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Abstract

This research, based on a neo-institutional model explores how a techno-managerial variety of e-governance reform as espoused by a transnational governance reform agenda affects the level of governance that hinges upon a dynamic relationship between state and society. Since such a research endeavour focuses on the relationship between technology and governance, a social constructivism approach is deployed to explicate how this relationship is mediated through an array of political, social and cultural factors which further calls for a context-specific analysis of e-governance. Consequently, a detailed analysis of e-governance policies and practices in India along with a case study of the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India has been undertaken. Such analyses often denotes substantial gap between the macro-policies of reform and their actual impact which is further explained through the analytical category of hybridity. Hybridity shows how both policies and practices go through a process of hybridisation in negotiating the hiatus between ‘imported’ institutional set up and the ‘inherited’ social set up in the post-colonial context of India. Thus, the implication of e-governance in India goes much beyond in explaining (e) governance as a complex interplay between politics, technology and culture. Hence, this research transcends the specific context of India firstly in explicating the relationship between technology and governance and secondly, by devising a unique yet holistic methodological approach to address the entanglement of politics, technology and culture in the complex whole of governance.