Development and Democracy/Research

As employment in India bounces back from the Covid lockdown, platform-mediated work is expected to come into its own. Indian legislation must take the right steps to protect the status and labour rights of gig workers in these changing times, while unions also need to bring these new workers…

The Indian Parliament is currently in the process of overhauling the country’s labour laws. Unfortunately, this exercise has sidestepped platform workers, a constituency whose needs and challenges have become…

IT for Change is excited to be a member of the Fair, Green and Global Alliance (FGG) – a consortium of eight global organizations – whose goal is to expand civil society voices to make trade and global supply chains just and fair in Global South contexts.

As part of this five year program…

IT for Change's research and advocacy track on labor aims to consider the emergent challenges for workers and laborers in the digital economy, and build a new frontier of labor rights for the 21st century. Our work is primarily concerned with the working conditions of and social security for gig…

The glass is half full.

Voices of resistance to power are everywhere. Students and young people are taking to the streets; women are infiltrating public discourse; and the unlikely activist is joining popular uprisings. Social movements are rejecting tokenism and ‘woke-washing’ from…

The human body is asserting itself more than as a performative spectacle on the streets. From Hong Kong to India, Catalonia, Lebonan, Chile and many more, the body is a signifier of bio-power and hope, defeating surveillance, courting arrest and deliberately seeking the system’s panoptic gaze.…

Statement of the APRCEM S&T Constituency on COVID-19.

The world is presently facing a global health pandemic as many countries battle the widespread transmission of COVID-19 that has already cost the lives of almost 42,000 and afflicted nearly 858,000 people. The healthcare community…

It is becoming increasingly evident that the far-reaching impacts of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) warrant immediate attention to the digitalisation of society itself. AI is not just another technology that has emerged on the horizon. On the contrary…

The platform model has emerged as a game changing force, transforming economic activity across key sectors. Platformization as the process of such a shift towards new modes of production and exchange serves as the pièce de…

This document puts forth a research framework for ‘Policy Frameworks for Digital Platforms - Moving from Openness to Inclusion’. It outlines and clarifies the key concepts invoked in this project and offers a broad meta research framework for the project. This framework has been constructed…

The gagging of free speech and its direct fallout in the form of self-censorship are slowly but steadily moving from being exceptions to becoming the norm in India. Proof of this downward spiral has been the recent backlash following a tweet from IAS officer Shah Faesal of the Jammu and Kashmir…

The digital paradigm with its arsenal of technologies promises to solve the most pressing social and economic challenges of our time. Breakthroughs in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, block chain, and other developments are being heralded as possible…

This report presents emerging insights from the research studies being undertaken under the project. Covering 14 countries and a range of domains and sectors, it examines the current trends in platformization, mapping the emerging policy responses and challenges.

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In this background paper, IT for Change maps the key issues/concerns for the rights and inclusion agenda, stemming from pervasive platformization. Scoping the platform economy from a development justice perspective, this paper outlines the many intersecting challenges that…

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Platformization is a key facet of the global economy today. Platforms, as understood through informational capitalism, are not just online market places – they are market makers. As “a set of digital frameworks for social and marketplace…