at scale? If and how are these imaginations are rooted in a place? In a diverse society such as ours does scale in the context of governance technology merely mean serving more number of people across contexts, or considering to design to support a diverse set of communities and their practices in place? What can we learn about how and which imaginations of people and places, are centred and scaled from constructing biographies of technology at different stages of its life?

In the first of a series of primers, we will focus on Citizen Redressal systems with the example of the Janaspandana-iPGRS - Government of Karnataka’s Integrated Public Grievance Redressal System portal. The facilitator constructed the techno-biography covering specific episodes and accounts across the public and policy origins of this citizen redressal system, its piloting in a specific place, and their ongoing use in Bidar and Kundapura, will be the key anchor of this primer. Over biweekly online sessions for 6 weeks, we invite you to closely read, annotate and add to this techno biography of citizen redressal system, through guided field-activities, culminating in a hybrid, digital-physical public exhibition of our learning.

Key words

Governance Technology, Digital Public Infrastructure, Techno Biographies, Close Reading, Guided field-activities, Science and Technology Studies, Digital Humanities.

Course objective

The primary objective of the course is to orient the learners with a method to critically understand how a public technology comes to be: what imaginations of public, their practice and its place do they hold, centre and scale? As notions of digital public infrastructure that can easily scale governance, take over the discourse about what a public technology could and should be, and how it has to be designed and deployed, it becomes even more crucial to learn from the many pasts of technologies that are devised to support democratic governance.

As the first of the series of primers, in this course we will focus on the techno biography of citizen redressal system, in the context of e-governance in the state of Karnataka. In Bidar, over 10 years of working with community histories, grasslands and water systems, we have encountered and subsequently worked with many governance systems at various scales. We have experienced citizen grievance redressals in many rich forms. In Kundapura, we have been working with seven Gram Panchayats since 2023 under the frame of Samagra Arogya. Co-imagining, designing and piloting a community palliative care as a public service has been a key engagement, and more recently we have been working with the Aluru Gram Panchayat to co-imagine technologies to support a more participatory governance of the panchayat resources and infrastructures. As we went about engaging with the governance systems in place, and collaboratively exploring ways to shift and see alternative possibilities for such systems, it became clear for us to dig more into the histories and life-stages of such technologies. For example, there is a lot for us to learn from how the Sakala scheme was piloted in Aurad Taluk, before scaling it out to other parts of Karnataka. Not only the historical, but also the everyday use of systems in Bidar and Kundapura also reveal a far more richer and diverse ideas of citizens and governance technologies. Hence we are constructing techno biographies of such technologies for us to collectively learn and prepare a ground for rich, plural re-imaginations. In this course we are opening up this space for collective learning through close-reading, annotations and guided field activities.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, you will learn:

1. To formulate a nuanced understanding of the inter-relationship between governance technology, its life-stages and the imaginations of public, practices & places centred and scaled. Such an understanding will offer a rich ground for future creative-critical explorations and reimaginations of governance technologies.

2. To engage with techno-biographies as a critical method of understanding human-technology relationships through closely reading, annotating, and expanding with guided field activities. This will orient the learners to further develop and integrate the method of techno biographies as a core part of their practice.

Learning modes

The techno-biography of Citizen Redressal systems with the example of the Janaspandana-iPGRS constructed by the facilitators will anchor the learning. In addition, the facilitators will also share curated learning cases, including that of the formation of the electoral roll to help orient the learners to key questions and inquiries. The techno-biography and learning cases will be in multi-media forms.

The learners will be facilitated to closely read these materials, and annotate individually and in groups to bring forward the specific insights about the relationships between governance technology, its life-stages and the imaginations of public, practices & places centred and scaled.

Later on, in the 4 & 5th week, the learners will be guided to plan, carry-out and document field inquiry into the Janaspandana (or any related form of Citizen Redressal system) at the place they belong. We will collective share and curate this documentation and add to the techno-biography. This combined techno-biography along with the annotations will be shared in a public exhibition, which will be online & in-person in the final week of the course.

What you bring?

We invite learners who are:

• Keen to cultivate their practice and career in investigating, designing, and / or developing technologies in a governance landscape.

• Interested in learning and developing their practice in the fields of history of technology, philosophy of technology, science & technology studies, and speculative design, and

• Practitioners & researchers of governance technology and policy design, development and implementation.

What will you make?

