“Learning Computers”
Sreela Sarkar · 2025
This chapter critically examines a globally acclaimed ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) skills training program in the resettlement colony of Seelampur directed at “Muslim women.” This “skilling” initiative was located under the umbrella of the new governance initiative Mission Convergence of the Delhi government. I study the skills program located in Seelampur from 2008 to 2017 based on ethnographic research. Over the years, program rhetoric emphasized a rapid leapfrogging into modernization through ICT skilling for marginalized residents. While “learning computers” was associated with higher status, the program’s promise of mobility was limited as it resulted in low-paying, precarious work. Further, technologically mediated program Mission Convergence promised rapid delivery of social service schemes to urban, marginalized residents. Through a focus on the Ladli (Girl Child) program, my research reveals how the process of “hybrid” partnerships between the state and civil society organizations heightened power struggles between different institutional actors and created confusion. As a result, women ICT trainees ironically emerged as the humane, caring face of the neoliberal state. The everyday lives of women at and beyond the doorsteps of the training center reflected a different timescape of waiting and lingering that mirrored the limitations of the skilling program for rapid transformations.