Karnataka’s Open Data Policy opens up a Pandora’s box of concerns for public interest and citizen rights
Last week, the Government of Karnataka (GoK) notified its Open Data Policy (ODP) to open up government-held personal and non-personal datasets for “innovation, co-creation and research”. The government’s logic fits very much into the…Anita Gurumurthy
2021
The new Intermediary Guidelines (IL Guidelines), require messaging platforms that have over 50 lakh registered users (such as WhatsApp) “enable the identification of the first originator of the information”.
The challenge from WhatsApp is that this impinges on an individual’s constitutional right to privacy and is therefore…
2021
Parminder Jeet Singh, Anita Gurumurthy, and Nandini Chami contributed a chapter on Open Institutions and Their “Relevant Publics”: A Democratic Alternative to Neoliberal Openness to the book Critical Perspectives on Open Development: Empirical Interrogation of Theory Construction, published by IDRC.
Over the last ten years, “open”…
2020
This paper discusses how the platform economy – dominated by a few firms – is extractivist, exploitative and expedient. It is based on an unsustainable model with scant regard for natural resources, and is built on the back of a global division of labor that bears the marks of race, class, gender, and geography. The paper emphasizes the…
2020
Parminder Jeet Singh and Anita Gurumurthy co-authored a policy brief titled, ‘Data Sharing Requires a Data Commons Framework Law’, based on the paper 'Data and Digital Intelligence Commons'. The paper examined the current non-governance of aggregate non-personal data, and presented a new approach that involves treating a large part of such data…
2020
Anita Gurumurthy spoke at an online conference entitled "Countering the Effects of the Pandemic: Women’s Viewpoints" organized by the "women and girls" working group of the Civil BRICS as a run up to a BRICS civil society forum happening later this year.
Anita spoke about "Feminist Pathways to Digital Transformation Post-Pandemic – Some…
2020
Anita Gurumurthy participated in a session on Technology and Surveillance for the Janta Parliament, a virtual peoples' Parliament, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020. Some of the participant organisations and individuals presented resolutions before the parliament that were voted on at the end of the session. IT for Change presented a resolution on a…
2020
This is the third issue paper, written by Anita Gurumurthy, for the Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).
The platform economy -- dominated by a few firms -- is extractivist,exploitative,and expedient. It is based on an…
2020
Disasters are gendered. They play out differently for men, women, and gender non-conforming people. So also the COVID-19 pandemic. In the domestic-private spaces, an incredulous increase in levels of violence against women during these weeks, a “shadow pandemic” — as the UN Under-Secretary-General referred to it — has laid bare the patriarchal…
2020
On March 24, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an advisory to States, asking them to treat e-commerce as an essential service. A few days before, industry body CII had urged the Centre to exempt e-commerce (delivery and shipment) from Covid-19 preventive measures. Being listed as an…