Violent sustainability: Blitzscale and counteraccounting in an Indian agtech start‐up

Abstract

In recent years, there has been rapid digitalization in agriculture, with India seeing a significant rise in agricultural technology (agtech) start‐ups. Many of these start‐ups promise to address the climate crisis by promoting the economic and ecological sustainability of agriculture through market‐driven business models. Using institutional ethnography and counteraccounting at an Indian agtech start‐up, this article illuminates social, economic, and ecological relationships that are obscured by one firm's accounting practices. It shows how, despite tech‐entrepreneurs intending to help farmers, violence remains built into the design and effects of rapidly scaled‐up (“blitzscaled”) sustainability programs. The article proposes violent sustainability as a concept to highlight the unintended harm caused to potential beneficiaries due to structural violence underlying tech‐entrepreneurialism and inherent design flaws in blitzscaled sustainability programs. In doing so, it challenges the normalization and monetization of recurrent failures prevalent in tech‐entrepreneurial ventures.