Presentations

Paper presented for the Commission on Social, Ethical, and Legal Issues of  the World IT Forum (WITFOR). The presentation emphasises the gender gap not just in terms of connectivity to the internet, but also access to the sophistication of ICTs. Identifying various factors detrimental to women's interests, it also critiques the closed nature of mobile platforms as well as the lack of debate around the merits of community-owned telecom networks and open platforms.

Anita Gurumurthy wrote a note for the Sakhi-Jagori Consultation on 'New technologies and new forms of violence against women and girls' that took place in Trivandrum (Kerala, India) on 27-28 March 2009. The note identifies emerging debates around personhood and privacy, on the one hand, and normative structures in emerging spaces, on the other, as two important vantages of inquiry to understand the challenges and possibilities thrown up by digital technologies as these become increasingly pervasive.

At the 2009 Conference on Information and Communications Technologies and Development (ICTD), IT for Change organised a panel  titled 'Tracing the genealogy of ICTD research: Premises, predispositions, and paradoxes of a field in the making'. As a field in the making, ICTD is situated right at the centre of an unfolding global transformation process marked by complex and intense power struggles. It thus comprises a contested multi-actor space often implicating competing positions – between technical and social actors, the corporate sector and development constituencies, and the state and communities.

IT for Change organised a workshop on 'ICTs for participatory local development – Exploring a systemic approach'  in Bengaluru (India) on 9-10 December 2008. The event offered a forum for researchers from five countries – Brazil, India, the Philippines, South Africa and Uganda – to present their initial findings regarding a multi-country ‘ICTs for participatory development’ research coordinated by IT for Change.

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.

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 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.