Governance Interface: The Index in Modi's India Available to Purchase

In Modi's India, a host of indices perform transparency, efficiency, and good governance but leave undeclared the political shifts they are bringing about. Dramatized in real-time dashboards, policy briefs, press reports, and social media posts, these technocratic numbers arbitrarily rank administrative units and place them in a competitive relation with each other within Indian federalism. As technical device, aesthetic projection, and mediating interface, the index is a node in “maximum governance,” an emergent apparatus of governance that renders development as the site of a pernicious combination of centralizing state power and neoliberal entrepreneurship.