Financial Statements

Balance Sheet as on 31st March, 2021

All amounts in Indian Rupees (INR) ₹

2019-20 ₹	Liabilities	2020-21 ₹	% of total	2019-20 ₹	Asset	2020-21 ₹	% of total
1,72,38,116	Organisation Stabilisation Fund	2,25,68,179	20	29,63,238	Fixed Assets	20,07,203	2
1,32,00,502	General Fund	1,68,38,565	15	7,18,20,084	Current Assets Loans and Advances	10,77,31,888	97
29,63,238	Asset Fund	20,45,662	2	7,79,136	Receivables	8,60,408	1
4,10,59,575	Advance Account	6,63,35,572	60
11,01,027	Sundry Payables	28,11,521	3
7,55,62,458	Total	11,05,99,499	100	7,55,62,458	Total	11,05,99,499	100

Income and Expenditure Account for the year ended 31st March, 2021

All amounts in Indian Rupees (INR) ₹

2019-20 ₹	Expenditure	2020-21 ₹	% of total	2019-20 ₹	Income	2020-21 ₹	% of total
2,06,27,442	Personnel Costs	2,68,86,613	64	2,91,25,226	Funds received	3,22,02,006	76
27,18,824	Operating Costs	43,83,942	10	32,74,188	Interest on Term Deposit & Savings Bank Account	46,06,482	11
61,30,627	Administration Costs	37,56,824	9	9,40,433	Other Income- Depreciation transferred from Asset fund	7,98,475	2
28,45,891	Excess of Income over Expenditure	36,38,063	9	0	Withdrawal from Asset Fund	3,88,141	1
28,45,891	Appropriation towards Organizational Expenses	36,38,063	9	2,39,312	Donation	24,91,116	6
				15,78,024	Professional Fee	17,97,977	4
				11,492	Interest on IT Refund	19,308	0
3,51,68,675	Total	4,23,03,505	100	3,51,68,675	Total	4,23,03,505	100

IT for Change, an NGO located in Bengaluru, India, promotes innovative and effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for socio-economic change in the Global South. Dominant approaches to digital technologies are steeped in ideologies of market fundamentalism, and have displaced the cornerstone ethics of participation, social justice, and gender equality.

At IT for Change, we believe that progressive development sector actors must come together to influence the techno-social structures that are redefining our societies. We seek to build bridges across different sectors to strive towards an equitable information society. Our work in the areas of education, gender, digital rights and democracy, and data and digital economy push the boundaries of existing vocabulary and practice and explore new development frameworks.

IT for Change is in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Thematic Areas

Digital Economy and Data Governance

Our policy research and advocacy efforts in relation to the digital economy and data governance have focused on identifying appropriate directions for the governance of platforms, data, and AI technologies, from the standpoint of equity and social justice. In global and national policy dialogues, we have consistently articulated the rights of marginalized people and groups in the rapidly platformizing and datafying economy, underscoring the linkages between data justice and the right to development. Read more.

Democratizing Digital Justice

Exploring the intersections of digital rights debates with democratic politics, especially in post-colonial societies in the Global South, has been a constant focus of our research, advocacy, and field-building efforts. In times of data governmentality and the automated public sphere, building an inclusive democracy which furthers citizen voices and meaningful participation for those at the margins is what we strive towards. Read more.

Prakriye Field Centre

Prakriye, our field resource centre, deploys the creative potential of information and communication technologies in furthering socio-political empowerment of marginalized rural women and adolescent girls and promoting gender-responsive local governance. In its efforts to evolve a radically new development praxis that brings power to the peripheries, the centre engages with rural women’s collectives, adolescent girls, male community leaders, local government institutions and community-based organizations in over 60 villages of Mysuru district, India. Read more.

ICTs and Education

IT for Change’s work in education focuses on demonstrating and maturing models of technology integration that strengthen teacher agency and school autonomy in public education systems. We work towards making classroom processes more democratic and participatory, and developing teacher networks and collaborative resource repositories. We also make efforts to inform education policy and discourse. Read more.

Gender Justice in the Digital Society

The feminist project of expanding women’s autonomy and overturning entrenched power hierarchies demands new strategies in these datafied times. Digital technologies have completely restructured society and its institutions. As data becomes the key artifact of power and control, feminism needs to stay ahead in its theory and practice. Our research, advocacy and networking efforts at global and national levels are directed towards this imperative, in order to promote gender justice in the digital society. Read more.

Download a PDF version of the report

October 1, 2020October 1, 2020

List of Abbreviations

AAAI: Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence

ACM: Association for Computing Machinery

APWLD: Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development

AVAS: Association for Voluntary Action and Service

BHS: Bangalore High School

BWSSB: Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board

CELT: Certificate Program in English Language Teaching

CESI: Comparative Education Society of India

CSO: Civil Society Organizations

CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility

CSTEP: Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy

DAWN: Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era Network

DGN: Data Governance Network

DoT: Department of Telecommunications

DST: Digital Storytelling

FAANG: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet

FEEL: Foundation for Education, Ecology and Livelihood

FES: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

FOSS: Free and Open Source Software

FTA: Free Trade Agreement

GHGH: Gangamma Hombe Gowda Girls High (School)