By the end of the course the learners would have:

• Closely read and annotated in groups the techno-biography of citizen redressal systems of Government of Karnataka.

• Individually carried out guided field engagement studying citizen redressal system working in their own place, to add to the techno-biography in multi-media form.

• Shared & exhibited your group and individual work held together by the multi-media techno-biography with the public in a hybrid form. Post the course, we will invite the learners to co-edit and publish the techno-biography via the Living Labs Press.

Course Fee

Fee Summary

Our course fees vary based on the total Notional Learning Hours (NLH). When you view a course description, you'll see a transparent breakdown of costs which reflects the unique structure and requirements of that particular learning experience. The published cost calculation below gives you clarity on what's included in your fees. As more learners join a course, we may adjust the per-person cost accordingly. We track all expenditures carefully against our initial estimates to ensure resources are used effectively for your learning journey. For more information please look at FAQ page.

Course fees includes:

1. Facilitator compensation - Rs. 2880

2. Community Facilitator Compensation - Rs 960

3. Materials and Supplies - Rs. 1200

4. Support and Sustenance - Rs. 3360

5. GST @ 18% - Rs. 1512

Total Fee per learner is Rs.10000 (Rupees Ten Thousand Only). Fee to be paid only on receiving the invitation to join the course cohort.

- In a primer 60% of the NLH is compensated for our Fellow course facilitators co-desinging, facilitating and managing the entire course.
- In a primer upto 40% of the NLH is compensated for learning support by our community collaborator via mentoring, maintaining, weaving, storytelling, guiding and so on.
- Cost towards any materials and supplies required during the coursework sessions. Please see the coursework for full list of materials covered in the cost.
- This amount will be utilised for extending financial support to learners who seek support (details are available in the application form). Any surplus will be added to the corpus for the sustenance of LLI.
- Our fiscal host for Trimester 03 is Aruvu LLP. As per the IT rules a GST of 18% will be charged on the fee collected for the course.

Course plan

Week 01 - March 3, 5 : Orientation

Session 01: Reading Excerpts from the Emperor of all Maladies | March 03 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: We will read excerpts from Siddhartha Mukherjee’s the Emperor of all Maladies, to understand the different facets of a biography. We will read and annotate the excerpts together in session.

What does it mean to see technology as a person? The underlying goal of a biography is to understand how a person has come to be who they are. To sift through the contexts, often even before their birth to beyond the death, that make up the person. What does change if we analyze technology in the similar manner?

The goal is to explore the following framing inquiries & questions:

1. If and to what extent naming a thing shapes what it becomes, what it does, and how it does?

2. What are the different shifts in Points of View we need to do, to understand what contexts shaped the thing, and how?

3. What timespans and its narrative metaphors—events, milestones, journeys, timelines—to traverse to trace how both the ideas, imaginations of a thing (for eg the name) and the effects and consequences have co-evolved?

Learning Materials

1. Mukherjee, Siddhartha. 2011. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. 1. Scribner trade paperback ed. Scribner.

Session 02: Technology Vocabulary: Seeing technology through Metaphors & Archetypes | March 05 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: What actions do technologies automate or make-easy? How do we decode the series of actions that a technology does when it must be imagined as people performing it? These metaphors will help us chain-together - as workflows and then decode what intents technologies carry in their actions. In the field guide, the learners will find a non-exhaustive list of metaphors with examples of technological manifestations of them. As an activity, we will string together metaphors for a small technology aided process of our choice.

The goal is to see these metaphors in the manifestations, history, systems and planning of technology.

Later: By session 5, learners will bring an annotated vocabulary for the technology of their choice.

Week 02 - March 10, 12: Orientation to Rabbitholing and repositories

Session 03: Searching Repositories | March 10 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: To investigate the origins and the grounds in which public technologies have been deployed, we have to read through the arguments that demanded for it. And the historical context that led to the circumstances demanding it, along with the government orders that instrumentally deployed it. For example, what has been the approach to distributing rationed essential items through Public Distribution System? What were the beginnings of it? How was it differently implemented in different states? And how are different states digitizing components of the system? To answer questions like these, we need to to scour through Legislative debates at the Union and State levels, different parliamentary committees that may have crucially led decisions, archival material from pre-independence to understand the constitutional provisions that necessitate such technology and more. We will search through online archives to understand this.

The goal is to orient the learners to search the immense scale of legislative, and governance-related information available in pockets on the internet. The learners will also by the end of the session have an idea of where to search for material about their specific contexts.

