Midnight's Machines English 2024

Named among "The Best Books of 2020" by Bloomberg Shortlisted for New India Foundation's Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize 2020Every Prime Minister of Independent India has guided, if not personally overseen, one prized portfolio: technology. If, in the early years, Nehru and his scientist-advisors retained an iron grip on it, subsequent governments created a bureaucracy that managed everything from the country's crown jewels - its nuclear and space programmes - to solar stoves and mechanized bullock carts. But a lesser-known political project began on 15 August 1947: the Indian state's undertaking to influence what the citizens thought about technology and its place in society.