GIS: Geographical Information System

IACMR: International Association for Media and Communication Research

ICANN: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

ICRIER: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations

ICT: Information and Communication Technology

IDFC: Infrastructure Development Finance Company

IDRC: International Development Research Centre

IFES: International Foundation for Electoral Systems

IGF: Internet Governance Forum

ILO: International Labour Organization

ITF: International Transport Workers Federation

ITfC: IT for Change

ITS Rio: Institute for Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro

ITUC: International Trade Union Confederation

IVRS: Interactive Voice Recognition System

JNC: Just Net Coalition

KOER: Karnataka Open Educational Resources

KREIS: Karnataka Residential Education Institutions Society

KSRTC: Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation

LMS: Learning Management System

MeitY: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology

MES: Mysore Education Society

MoU: Memorandum of Understanding

NEP: National Education Policy

NLSIU: National Law School of India University

OER: Open Educational Resources

OHCHR: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

PGDELT: Post Graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching

PSI: Public Services International

RCEP: Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

RIESI: Regional Institute of English, South India

RVTC: RV Teachers College

SDGs: Sustainable Development Goals

SEWA: Self Employed Women’s Association

SFLC: Software Freedom Law Center

SIDA: Swedish International Development Agency

SIF: Stockholm Internet Forum

SSCE: Sri Sarvajna College of Education

STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

TCoL: Teachers Communities of Learning

TWN: Third World Network

UNCTAD: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNDEF: United National Democracy Fund

UNESCAP: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

VTC: Vijaya Teachers College

WACC: World Association for Christian Communication

WASH: Water, Sanitation and Access to Health

WTO: World Trade Organization

September 21, 2020September 11, 2021

Prakriye

Prakriye Field Centre

Prakriye, our field resource centre, deploys the creative potential of information and communication technologies in furthering the socio-political empowerment of marginalized rural women and adolescent girls, and promoting gender-responsive local governance. In its efforts to evolve a radically new development praxis that brings power to the peripheries, the center engages with rural women’s collectives, adolescent girls, male community leaders, local government institutions, and community-based organizations in over 60 villages of Mysuru district, India.

Namma Maathu, Namma Jaaga (Information centres)

The seven ICT-enabled information centres (Namma Mahiti Kendras) that Prakriye runs in partnership with local women’s collectives in Hunsur and HD Kote blocks of the Mysuru district continue to further a gender-responsive local governance culture at the grassroots in 60 project villages. Young women from the local community are trained and mentored by the Prakriye team to act as infomediaries (sakhis) and manage these information centres in consultation with the members of women’s collectives.

In the year 2019-20, our infomediaries reached out to 12,000 villagers to share information about welfare schemes and subsidies, and processed 503 entitlement claims. Overall, 325 women were supported in accessing social security and achieving some degree of financial independence contributing to status gains at the household level. In partnership with the Department of Women and Child Welfare, Government of Karnataka, we also conducted sessions on diverse issues including nutrition for pregnant women and adolescent girls, awareness about the Domestic Violence Act, benefits of women’s collectives, and loan facilities for women-led enterprises. We were also able to co-organize four livelihood training sessions for women with the State Rural Livelihood Mission’s local skill training centres.

Entitlement Claims Processed in 2019-20
Agriculture and allied departmental schemes	75
Government ID cards	104
Pension schemes	91
Welfare schemes	98
Subsidy	37
Land and other ownership documents	98

My husband was controlling the PDS rations card and not bringing home any rations. The infomediary at the Mahiti Kendra in my village helped me obtain a separate ration card. Now I can manage on my own.

Sakamma

Group D Worker at a panchayat

Namma Jaaga help desks

We have strengthened our crisis support services and community mobilization efforts to address gender-based violence as part of our program, Namma Maathu, Namma Jaaga (Our Discourse, Our Space), which is supported by the EdelGive Foundation.

The 37 Namma Jaaga help desks set up in 25 villages of HD Kote Block as part of this program provide a first point of crisis support for women and girls facing various forms of gender-based violence. In 2019-20, these help desks addressed 988 cases of various forms of gender-based violence, including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse by spouses or family members, desertion and abandonment, denial of property rights, harassment for dowry, and harassment experienced by adolescent girls. The work of the gender help desks was aided by the fact that women in these villages have become more comfortable in seeking help from them over time.

With support from Samvada, a Bengaluru-based organization with extensive experience in feminist counseling trainings for grassroots workers, we conducted advanced sessions for our team of 51 para-counselors to strengthen their skill sets. We also provided each para-counselor with a tablet, pre-loaded with audio and video learning material, which they can consult for case work. Adept at strategizing and addressing issues on the ground, para-counselors have come into their own now and require minimal hand-holding from our team.

Learning dialogues with women’s collectives, adolescent girls, and boys

In addition to crisis support, our para-counselors are also engaged in furthering the empowerment journeys of local women’s collectives (sanghas) through monthly video-based learning dialogues on women’s rights, gender justice, and promoting women’s participation in local governance. These sessions have targeted 1,200 women across 60 villages. The discussions have focused on motivating women to participate in local governance, creating a gender equal environment at home, negotiating property rights, and accessing state entitlements.

Motivated by the learning dialogues, around 20 women from Manuganally, Kalihundy, Adally, and Belathur villages led a campaign demanding new bus routes for their school-going children who could not attend classes due to lack of public transport. Women from these villages met with the panchayat and depot manager of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), and later, the local Member of Legislative Assembly to resolve the issue. The campaign led to the introduction of new bus routes in six villages in the area.

Our field center team also held regular learning dialogues on unpacking social constructions of gender with 526 adolescent girls and 345 adolescent boys across six schools in two villages.

