Cutting Chai, Jugaad, and Here Pheri: towards UbiComp for a global community
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This paper attempts to re-imagine ubiquitous computing and technologies for populations in resource-poor, digitally unstable, and diversely literate environments. Extending UbiComp’s frame of reference to include any ICT with a ubiquitous presence, we articulate how technologies are adopted, accessed, used, and diffused in three urban slums of India. We showcase important local practices surrounding technology diffusion and their widespread implications for entrenching ICT use through sharing, learning, training, renewing, and extending use and access. We do this by discussing three main processes at the intersection of technology consumption, resource constraints, and cultural production specific to low-income communities in India: Cutting Chai or sharing technology ownership and maintenance to cut costs, Jugaad or workarounds in the face of resource constraints, and Here Pheri or gray market activity that subvert legal business processes. We also suggest a few design principles to provoke new kinds of inquiry and practice in the design and implementation of UbiComp for a global community.
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Elderly people and manual laborers had difficulty recording their fingerprints and irises during Aadhaar enrollment.
“the elderly and manual laborers as they encountered troubles in recording their fingerprints and irises [44,71]”
From Seeing Like an Infrastructure: Low-resolution Citizens and the Aadhaar Identification Project (2021) · cites this paper as [71]
The Method and Bangalore study sections describe research with low-income residents, including domestic laborers aged 20–70, but do not discuss Aadhaar enrollment. Searches for Aadhaar, fingerprint and iris recording, and biometric enrollment found no passage addressing the claimed difficulties. (LLM, conf=0.74)
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- Authors
- Rangaswamy, N., & Sambasivan, N.
- Affiliations
- Microsoft Research (India) (IN)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sambasivan, Nithya
- Venue
- Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
- Published
- 2011-04-27
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 553-564
- ISSN
- 1617-4909 (ISSN-L)
- 1617-4917
- OpenAlex
- W2041439873
- Cited by
- 69
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 11.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Personal and Ubiquitous Computing (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- Microsoft Research
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › ICT in Developing Communities
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Business and International Management › Innovation and Socioeconomic Development
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Keywords
- ubiquitous computing, low-income communities, urban slums, technology diffusion, resource constraints, technology sharing, jugaad, grey market, technology ownership, digital inclusion, design principles, India
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