Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the paradoxical nature of democracy assembled by Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC) in India's aspiring smart cities. It argues that ICCCs simulate performance of democracy, while reinforcing centralised State structures that restrict digital democracy of its citizens.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will examine the paradoxical nature of democracy that is performed in the Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC) in India's aspiring smart cities. The ICCCs are spatial nodes in the unidirectional flows of data from the citizen to the state, assembling different structures of governance (traffic, waste, water and so on) within a real-time visualisation. In the context of India's 100 smart cities mission, the assemblage of ICCCs in its second-tier cities take a special significance as a simulacrum of 'democracy' and 'development' in transitioning smaller cities towards a 'smart urban future'. The ICCC upholds a performative 'process' of technocracy in a context of disconnected, broken or absent physical infrastructures and rapidly receding democratic processes of municipal governance. Based on research in three small and second-tier cities in India, we argue that this performance of centralised visualised governance exists in parallel to forms of structural and infrastructural violence by the state that has become evident in frequent internet shutdowns across these cities to regulate street protests and public dissent. In this context, the ICCC promises municipal autonomy and accountability to it citizens but performs instead as a surveillance arm of the centralised state that can withdraw access to digital infrastructures at will. Thus the performative governance of the ICCC constructs a simulacrum of democracy while at the same time retracting the very infrastructures of everyday life which makes governance democratic for ordinary citizens.