Promoting critical conversations on gender at the village level

In seven panchayats, our team worked with and urged elected male representatives, panchayat leaders, community leaders, and male residents to address concerns raised by women and girls on the lack of safety, hampered mobility, violence, and discrimination in their communities. We interacted with 138 male leaders through this track, who now actively participate in gram sabhas (village assemblies) as well as in interventions by para-counselors and/or the village communities to address cases of gender-based violence.

Panchayats addressed some of these issues in village assemblies organized exclusively for women (mahila gram sabhas) and children (makkala gram sabhas). The gram sabhas were also successful in prompting action from panchayats on long-standing issues such as releasing subsidies for housing and sanitation schemes.

Alleviating the financial burden on women

The Prakriye team collaborated with the Naganally Panchayat in Dasanapura village to conduct a study on financial distress and exploitative lending practices faced by sangha women. The study revealed that the average monthly income of households almost equaled their average monthly loan repayments. When we shared these results with elected representatives of the panchayat, members of the Social Justice Committee were taken aback by the excessive financial burden that women had to shoulder. They promised to pay attention to the debt crisis in the village, and discourage women from borrowing beyond their repayment ability.

Our image at the block level has been bolstered because of our collaborative work with Prakriye on orienting adolescent girls and boys on gender rights, motivating women to participate in panchayat activities, GIS-enabled planning, conducting surveys, and providing counseling services to victims of gender-based violence.

Swamy

President of Social Justice Committee, EMR Naganally Panchayat

Community events by members of women’s collectives

In 2019-20, the Prakriye team initiated a ‘Gender Score Card’ exercise with the sangha women to better assess their position in our intervention areas. A survey-based assessment of perceptions of women’s decision-making capacity within the household – control over finances, children’s education, sale of agricultural produce, etc. – triggered critical dialogue and debate within the women’s collectives. The exercise helped sangha women realize that husbands and other male members of the family were taking all the major decisions regarding agricultural produce, access to the market, procurement of daily necessities, participation in the panchayat and gram sabha level meetings while women put in all the labor.

With an aim to help women reclaim their right to public spaces, the Prakriye team organized sports days for women in several villages in the HD Kote block. Approximately 350 women and adolescent girls from 18 villages participated in a range of games and competitions. The participants were ecstatic about breaking prevailing norms of sport being a ‘male-only’ domain. Their reflections were captured as digital stories and shared with women from other villages.

To promote ICT-based gender sensitization, we organized a Gender and Technology Fest on the theme of Participation for Equality in four schools with video screenings, digital literacy trainings, and a selfie corner. 259 adolescent girls and 197 adolescent boys participated in the event.

Media strategies to effect progressive gender discourse

The Prakriye team continued its efforts to creatively utilize mobile-based IVR technologies and participatory media strategies to break the silence around the naturalization of gender-based violence and women’s subordination.

In 2019-20, we broadcast 45 episodes of an audio fiction series, Anjali Akka (Sister Anjali) to 737 women and 510 men subscribers. The series is about the eponymous Anjali Akka (elder sister), a young woman from a village in the Mysuru district, who works to further the gender justice agenda in her community. The choice of using a fictional format to discuss pertinent issues of female education, women’s participation in public forums, etc. helped initiate difficult conversations with community members. In addition to a serial/story format, we broadcast informational voice messages to generate interest among new listeners.

An IVR message about the importance of girls’ education from our audio fiction series Anjali Akka.

With support from our intermediaries, we organized 448 film screenings for 9,000 viewers. These video resources included films made by the Prakriye team. We produced five short films in 2019-20, including Power Game, which depicted prevailing gender-based power structures and prejudices in society, and Gender Roles, which showcased interviews with men who support their wives’ professional endeavors. Some films captured the children’s village assemblies (makkala gram sabha), while others traced the journeys of our sakhis.

Because of the Mahithi Kendra in the panchayat premises, women who had never stepped into traditionally male spaces like the panchayat have started visiting and participating in panchayat activities. Prakriye's intervention made this possible.

Santosh

PDO, Mallur Panchayat

Covid-19 relief

As the Covid-19 pandemic swept across India, the Prakriye team quickly mobilized to raise funds for relief services. Community-level discussions were held in 60 villages to assess the needs of the community and identify beneficiaries who required urgent relief. We shortlisted 1,500 beneficiaries for immediate support, prioritizing poor families without ration cards. Most beneficiaries were single women and older women without family support.

Impact

The setting up of 37 Namma Jaaga desks at accessible locations has benefited many women and girls. The help desks are doing well, acting as a safe space where women can gather and discuss issues and provide psycho-social assistance to victims of gender-based violence. More and more women have started visiting these desks to share their problems and seek solutions.

Para-counselors who have been through Parkriye’s intensive capacity-building exercises are recognized and sought after as local experts and resource persons. One of our para-counselors, Jyothi, from Tumbhasoge village, received an award from the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Karnataka, recognizing her proactive work supporting women and girl victims of gender-based violence. Due to their digital proficiency, three para-counselors from the cadre were also invited by the Women and Child Development department to train other Anganwadi workers in the district to use a data collection app to document their work.

Our work on digital capacity building has been recognized by other organizations. Jan Sahas, an NGO based in Madhya Pradesh and working across nine states, visited the Prakriye team in Mysuru to understand how ICTs can be used in their development work. We oriented the visiting team to various digital strategies that we employ in our work and strategized with the Jan Sahas team on how they could use these tools in their interventions.

Plans for 2020-21

Prakriye’s funding from the EdelGive Foundation was successfully renewed this year. In 2020-21, we will work to deepen our intervention on prevention and redress of gender-based violence. We will strengthen our Namma Jaaga help desks, enhance the capacities of our team of para-counselors, and undertake more media-based learning dialogues in the HD Kote block while extending the intervention to villages from the Hunsur block.

