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This dissertation studies the promise of inclusion in the global information society for marginalized groups in India, a nation that represents a modular case for technology and modernization initiatives in the global South. There has been significant research on the problematic notion of the "digital divide," based on the premise that access to technology will ensure economic and cultural transformations. Combining approaches from the political economy of communication and from cultural studies, my research is located in the growing critical and ethnographic scholarship on technology and modernity in the global South. I examine the institutional and cultural politics of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) initiatives in rapidly globalizing Delhi through a multi-method study that includes archival research and an extended period of fieldwork at the sites of interconnected global and local institutions, markets and communities. Forms of institutions and governance, starting from the colonial period, demonstrate continuities to the evolution of digital inclusion initiatives in the 21st century. Through archival and ethnographic research, I trace the beginnings of public-private partnerships in education and the establishment of the Industrial Training Institutes to 19th century colonial India, when the British Empire sought to strengthen its rule. My ethnographic research also studies the modern, postcolonial state as it changes from the Nehruvian socialist model to a neoliberal one and increasingly becomes a deliverer of social services, enabled by ICT programs. Corporations emerge as important welfare actors through hybrid public-private partnerships. I argue that such new institutional forms renegotiate, reify and occasionally reproduce structural inequalities, especially for low-income and marginalized communities. My project connects institutional politics to the politics of culture. I study the habitus of "new middle-class," corporate professionals in India who comprise the initiators of ICTD projects. In addition, my ethnographic research follows "urban poor Muslim women" and "slum youth" from the doorsteps of the ICT center into their everyday lives to understand policy shifts from subaltern perspectives. My study unpacks concepts of the "digital divide" and "access" in the context of complex histories of gender, class, caste, religion and the politics of urban space in global Delhi. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

In recent years, the subject of the newborn disability rights movement in India has been attracting the attention of researchers, but there has been very little effort to document the movement of blind people in India for their rights, which preceded the broader disability rights movement. I therefore conducted a qualitative study of this movement of blind people in India by using the methods of oral history and document analysis. For this purpose, I conducted 93 interviews (by interviewing 45 informants) and analyzed relevant documents. Borrowing terminology from the self-advocacy movement of the blind in the United States, I describe this movement as a "movement of the Organized Blind," which was launched when blind activists began to organize themselves at the national level in India during the early 1970s. I have attempted to explain that since the launching of this movement, blind activists have been constantly engaged in a struggle for their rights, which encompasses a wide range of issues from the right to employment to the enactment and implementation of the comprehensive disability rights law. I describe the historical evolution of this movement as a process of transformation of the status of blind people in India from being "passive recipients of services" offered to them through the service delivery organizations to "active advocates of their rights." I have classified the evolution of this movement into four stages from 1970 to 2005. I also reject the existing views about the time of origin of the disability rights movement in India and establish my argument that it began in late 1980s when blind activists began to focus on the demand for the enactment of a comprehensive disability rights law, which resulted in the enactment of such a law in 1995. Finally, I have analyzed the changing methods of advocacy as well as the shift in the approach of the service delivery organizations in the field of blindness in India from outright rejection of the advocacy approach to its acceptance in the post-1995 period. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]