Internet Governance/Advocacy

During a global discussion led by Brazil in 2014, India maintained that the internet is not merely an open, free, global commons that should remain untouched by major governmental control, but also a resource that needs to reflect the values of an ‘Equinet’ – a platform for commerce, e-…

The Srikrishna Committee report on data protection (2018) is based on the fundamental belief that a legal framework for the protection of personal data is imperative for empowerment, progress and innovation in the 21st century.

In the words of Justice Chandrachud in Justice KS Puttaswamy…

This policy brief deals with the principles and framework to govern aggregate non-personal data as 'common pool resources'. Such an intervention is necessary in view of the large dividends acquired through the use of such data, the widespread de facto collection of data and its potential as a…

The United States’ blacklisting of the Chinese company Huawei — since reversed — represents an important milestone as the world splits digitally around its two digital superpowers, the US and China. Last year, the US disallowed Alibaba’s takeover of Moneygram and later embargoed US supplies to…

There are two ways to look at the digital economy.  One is just as progressive automation of production processes that has been going on for many years, now hitting a whole new level.  Another is to see it as a distinct discontinuity, much like the industrial revolution was.  The latter, within…

A global Internet with unrestrained global flow of data has been held up as the ideal. However, while there is great value in it, there are also other, often competing, imperatives of ensuring rule of law over the internet and data, and using local and national data for encouraging domestic…

For long, Internet activists considered the Internet as being beyond law, politics and governments. J.P. Barlow made the famous Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in 1996. It was fine when this phenomenon was just shaping up and challenging established institutions. But with the Internet…

We need to move towards a new legal framework for surveillance

Over the past decade, we have been witness to many legal, juridical and executive interventions that comprise the highly contentious terrain of surveillance in digital times — from the amendment to Section 69 of the IT Act in…

In this piece, Prabir Purkayastha outlines the dangers of discrimination against vulnerable and marginalized communities that can arise from automated algorithmic decision making.

Commission for Science and Technology for Development's Working Group on Enhanced Corporation (WGEC) is an important group deliberating on how to develop the required global Internet-related public policies, and the corresponding institutional frameworks. IT for Change is represented as one of…

On June 28, 2017 Anita Gurumurthy joined Nicole Shephard in a tweetchat organized by GenderITorg to discuss the impact of Big Data on gender and women’s rights.

Find the storify here.  

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. 

Since 2015, IT for Change has been actively engaged in influencing the policy debate on net neutrality in India, undertaking policy research and advocacy. We carried out a field research in New Delhi on patterns of access and use of the Internet that demonstrated the critical importance of…

Between 2015-2017, IT for Change actively engaged in a series of consultations convened by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on regulation of Over-the-Top services, differential pricing of data, and core principles of net neutrality in the Indian context.
In these responses…

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…