Covid-related restrictions and social distancing norms have restricted our access to the operational area. We are in the process of addressing and reorienting our work plans to this challenge in the short and medium term.

September 21, 2020September 25, 2020

Gender

Gender Justice in the Digital Society

The feminist project of expanding women’s autonomy and overturning entrenched power hierarchies demands new strategies in these datafied times. Digital technologies have completely restructured society and its institutions. As data becomes the key artifact of power and control, feminism needs to stay ahead in its theory and practice. Our research, advocacy, and networking efforts at global and national levels are directed towards this imperative of promoting gender justice in the digital society.

Research

Righting Gender Wrongs – A socio-legal enquiry on gender-based cyberviolence

In August 2019, in partnership with the Indian Police Foundation and support from UN Women, IT for Change (ITfC) convened a Strategy Meeting on a Systemic Response to Gender-based Cyberviolence to release the final research report from our project, Righting G ender W rongs. This research project, supported by the Web Foundation, focused on a systematic mapping of young women’s experiences of gender-based cyberviolence in India, and the hurdles they face while seeking redress from prevailing legal-institutional response mechanisms. Towards this, we conducted a quantitative survey of over 800 college-going women between the age group of 19-23 years in six locations across Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu. The analysis of the survey data was supplemented with insights from key informant interviews and focus group discussions with young men.

The Strategy Meeting brought together government representatives, women lawyers, women’s rights organizations, groups working on masculinity and sexual rights, law enforcement officials, members of Internal Complaints Committees constituted under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, platform companies, and women in media. The meeting catalyzed a rich and vibrant dialogue – building on insights gained from the research report – about the knowledge gaps that need to be immediately addressed to effectively prevent cyberviolence and improve access to justice for women victims/survivors.

Our findings were received with considerable interest during the discussions. Particularly, findings pertaining to legal-institutional overhaul to address emerging typologies of technology-mediated violence and enhance platform accountability for women’s human rights violations. The participants of the Strategy Meeting also pointed to how the next frontier of knowledge building in this domain lies in an institutional and technical governance roadmap for challenging sexist hate speech on the internet. This has now emerged as a key area for research at ITfC.

IT for Change has been a constant and vigilant presence in debates on digital rights, bringing a sharp political analysis into the frame and never letting anyone forget that the hierarchies of power and privilege that impinge on our "real" lives are no less potent in virtual spaces.

Kalyani Menon-Sen

Feminist Learning Partnerships

Recognize, Resist, Remedy – Addressing gender-based hate speech in the online public sphere

In August 2019, with support from International Development Research (IDRC), Canada, ITfC and InternetLab initiated a research collaboration on sexist hate speech in the online public sphere, with a focus on hate against femininity. In both Brazil and India, women’s claims to full participation in the online public sphere have been met with rising patriarchal backlash in recent years. This is fueled by gaps in traditional legal frameworks pertaining to gender-based violence and hate speech, and the unaccountable content management practices of platform intermediaries.

Against this backdrop, the project seeks to undertake gendered readings of prevailing legal frameworks in India and Brazil over a two-year period. We aim to identify blind spots that result in a failure to recognize sexist hate speech as a violation of women’s rights. Additionally, we want to identify the inadequacies of the existing intermediary liability regimes with respect to ensuring the culpability of platform companies for viral misogyny through this project. A participatory action research component with youth from Samvada has also been planned for the coming year.

There are no statutory provisions that directly respond to sexist speech in India. Therefore, to assess how courts are responding to sexist hate speech, we initiated an empirical investigation of the case law database, Indian Kanoon. We have obtained API access to the database to comb through judgments using critical keyword searches and identify those relevant to our analysis.

We also intervened in critical debates on platform governance at the global level. In October 2019, in response to a call for inputs on gender perspectives on privacy by the United Nations Office of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Privacy, we submitted an input highlighting the gendered ramifications of the erosion of privacy in the platform-controlled online communicational arena, and the need for a fiduciary duty of care to be thrust on platform companies vis-à-vis the right to privacy. The Web Foundation held the first of a series of consultations between civil society and platform companies on the crisis of gender-based cyberviolence in March 2020. At this event, Bhavna Jha from our team participated and presented emerging insights from our research.

Centering Women in India’s Digitalising Economy

In January 2020, with support from the European Commission and in partnership with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), we initiated a five-year (2020-2024) research project on Centering Women in India’s Digitalising Economy. Through direct research by the ITfC team and a national gender fellowship program, the project seeks to generate a robust body of knowledge that supports evidence-based policy making on gender and digital economy at the national level. Additionally, the project will deploy a participatory action research methodology by partnering with two social enterprises – Vrutti and LabourNet. We will help strengthen their capacities to build an effective platform-based institutional ecosystem of services with their women worker constituencies. Finally, the project seeks to build a new policy discourse on a gender inclusive and equitable digital economy at the national and global level by forging an India-Asia-EU-Africa knowledge network of scholars and practitioners.

IT for Change stands out for its commitment to some of the most difficult issues – gender justice, equity, and digital divide. What is remarkable about their work is that it is centered in grassroots understanding while advocating for systems change. Their research and advocacy is grounded, but of extremely high quality. This combination is not easy to come by.

