Rahul Mukherjee – författare

How telecom companies in India have added a whole new group of mobile phone users—and the tremendous impact of this new reach.Around 2016, buoyed by affordable data plans of telecom companies, an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first time on their mobile phones. What kinds of digital infrastructures are emerging for content and money to move and reach such users? And how does their design impact access, exclusion, and surveillance as well as the horizon of social behaviors and expectations in “Digital India”? In Unlimited, Rahul Mukherjee explores how aspirations shape practices of distribution as well as how distribution technologies aid state-corporations to set aspirational targets for consumer-citizens who encounter gender- and caste-based fault lines.This book traces the supply chains of content delivery networks enabling streaming video-on-demand services, such as Hotstar and SonyLIV, and informal ways of circulating vernacular Bhojpuri music videos through memory cards. It assesses the possibilities and limits of the platform economy with the rise of mobile payment and lending services, as well as the accompanying online scams. Unlimited offers the first systematic examination of distribution considerations—including localization strategies—required for imagining mobile phone users across the varied regional geographies of India.

In Radiant Infrastructures Rahul Mukherjee explores how the media coverage of nuclear power plants and cellular phone antennas in India-what he calls radiant infrastructures-creates environmental publics: groups of activists, scientists, and policy makers who use media to influence public opinion. In documentaries, lifestyle television shows, newspapers, and Bollywood films, and through other forms of media (including radiation-sensing technologies), these publics articulate contesting views about the relationships between modernity, wireless signals, and nuclear power. From testimonies of cancer patients who live close to cell towers to power plant operators working to contain information about radiation leaks and health risks, discussions in the media show how radiant infrastructures are at once harbingers of optimism about India's development and emitters of potentially carcinogenic radiation. In tracing these dynamics, Mukherjee expands understandings of the relationship between media and infrastructure and how people make sense of their everyday encounters with technology and the environment.

In Radiant Infrastructures Rahul Mukherjee explores how the media coverage of nuclear power plants and cellular phone antennas in India-what he calls radiant infrastructures-creates environmental publics: groups of activists, scientists, and policy makers who use media to influence public opinion. In documentaries, lifestyle television shows, newspapers, and Bollywood films, and through other forms of media (including radiation-sensing technologies), these publics articulate contesting views about the relationships between modernity, wireless signals, and nuclear power. From testimonies of cancer patients who live close to cell towers to power plant operators working to contain information about radiation leaks and health risks, discussions in the media show how radiant infrastructures are at once harbingers of optimism about India's development and emitters of potentially carcinogenic radiation. In tracing these dynamics, Mukherjee expands understandings of the relationship between media and infrastructure and how people make sense of their everyday encounters with technology and the environment.