Presentations

Parminder Jeet Singh was the civil society representative at the 11th session of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development - UNCTAD, held in Geneva (Switzerland) in May 2008. The theme was 'Development-oriented policies for a socio-economic inclusive information society'. Parminder Jeet Singh spoke about the need for policy to ensure the forces of creativity and productivity that have been unleashed and to bring equity and social justice in the emerging information society.

The 2008 Internet Governance Forum(IGF) was held in Hyderabad, India, between 3-6 December with the  overall theme 'Internet for All'.

At the 2008 AWID Forum (Cape Town, South Africa, 14-17 November), IT for Change (ITfC) was  part of the strategic session on 'Politics, power and the Internet' which discussed the intersections between women's rights and communication rights, and why communication rights are critical to women's movements. ITfC was also involved in organising a meeting of the Feminist Network on Gender, Development and Information Society Policies (GDISP). They met to discuss the paradigmatic changes of the information society that are in danger of being instrumentalised and co-opted by dominant ideologies, especially those of market fundamentalism and patriarchy, and to look at how they can be shaped by a vision of gender equality.

IT for Change was at the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Ministerial Meeting on 'The Future of the Internet Economy', an event held in June 2008 in Seoul (Korea). Parminder Jeet Singh was a panelist on the Civil Society - Organised Labour Forum on a policy round-table titled 'The future of the Internet: The human and political dimension', where he spoke about the democratic deficit in global Internet policy making.

IT for Change made a presentation at the Access Plenary Panel during the second Internet Governance Forum (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 12-15 November 2007). The presentation posits that ICTD models for poor people cannot be driven by financial considerations, and neither can they be demand-driven. Progressive ICTD models must be embedded in social institutions and sectoral agencies - like health, education, governance. 

The 2007 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil, 12-15 November) and its overall theme was 'Internet Governance for Development'. IT for Change was part of several panels and workshops.

The information society phenomenon presents a paradigmatic shift in redefining political, social and institutional systems. However, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) which constitute a vital component of this phenomenon are mostly guided by neo-liberal principles and are nested in technical domains, resulting in the absence of traditional development actors in ICT policy making spaces. Further, e-governance spaces are devoid of any debate on governance reform concepts of active citizenship, participatory democracy, etc.

Anita Gurumurthy was at the 2007 Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) Conference held on 15-16 December in Bengaluru (India). She participated in a panel discussion on 'Meaningful Research for ICT and Development'. Her presentation highlighted the dominant meanings ascribed to ICTD theory both in discourse and practice. It posited an alternative to ICTD inquiry as a study of power and offered constructivist epistemology towards an ICTD research agenda that would embrace activist and bottom-up resistances.

This paper, presented at the United Theological College (Bengaluru, India) on 14 December 2006, points out that ICTs are reshaping personal and institutional relationships and the new public reality that ICTs have helped create need to be seen as a new site for feminism. The author discusses the recent depoliticisation of gender and the consequent obscurement of the agenda of feminist struggle.