Gayathri Vasudevan

Co-founder and CEO, LabourNet

Digital Justice Project

We continued our research and advocacy collaboration with the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era Network (DAWN), to further the feminist analysis of digital and data economy in critical global policy debates. In October 2019, we finalized our issue paper From Ill-Founded Delusions to Real Possibilities: An e–Commerce Agenda for Women’s Empowerment and circulated it widely in English, French, and Spanish at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Public Forum.

We were also called upon as resource persons by women’s groups and civil society organizations (CSOs) engaging with trade policy forums, to bring a critical feminist analysis of the political economy of digital trade negotiations. In September 2019, Nandini Chami was a panelist at a webinar organized by FES, in collaboration with the Gender Trade Coalition and WIDE+, on unpacking pink-washing in digital trade debates. In December 2019, Anita Gurumurthy was invited as an expert speaker by Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Third World Network (TWN), and the Gender and Trade Coalition for a webinar that sought to unpack the ramifications of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement on women’s rights in the Asia-Pacific region.

Anita Gurumurthy with her co-panelists at FES’ The Future is Feminist network event.

Advocacy

Global

This year, we deepened our footprint in global debates at the intersections of governance of the digital paradigm, development justice, and gender equality. We also continued our advocacy efforts to foreground critical feminist analysis in digital trade policy debates.

Anita Gurumurthy was invited by UN Women to be a member of the global expert group on Beijing+25 and contributed an input paper on a feminist manifesto for digital equality, calling for a new global social contract for a gender-just digital economy and society.
In April 2019, we co-organized a session with DAWN at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) e–Commerce Week on how women’s enterprise development often becomes a red herring in digital trade policy dialogues, especially with the agenda of market liberalization in digital services coming to the fore.
At the WTO Public Forum in October 2019, Nandini Chami presented a feminist political economy analysis of global digital trade debates at two panels: a WIDE+ workshop on Trade, D igital E conomy and W omen’s A ccess to D ecent W ork, and UNISON Trade Justice Movement’s panel on Jobs for M illenials in a D igital W orld: e –C ommerce and the F uture of W ork.
We continued our engagement with FES’ The Future is Feminist network. In October 2019, Anita Gurumurthy made an input on Gender, Politics and Global Justice in the New Era of Digital Capitalism at the international conference on Digital Capitalism and Real Utopias, co-organized by the Critical Sociological Association of Korea and FES, Korea office.
In June 2019, at the kick-off meeting of FES’ network on Women and the F uture of W ork in Asia, Nandini Chami presented a structural critique of the gender justice implications of the digital restructuring of economic process and labor markets.
In November 2019, at the second meeting of this network, Anita Gurumurthy spoke at a public panel on A Feminist Future for All – Shaping Digital Justice.
In November 2019, Bhavna Jha and Nandini Chami co-organized a panel with InternetLab at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) on Internet De-to x: A F ail-P roof R egimen to E nd O nline S exism.
Anita Gurumurthy made an input at the IGF Best Practice Forum on Gender and Internet Governance on the importance of moving the debate from access and inclusion to structural analysis of why the digital economy is not working for women at the margins.

National

In December 2019, we made a solicited submission to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), on the proposed amendments to the Internet Intermediary Guidelines under the Information Technology Act, 2000. Our input brought in specific considerations about tackling online sexism and misogyny.

We also strengthened our linkages with UN Women, New Delhi, on the agenda of digital technologies and women’s rights.

In June 2019, Anita Gurumurthy was invited as an expert speaker at the seminar on Perpetration of Violence Against Women and Girls through Abuse of Technology: Current Challenges and Promising Practices on Prevention and Response, co-organized by UN Women and the Data Security Council of India.
Anita was also invited to the Consultation on Business and Human Rights from a Women’s Rights Lens in March 2020, co-organized by the European Commission, WeEmpower Asia, and UN Women.

IT For Change understands that bridging the gender digital divide is not just about asset ownership or capacity building – it is a deeper, more systemic issue that needs to be resolved through evidence-based advocacy. They also understand the need to keep the voices of women at the center of program planning and implementation. Our work together has been collaborative, adding very fruitfully to our mandate of digital inclusion of informal women workers and their cooperatives.

Mittal Shah

Managing Director, Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA)

Bhavna Jha speaking at a panel titled Internet De-tox: A Fail-proof Regimen to End Online Sexism. The panel was co-hosted by ITfC and InternetLab, at IGF 2019.

Impact

Our research and advocacy on feminist frameworks spans a wide thematic spectrum – from gender-based violence and the law, to gender dimensions of the emerging digital economy and implications for women’s rights in international development and financing frameworks. This depth of organizational expertise gives us a unique vantage to network, connect and catalyze action with trust and credibility in a range of forums – from national policy spaces, to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) mechanisms, the WTO, UNCTAD, and UN Women. Leading organizations like SEWA and LabourNet being partners in our research is also a testimony to this.

Our expertise on the legal-technological nuances of gender-based cyberviolence is recognized by peers in civil society and the bureaucracy, and in policy circles at the state, national, and global levels. We were among the two civil society groups invited by the Karnataka government to reflect on immediate strategies for policy intervention in the aftermath of the pandemic. MeitY’s request for an input from us to the proposed intermediary liability guidelines is another example of the recognition of our domain leadership.

Leading feminist networks such as APWLD, WIDE+ and the Gender and Trade Coalition consistently turn to us for inputs in their capacity building and strategic work on digital trade. Invitations from the South Asia, Asia-Pacific, and New York offices of UN Women to be part of the Beijing+25 review process reflect the legitimacy we have earned for representing critical feminist perspectives embedded in a Global South analysis of the digital paradigm.