Session 04: Rabbitholing & Serendipitous Discoveries | March 12 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: Rabbitholing has come to be as one approaches to dig and make sense of the deeply interconnected and yet increasingly fragmented online spaces. Though not an establishing methodology, it sure is fun! It allows for serendipitous discoveries and makes space for one’s individual approach to exploration and digging-up. We will introduce, through a case, the facilitators attempts of rabbitholing, highlighting the workflows and practices of keeping breadcrumbs through bookmarking, annotating and adding to Zotero libraries, speculatively deducing through making and sketching.

Learning Materials

1. A Short Speculative Narrative

1. George, Paulanthony, and Naveen L. Bagalkot. 2025. “Memewhile: A Carrier Bag of Baat-Cheet (Chit-Chat) and Makeshift Methodologies, While Studying Memes in India.” In Qualitative Methods for Digital Social Research: Studies from the Global South, edited by Nimmi Rangaswamy and Shriram Venkatraman. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9843-8_13.

Week 03 - March 17, 19: Explore - Patchworking Techno-Biography

Session 05: Breaking down Technology using Metaphors and Archetypes | March 19 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: In session 2, we ended with expecting the learners to bringing together an annotated vocabulary for a technology of their choice. In this session, we will review the annotated vocabulary, and expand it to cover the breadth of the technology. In this session the goal is to

1. Breakdown the technology into its constituent functional and relational components, and their definitions.

2. See each component definition from the lens of a biography and annotate it with references from repositories and discoveries.

Session 06: Blueprint for Techno-Biography | March 17 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: We will introduce the notion of a Blueprint that offers an organising structure to construct Techno-Biographies. We will reflect on the framing questions that emerged in session 1, and also the annotated vocabulary for technology in session 2 and 5, to formulate a sketch blueprint. The blueprint will then offer the directions for the learners to construct the techno-biographies of the technology of their choice. We will revisit the blueprint periodically.

Week 04 : March 24, 26: Explore - Patchworking Techno-Biography

Session 07: Patchworking Techno-Biography | March 24 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: In this working session the learners will engage in rabbitholing and searching of repositories, based on the keywords derived from the Sessions 5 & 6. Materials dug-up and unearthed will be read and annotated together while adding them to the sub-folder in the Zotero library.

Session 08: Samagama Talk: Invited Talk on Governance Technology Experiments & Pilots | March 26 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: This invited talk will highlight the nuances of what it means to carry out early experimentation or technological fixes in a place, leading to the technology being piloted within the context of governance. The talk will be online, and open to the public under the Living Lab Institute’s Samagama Talk Series.

Week 05 : March 31, April 2: Make to Synthesize & Share

Session 09: Reviewing the Blue-print & Techno-Biography | March 31 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: In this reflexive session we will take stock of the materials being collated, and loosely organise narratives and flows of the techno-biography. While doing so, we will also re-look and refine the blueprint outline.

Session 10: Refining, Editing, Synthesizing | April 2 | 5:00 - 7:00 pm

Session note: The reflexive editing and refining of both the blueprint and the Techno-biographies continues in this working session.

Week 06 : April 7, 11: Exhibit, Share & Reflect

Session 11: Techno-Biography making session in Yelahanka | April 7 | Timings yet to be decided

Session note: This session will be offline, at Living Labs Institute, Aruvu Collaboratory’s Yelahanka Nodal Center, where we will work to finish the final blueprint of the Techno Biography for displaying on a public exhibition. This will entail physically noting and taking care of arrangements for the techno-biography to be displayed in physical forms: blueprints, printed material, posters, etc

Session 12: Public Exhibition | April 11 | Tentatively 11AM to 3PM

Session note: The public exhibition would have been announced by Session 7, an online invite will be shared by the same time. The exhibition will be a space for discussion and with members from our network and the public about the technologies and the techno-biographies that the learners have made.

Assignments

Through the course, the learners will be making the following three artifacts

1. Annotated vocabulary for the chosen technology.

2. Blueprint for the Techno-biography

3. Techno-biography.

All these artifacts are planned to be made within the stipulated NLH, through guided working sessions.

Review

The three artifacts become opportunities for continuous assessment, which will be peer-led and framed by the learning outcomes as assessment criteria. The assessment will take form of qualitative reviews stipulated in sessions 5 and 11, and will be led by facilitated peer-discussion.