Thoughts on Public Policy and Technology 

The conversations regarding data security are long over drawn, but with the JAM+Demonetisation combination, this lens is more relevant than ever. Public Policy will be more technology driven passing everyday, and the questions of ethics and transparency to citizenry have to brought up again and again. India is a country of unprecedented complexities and realities on the ground are infinitely complex to model the deficiencies. There is a rampant black market already in Aadhar numbers. No one talks about making government decision making transparent, including diluting RTI. Rather citizens as taxpayers are treated as criminals unless proven otherwise exemplified by the Bank officials question usual account holders wishing to deposit or withdraw their own resources. Technology is underwritten by value laden thinking, and assumptions behind technology need to be unpacked as a black box.

The Caste Question in the Indian Start Up Sector 

The intersectionalities of caste are as real in the Indian Start Up sector. The Baniya is as powerful as ever. The Agarwal, Bansal, Sangal, Sethia etc. Business models are pretty standard too, as the source of capital behind the thinking is the same. Some things are never ‘disrupted’ for all the chatter about disrupting the status quo. Man, disrupt the traditional cash castes.