Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy gave a keynote lecture on The Power of Data Science Ontogeny: Thick Data on the Indian IT Skill Tutoring Microcosm at the International conference on Data Power 2019 organized by the ZeMKI, Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research, University of Bremen in cooperation with the Universities of Carleton (Canada) and Sheffield (UK).
Notions of power embedded in the learning structures of science & technology education are undergoing transformations post the liberalisation era in India. New demands of a growing Indian software service industry are spawning neo-educational structures, especially in the domain of data sciences. The latter invariably pose a challenge to the inherent elitism and power of the existing science and technology education through vibrant market mechanisms offering a scalable and industry focussed learning system. Since the 1990s, Indian software firms have developed expertise in carrying out outsourced back office tasks and mid-level IT services like data entry, managing call centres and performing software quality testing for foreign companies taking advantage of a technically trained local workforce. However, the rapidly improving automation technologies are allowing AI-based software to carry out routine IT support work, and repetitive back office tasks that were previously performed by human actors–the very tasks that global companies originally outsourced to India. This trend of automating manual work practices in the IT industry has generated a different kind of demand for Data Sciences directed at up-skilling and job readiness. India is home to the largest under-25 demographic profile in the world requiring a wide-spread, skill-oriented, job ready education equipping youth to thrive in highly dynamic job markets. India has been witnessing a market oriented ground swell of Data Science and IT skill tutoring ‘shops’ restituting a science and engineering education. A closer exploration of the Indian markets of tutoring acknowledges a complex system of demand and supply; a vast variegated clientele ; an embedded actor network in a seasoned socio-technical microcosm. Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy’s keynote lecture addressed the contestations to the power of hierarchical and elite educational structures in India the IT tutoring market pose; especially as a skilling, scalable and situated eco-system of learning.