Democracy, digital India and networks

Digitisation and democracy are ruled by the ineluctable dynamics of networks

There’s no escaping the blessing or the curse of the Digital Age in India, any more than the benefits and challenges of democracy. The headlong rush into digitised networks provides incredible benefits of reach and efficiency in many different ways, at the individual and many collective levels — of family, friends, community, nation, polity, work, domain, and so on. It also lends itself to the dark side, plumbing the depths of social, religious, or political factions and tribalism, bigotry, autocracy and fascism, anarchy, social dysfunction, and the rest. Yet, there’s no denying that for India, with all its needs, talents,