Jugaad Infrastructures: Platforming Habituated Ecologies during the Kerala Floods of 2018

Abstract

Infrastructure has often been approached through the built, and yet hidden, substrates that facilitate modern life. In postcolonial contexts, the rise of platformized solutions tasked with performing infrastructural functions has introduced complexity in theorizing infrastructure. However, provisional and temporary solutions that bring together networks, relationships, and habitations as jugaad (informal or workaround) infrastructure have the potential to address crises beyond neoliberal capture enabled through platformization. This paper uses theories on alternative ways of assembling infrastructures to analyze a rescue portal built during the Kerala floods in 2018. It argues that these complex forms of assembling an infrastructure, even during the moments of imminent existential crisis, face the risk of platformized capture, surveillance, and governance.