Smart city initiatives, practices and technologies: surveillance in breach of fundamental human rights

What the paper says

• Critically examines how smart initiatives, practices, and technologies facilitate mass surveillance. • Exposes gendered surveillance practices and caste-based over-policing. • Showcases the insurgent civil society enacting the ‘right to the smart city’ from below. Smart cities are rapidly emerging in the Global South, and it is critical to understand how they interact with fundamental human rights. In this paper, we shed light on the rights implications of smart city development in India by analysing the ways in which diverse smart initiatives, practices, and technologies contribute to mass surveillance. The findings – informed by 30 interviews conducted with civil society actors – expose the gendered surveillance practices and the enabling of expanded caste-based over-policing. Nevertheless, we identify evidence of an insurgent civil society channeling a variety of civic avenues to disclose breaches of fundamental rights in smart practices, to resist, and to reverse the wrongs when possible – ultimately enacting the right to the smart city in the Global South, from below. We discuss how class, caste, religion, gender and territory have been reinforced in the interactions between ‘smart’ and ‘fundamental human rights’.