For-profit edtech needs to be banned, and the government must play an active regulatory role.
After a Congress member of Parliament from Tamil Nadu highlighted the unethical practices of the Indian edtech companies in Parliament, the Ministry of Education (MoE) issued an advisory. The advisory asked parents to “verify that content…
This is an electronic interview conducted between Anita Gurumurthy and The Quint, India on cybercrime in India and its larger cause in the wake of the 'bulli bai' app incident in January, 2022.
Q. How do the digital spaces become a readymade tool for people to harass and humiliate women? Does the anonymity on offer on these platforms…Our research associate, Khawla Zainab, along with Kriangsak Teerawitkajorn from the Just Economy and Labour Institute (JELI) were part of the third episode of the second season of the Gig Podcast hosted by Bama Athreya.
The Gig Podcast is about the women and men who work in the so-called 'gig economy' worldwide. They find work through…
The Indian Government appears convinced that cryptocurrency is a dangerous proposition. Cryptocurrency enables relatively invisible transactions, with serious implications for crime, terrorism, money laundering, tax evasion, etc. Another worry is that the crypto mania is getting built of purely…
The pandemic has exposed India’s ambivalence about scientific knowledge. While masking and distancing constitute scientific wisdom, we see mass disregard of these in festivals and polls. The pandemic has exposed another ambivalence — about beliefs on the purpose and processes of education. Education experts’ views have sharply contrasted with…
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…An essay authored by IT for Change's Deepti Bharthur and Ankita Aggarwal, titled 'Reclaiming a Feminist Digital Public Sphere from the Margins', has been published in the third quarterly issue of WACC's Media Development. This issue of Media Development focuses on the theme of 'Democratizing the Public Sphere'.
The 'public sphere' is…
School closures since March 2020 have allowed students limited opportunities for structured learning, causing learning loss, and aggravating malnutrition, child abuse, child labour, school dropout and early marriage.
Online education is seen as a solution to the education emergency. A survey conducted by Karnataka Education Department…
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…
The government is fiddling, as children are losing foundational literacy and numeracy. The Karnataka government has opened schools fully for grades 9-12 and partly for 6-8. However, lower primary schools (LPS) consisting of grades 1-5 remain closed and may have a zero year (a year of no school). Most states seem to favor keeping LPS closed.…