Our work to create critical resources for feminist activists and scholars, with networks like DAWN, has enabled a ripple effect, building new feminist leadership across the Global South.

Plans for 2020-21

The Covid-19 context has strengthened the control of transnational platform corporations over data value chains, exacerbating gendered and racialized global labor hierarchies. The pandemic has also exposed the unrelenting nature of gender-based violence. The trenchant misogyny that the public domain presents a crisis like never-before. Yet, in the arena of digital rights, gender concerns are often integrated in superficial ways, lacking the political commitment and budgets for systemic change, and often becoming a dangerously depoliticized add-and-stir ingredient. Our work must rise up to meet this challenge.

We will continue our research and cutting-edge policy work on online sexism and misogyny, and gender and the digital economy, engaging new constituencies and learning from the ground. We will intensify our movement-building interventions on feminist digital justice through capacity-building spaces for feminist leaders.

The Covid-19 context has opened up several operational difficulties with respect to field research and convening meetings or workshops, and we will need to navigate the new scenario with adequate attention to this reality and the health and safety of our team members. Balancing flexibility and agility, necessity and prudence to achieve our mandate will be essential.

IT for Change is a crucial partner of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung India’s work on digital transformation. They not only bring a 360-degree view on the issue tying up global, national and local interests but position it through values of social justice and equality, a requisite for FES’ work. Their pioneering work on data economy and digital justice is used widely within the FES network and provides the much-needed entry point in policy discussions and discourse building. Their intensive exploration and quick analysis, for instance in the current crisis, has resulted in first-of-its-kind research connecting data with governance and ethics.

Mandvi Kulshreshta

Program Adviser Economy of Tomorrow, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, India

September 21, 2020September 11, 2021

Education

ICTs and Education

The promise of digital technologies lies, in large part, in their ability to empower the peripheries. In the context of education, this means empowering not only marginalized groups but also teachers. The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance content and pedagogical knowledge, create and share open educational resources, and support constructive classroom engagement goes a long way in the professional development of teachers. The use of free and open digital technologies also creates a free and open learning environment, where teachers see themselves as active participants in a digital society, and not merely as users or consumers of content.

IT for Change’s (ITfC) work on education continues to focus on demonstrating and maturing models of technology integration that strengthen the agency of teachers and the autonomy of schools in the public education system. In 2019-20, we continued to make classroom processes more democratic and participatory, build teacher networks, and develop collaborative resource repositories. We also made progress toward informing education policy and discourse.

The online course offered by IT for Change has made our master trainers confident about training their colleagues in online interactive teaching and integrating Geogebra. This learning will be very useful even after schools reopen.

E. Prabhakar

Joint Commissioner (Finance and Training), Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan

Teacher professional development

As part of ITfC’s continued association with the Regional Institute of English, South India (RIESI), we conducted workshops that equipped participants of the Post Graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching (PGDELT) program with the capacity to develop digital materials for teaching and learning. In similar workshops conducted for three batches of RIESI’s Certificate Program in English Language Teaching (CELT), participants learned how to create and develop digital materials using free and open source software (FOSS) audio editors.

Rishi Martin, Kotak Bank at the felicitation at VTC.

We continued the ICT Integrated Learning course, which focuses on how digital technologies can be applied in education, for the 2018-20 batch of student-teachers at Vijaya Teachers College (VTC). The same course was also initiated with the 2019-21 batch of B. Ed. students at the same college.

In collaboration with VTC, we conducted a five-day certificate course on ICT Integration in Teaching for student-teachers from B. Ed. colleges across Bengaluru, introducing them to a variety of generic and subject-specific software applications to develop lesson plans and other resources.

ITfC entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Sri Sarvajna College of Education (SSCE), a reputed institution in the area of teacher education, to offer pre-service programs for student-teachers and teacher-educators. As part of this collaboration, two-day workshops on integrating ICT in pre-service teacher education were organized for B. Ed. students at SSCE and RV Teachers College (RVTC).

Work with school systems

Nagaraju D., a national resource person, receiving the National ICT Award from Sanjay Dhothre, Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development. Nagaraju sir has been a Master Trainer in our Telangana program

Gurumurthy Kasinathan was invited to become a member of the Academic Council of the Karnataka Residential Education Institutions Society (KREIS), one of the highest autonomous academic bodies of the state’s Social Welfare department that runs schools for children from socially marginalized backgrounds. He was part of deliberations to develop an academic plan for KREIS schools.

ITfC designed and conducted an orientation session for 85 KREIS teachers — under our ICT Integration in Teaching program — aiming to equip them as Master Resource Persons (MRPs), who, in turn, will train other teachers.

Other workshops and training sessions

Over the past year, the ITfC team designed, organized, and conducted several other workshops, including:

A workshop for head teachers of 100 schools on digital tools and methods for classroom teaching, in collaboration with Kristu Jayanti College.

A workshop for college teachers across the country on concept mapping and video resource development at Ramanujan College, Delhi University.

A workshop to support the RIESI faculty in developing new open-access (for the public) certificate courses.

Training on Geogebra and H5P software applications for mathematics and English teachers from government schools in Telangana.

OER development in Indian languages Open Educational Resources (OER) are a critical part of imparting high quality and inexpensive education. Unfortunately, most OERs are available only in English. To fill this knowledge gap, we had started integrating the development of OERs in Indian languages as a component of our teacher development programs, with support from Kotak Mahindra Bank CSR. During 2019-20, 15 articles on language and language teaching were translated into Kannada from English, as part of a collaboration with Azim Premji University. Most of these pertain to ITfC’s language teaching work while others focus on designing a language policy in education. Our collaborations with other teacher-education institutions also contributed to the creation and publication of OERs. Overall, 102 resource pages and 298 files were created and published on the Karnataka Open Educational Resources (KOER) in the past year.

