個案總覽

This case is based on a four-month-long ethnography conducted during January-May 2020 in the research lab of an established IT-BPM (Information Technology - Business Process Management) services organization (ITSO) situated in Bengaluru, India. It focuses on the dilemmas facing this research lab garnering AI expertise as it operates under a larger service-based organizational environment. The case deals with the important themes in current times: project life cycle of an AI project, the various roles for such emerging technology projects, and the strategies of the Indian IT firms implementing these projects. The case brings out perspectives of technical and managerial work roles at ITSO as they engage in IT-BPM services augmented using emerging technologies like AI. Furthermore, it tries to bring out crucial dilemmas facing ITSO's AI Research Lab. These dilemmas stem from the fact that while this lab's stated objective was to further research expertise around AI, its sustenance depended on executing AI projects emerging from ITSO's mainstream IT-BPM services offered by its ODCs. This case tries to bring out the challenges faced by the research lab and its key members as they try to navigate through these dilemmas. It also provides opportunities to discuss the challenges facing the Indian IT sector as it transitions into AI technologies and projects.

The case highlights the differing trajectories of two, contemporaneous models of microfinance in India. The well-known Grameen MFI Model made inroads in the mid-90s, primarily in the four southern states of India. This was in a setting where there was an extensive network of a pre-existing indigenously developed group lending model, called the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage (SHG Bank Linkage) model. Today, the Indian microfinance story stands at a crucial juncture with respect to these two models. The SHG model, while being recognized as a key player in changing the financial inclusion discourse in India, is no longer salient in the current financial inclusion narratives. Grameen MFIs on the other hand, are on their way to being "mainstreamed" as banks, pretty much along the lines of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Using the dramaturgical approach of the sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982), the case differentiates the two models based on the front-stage (borrower-groups) and back-stage (organizations, investors, and the State). This distinction is useful for our microfinance narrative because while the front-stage is steeped in discourses of community, and poverty alleviation; the back-stage revolves around the hard-nosed financial ratios, fund disbursement and recovery pressures, break-even analyses around lender-borrower relations - which are unrelated or even detrimental to the front-stage discourse. Differentiating between the front-stage and back-stage interactions thus allows us to reveal processes that played out very differently for both these microfinance models. It helps us parse out a key question: did the more globally attuned model Grameen Model end up gobbling the clunkier and local SHG Bank Linkage Model?

This case illustrates the perils of implementing top-down, macro economic reform measures at the local level, in response to curbing national fiscal deficits, without taking into account the local, meso/micro or technical ground level realities in the process of implementation. It details a specific instance of economic reforms during the post-90s economic liberalization of India. This case depicts what went behind one such reform in the mining sector - the closure/abandoning of the copper mines of Hindustan Copper Limited at Ghatsila, East Singhbhum district, Jharkhand. The closure was dictated by an extract in a report of the Government of India's Committee on the Tax Reforms (Chelliah Committee) recommending the closure of uneconomic mines in the eastern sector, in its push towards lowering import duties on refined copper. Continual low LME (London Metal Exchange) prices of copper precipitated this decision. With the LME prices picking up towards early 2000 and the predictable growth in the demand for copper, a decision was taken to re-open these mines. Since these mines were summarily abandoned and sealed, this process turned out to be extremely difficult and costly. The case gives the points of view of the stakeholders on the ground - the local management at the mines during the time of closing and the mining trade union workers along with technical experts.