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-border data flows as a means for smaller players to…
In the light of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing recommendations on Net Neutrality, this article by Anita Gurumuthy discusses the significance of TRAI recommendations. TRAI’ s stand presents a contrast to US government’s decision to roll back net neutrality. When Internet access is already not equal, revoking net…
Platforms are to the network age what the factory was to the industrial revolution. From popular imagination to research activity, there is a palpable sense of a new turn in economic reorganization, implicating productivity, growth, jobs and skills in the future economy. The dominant mood is about innovation and opportunity. However, there is a…
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 this judgement is only a beginning. The de facto…
In April 2017, IT for Change with support from the International Development Research Centre, Canada participated in a multi-country research study to map the key issues/concerns for the rights and inclusion agenda, stemming from pervasive platformization, in three key domains – economy, knowledge and governance. Through a detailed analysis 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, IT for Change develops a unique set of…
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 universal access to the full Internet, for marginalised…
Parminder Jeet Singh was invited by the Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay to deliver a talk on 'Digital Data - The New Raw Material in the Globalising Economy' as part of the Development Discourse Series. In the talk, Parminder unpacks data collection, use, and regulation from a political economy perspective; and also delves into the…
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.
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Understanding platformizationPlatformization 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 interactions” (Kenny & Zysman, 2016), platforms replace…