IT for Change has greatly supported us by conducting workshops on open resources for our trainee teachers and creating audio resources for our courses. We appreciate the whole team for their relentless and valuable support in helping us successfully conduct online sessions for our PGDELT course.

Suman Bandi

Faculty, RIESI & Nodal Officer for PGDELT 2019

The ITfC team also translated important components of the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) user interface into Kannada, so that Kannada-speaking student-teachers, teachers, and teacher-educators could access e-learning courses on Moodle.

A Wikithon was conducted for the student-teachers of VTC to translate articles on English Wikipedia into Kannada. As part of this initiative, 20 articles were published by teams of student-teachers on the Kannada Wikipedia.

Teachers’ Communities of Learning program with Bengaluru schools

ITfC continued to engage with teachers through the Teachers’ Communities of Learning (TCoL) program in Bengaluru South district. Supported by the Cognizant Foundation, the program aims to strengthen participatory learning and student engagement through contextualized teaching. This involves:

Conducting school/classroom demonstrations for mathematics, Kannada, and digital learning in select schools.
Documenting these learnings and creating e-content for wider dissemination through the KOER portal.
Conducting block level workshops for mathematics and Kannada teachers and head teachers, and enrolling them into an online community of learning.

ITfC actively works to mainstream the resources, experiences, and learnings from these areas of work into the public education system.

In 2019–20, we engaged with teachers under this program in two ways: 1) periodic collaborations to develop lesson plans, activities, and resources for mathematics, Kannada, and digital literacy, and 2) block-level workshops for teacher capacity building where participants learned to use digital tools for teaching and content development.

Some highlights of our work under TCoL during the reporting period include:

First-ever student mathematics camp to strengthen foundational mathematics: Students participated in a variety of activities, some connected with their daily lives to unearth mathematical concepts, principles, and processes, in a three-day workshop.
Second edition of the Student Digifest for schools in Bengaluru South 3rd block: Over 100 students from nine government and government-aided schools participated in the event, producing audio stories, photo essays, Geogebra lessons, and other forms of digital storytelling.

Special camps at St Euphrasias’ Girls High School to build STEM capabilities among students: The camps focused on visual programming using Turtle Art and data analysis using LibreOffice Calc, both FOSS applications.
Interactive Voice Recognition System (IVRS) for school teachers to contact parents: IVR messages, sent by ITfC on behalf of schools, informed parents about examination schedules, parent-teacher meetings, and helped schools reach out to parents who were not comfortable with emails or text messages.
Block-level workshops for mathematics, Kannada, and computer teachers: Teachers from government and government-aided schools participated in these workshops.

Adolescent girl empowerment program – Hosa Hejje Hosa Dishe

ITfC launched a new initiative in 2019-20, Hosa Hejje Hosa Dishe (New Step, New Pathways in Kannada), supported by British Telecom through the British Asian Trust. The program works with marginalized adolescent girls from government and government-aided schools in the Bengaluru South district. It aims to empower them through an understanding of the gender-based risks they may potentially face in the family, school, and society. To achieve this, we built development-oriented and responsive teaching communities that utilize digital technologies.

Over the past year, the program team developed a dynamic curriculum that takes into account the girls’ diverse social contexts along with differences in their pace of learning. Our modules were administered differently in each school based on the needs and contexts of the students. The process was participatory and harnessed ICTs for co-creating learning interventions.

The highlights of our work under this program are as follows:

Food buddy prize distribution: This was part of a campaign to tackle malnourishment among school-going girls at St. Annes’. Students started eating better after we emphasized to them the importance of availing the mid-day meal scheme. At the prize distributon ceremony, students were proclaimed ‘food buddies’ and took an oath to respect their body and nutritional needs at this ceremony.
Cultural day: We had been working to boost the confidence levels of the girls at the Gangamma Hombe Gowda Girls High (GHGH) School using our learning modules. During the cultural day program, girls who barely spoke at the beginning of the year, volunteered to participate in events like pick-and–speak, singing and fancy dress competition.
Using IVRS to create a communication platform between schools and parents: Our program team helped the heads of the schools we work with utilize IVRS to inform parents about school events and meetings, and urge them to oversee students’ homework and study schedules.
Orientation for school teachers: These orientation programs discussed issues like apprehensions around technology and ways to introduce adolescent girls to the positive use of technology and social media with teachers of the schools we worked with.
Block-level workshops: We organized four block-level workshops for teachers from two different education blocks, to provide them with a space to voice their concerns about the myriad risks faced by adolescent girls in urban settings.

Community-supported schools

ITfC continued its work with the Foundation for Education, Ecology and Livelihood (FEEL) on tribal education and rural development in the predominantly tribal areas of the Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh. We supported digital integration in tribal schools run by FEEL and helped strengthen the educational and digital capabilities of tribal communities in the region.

Our work focused on building the digital literacy capabilities of teachers in the tribal schools, enabling them to integrate technology into their work with children. We conducted language immersion workshops where students worked with different digital resources to produce short story books in Telugu. We also set up community resource centers in schools from two tribal villages and conducted regular community interactions to introduce basic literacy, numeracy, and craft skills.

