Development and Democracy/Advocacy

In March 2018, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights invited all stakeholders to provide input on human rights challenges relating to the right to privacy in the digital age, including on principles, standards and best practices with regard to the promotion and protection of the…

E-commerce platforms have radically reorganized economic activity, given rise to new structures of intermediation and changed the conception of global trade altogether. And yet structural inequities in opportunities and access between actors in developed and developing nations continue to…

The US based Multinational Corporation (MNC) Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart undermines India’s economic and digital sovereignty and the livelihood of…

In this piece for The Hindu, Parminder Jeet Singh calls attention to the usurpation of digital issues by the ever increasing ambit of global trade treaties, and discusses possible policy directions for India. 

As the Supreme Court finds itself in the midst of a heated debate on privacy, Parminder Jeet Singh muses on the implications for a citizen oriented right to privacy in the digital age in The Hindu. 

Data protection in India is a fragile concept, heavily reliant on one sided user contracts between corporations and citizens. Read our article on First Post, to know more about how corporation defined 'Terms of Use' have come to dictate users' right to privacy in the glaring absence of…

'Digital Democracy in India' is our ongoing attempt to examine the emergence of a new governance paradigm in the country, characterized by the rise of ‘governance by networks’ and ‘rule by data’, from the standpoint of inclusive citizenship. We are primarily concerned with tracing critical…

We have been actively engaging with the debate on privacy and data protection in India, that has gained traction in the context of the unique citizen ID/ Aadhaar project of the government. Through our media articles, we have emphasised the public value of privacy, bringing in an agency…

The nine-judge bench of India’s Supreme Court has just ruled that “privacy is intrinsic to freedom of life and personal liberty” guaranteed in Article 21 of the Constitution of India and qualifies as “a primal natural right”. In this article, Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami reflect on how…

Gurumurthy wrote an article 'Use of Information Technology in promoting transparency' in elections, in the Common Cause publication.

At MC 11, the United States, Japan and European Union are actively pushing for a liberalised e-commerce regime that will reinforce the rules for trade set by the global North. Key to this dominant discourse is the persuasive rhetoric on free cross-…

MC11 e-com battlelines drawn across three camps' gives an overview of the various positions countries have adopted on e-commerce and trade, and likely to play out at the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference from 10 to 13 December, 2017. The divergent approaches to the…

IT for Change submitted comments on the draft general comment on state obligations under the ICESCR in the context of business activities. The submission asserted the need for an immediate and appropriate regulatory response to platform-companies, who have increasingly become…

This article examines the new concerns for privacy emerging in the age of data-based governance, using the UID/Aadhaar scheme in India as a case in point.

Privacy is no longer just about non-interference from the State but an urgent imperative in the age of digital where citizen data protection is vulnerable to incomplete legal safeguards. Read more on this in our take on the Aadhaar Act in First Post.