Twitter played a dominant role during the 2014 general elections in India, ushering a right-wing party into power. Political leaders employed Twitter to augment their public image and push right-wing campaign agendas to millions of followers. A prominent and strategic use of Twitter was credited to Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, portrayed as a visionary leader supporting economic development, social empowerment and good governance. Within this narrative, women's empowerment debates underwent multiple transformations. Through this article, we aim to establish the (...) nature of discussions lying at the intersections of feminist thinking and internet technology. We study the discursive trajectory of women's empowerment against the backdrop of a right-wing political ideology playing out on Twitter. Utilising the qualitative methods of Thematic Analysis and Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis, we study two cases highlighting feminist campaigns beginning in 2014: instant triple talaq, and the Sabarimala verdict. We analyse tweets in relation to these incidents and highlight the rhetorical inconsistency of right-wing leaders and supporters. We further discuss the implications of this inconsistency for the simultaneous suppression of voices demanding empowerment and amplification of those justifying religious tradition. Finally, we conclude by introducing the idea of the ‘controlled empowerment’ of women in support of our analysis. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to profile everyday management and business strategies of 30 cyber cafés in Mumbai and contextualize them in the broader and pervasive culture of non‐formal economy.Design/methodology/approachThe paper conducts an ethnographic study of open‐ended interviews of cyber café owner/managers to understand everyday patterns of managing a cyber café. The field observations and literature review aid an understanding of non‐formal economy in Mumbai.FindingsThe paper finds three important insights: business with internet technologies, even at the level of a (...) small café, is expensive, requiring reasonable computing skills to maintain or expand business potential; in order to survive expense management several unauthorized practices are routinised and merge with the broader structures of non‐formal economy; and the non‐formality of business practices influence an open, liberal atmosphere to browse the internet and turn in a predominantly youth clientele.Research limitations/implicationsWith regulatory discourse on information and communication technologies centered on piracy and ill‐legality, informality of business practices in emerging economies provide an alternate premise to understand its nature and function. These challenge received notions of visualizing ICT as simply piracy and coming to terms with markets shaped and structured by non‐formal processes.Originality/valueThe study is one of the first on cyber cafés in Mumbai using the framework of non‐formal economy to analyse data. This paper presents the connections between a small ICT‐enabled business and the pervasive culture of non‐formal business relations in Mumbai. It also reports on the everyday organizational practices and client usages of internet cafés in India. (shrink)

Employing the poststructuralist approach to language and literature as a methodology, the present article insists on the significance of the novel, Body Offering, in understanding the idea of giving in to literature through writing. The notion of giving in the novel unfolds with regard to two contexts: love and writing, which, in turn, problematizes not only the way in which giving is understood in the binary structure of giving and receiving, but also the representational function assigned to literature due to (...) its appearance without voice. So, doing it highlights the openness to receive beyond self desire as the most fundamental force that makes an offering unconditional and sincere. (shrink)