Publications and events

During the past year, some of our key engagements in the form of paper presentations and participation in panels are as follows:

Gurumurthy Kasinathan wrote a paper on Implications, T hreats and O pportunities of D igital T echnology in the E ducation S ector for Justicia Social en un Mundo Digitalizado, published in Spanish and English.
Gurumurthy Kasinathan published a paper on Making AI Work for Indian Education, as part of a series of papers produced by ITfC in association with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), on the ways in which AI impacts different sectors of Indian society and economy.
Anand Devaraj presented a paper on Integrating ICT in Kannada Teaching: ITfC’s Experiences and Insights at a seminar organized by the Azim Premji University in Dharwad.
Sriranjani Ranganathan, Director, Foundation for Education, Ecology and Livelihood presented a paper on Building T eacher C apabilities as a P ossible A pproach for C reating I nclusive L earning E nvironments, co-authored with Gurumurthy Kasinathan, at a national conference on Exclusion, Inclusion and Equity in Education at Jawahar Lal Nehru University in December. The conference was organized by the Comparative Education Society of India (CESI). The paper was based on a comparative study of tribal and government schools.
Gurumurthy Kasinathan participated in the Young Thinkers’ Conference on AI, Technology, & Social Change, organized by UK High Commission with MIT World Peace University in Pune and moderated a panel on AI to Moderate Online Content: Broadly, Data for Good?
Yogesh K S and Gurumurthy Kasinathan conducted a session on Digital Possibilities to Strengthen School Education at the All India Montfort Schools Association, Principals’ Conference, where over 100 school principals from across the country participated.
Yogesh K S participated in the State of the Map Asia 2019 conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh and spoke about Dive Deep into OpenStreetMap Data with Taginfo. The presentation included his experiences with integrating Open Street Maps in building a geographic information system (GIS) for Bengaluru schools.

Impact

During the reporting period, our work helped 140 student-teachers of VTC learn to integrate ICTs into subject teaching and development of OERs; 100 school principals were oriented on the possibilities of ICT integration in subject teaching; and 65 English teachers learned to develop OERs for teaching English poetry and prose.

Our work also informed national curriculum efforts. Gurumurthy Kasinathan participated in the review of the NCERT Class 10 ICT textbook. The National Education Policy (NEP), released by Ministry of Human Resources and Development, reflects inputs provided by ITfC on the integration of digital technologies in education.

We customized the Moodle software to enable online courses in Kannada. We also developed open educational audio resources for English language teaching in collaboration with the RIESI faculty. These resources have been made available to teachers across the country through the KOER portal.

ITfC successfully designed and conducted a Digital Storytelling (DST) project in two schools – Bangalore High School (BHS) and Mysore Education Society (MES). During these sessions, students explored multimedia artifacts like photographs, video, sound, music, and text, helping build their confidence to express, collaborate, and think creatively. As one of the teachers at BHS said:

Amreen Banu (name changed) never spoke in the class. The DST project has given her the courage to express herself and participate in her class activities.

Sushma

Computer Teacher, Bangalore High School

Plans for 2020-21

In the coming year, we will continue our work on integrating ICTs in teacher education programs with VTC, SSCE, and RIESI. We will engage with state governments and school systems on teacher development through ICT integration, and deepen our school-level demonstration project with government and government-aided high schools in the Bengaluru South district once schools reopen.

With the Covid-19 pandemic shifting the focus to online education, we will work with colleges (VTC, SSCE), institutes, and other organizations (Kendriya Vidyalaya Sanghathan, KREIS, RIESI) to enable teachers to conduct classes online. We will also work on building teachers’ capacity to leverage digital capabilities to make online teaching-learning more effective and engaging for students. As we wrote in an article in the Deccan Herald, the lessons from the pandemic should lead us to re-imagine education in ways that bring in a spirit of inclusive and holistic learning. This is something we have always emphasized in our work, curriculum, and policy stance.

As the role of digital technologies in education increases due to the pandemic, ITfC will continue to advocate for ICT integration in ways that strengthen the teachers’ role rather than undermining it. A stronger role for the teachers is crucial to re-imagining education, and achieving the goal of universal and quality education.

September 21, 2020September 25, 2020

Digital Rights and Democracy

Exploring the intersections of digital rights debates with democratic politics, especially in post-colonial societies in the Global South, has been a constant focus of our research, advocacy, and field-building efforts. In times of data governmentality and the automated public sphere, building an inclusive democracy, which furthers citizens’ voices and meaningful participation for those at the margins, is what we strive towards.

Spoorthi – A spatial data system for the inclusive cities agenda

In 2019–20, IT for Change (ITfC) implemented the final phase of the action research project Spoorthi, supported by the United National Democracy Fund (UNDEF). The project seeks to build a proof-of-concept, community-based spatial data system for inclusive local governance in urban poor neighborhoods. It was implemented in east Bengaluru in partnership with the Association for Voluntary Action and Service (AVAS) and the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP).

In 2019, in partnership with our data stewards – a cohort of young women and men leaders who have been trained on digital literacy and basic data analytics – we set up a bilingual (Kannada and English), community-based spatial data platform to track community grievances pertaining to Water, Sanitation, and Access to Health (WASH) services.

Stewards from Spoorthi also organized a data campaign in November 2019 to map issues related to lack of drinking water supply. Through video testimonials and interviews, baseline data from the platform, and a validation survey exercise, stewards presented key water-related issues to the community at a forum. Residents were also invited to speak about these issues and discuss their experiences.

Stewards have also been able to take their engagement with the project forward in several other ways, exhibiting great leadership and drive. Especially as the project moved into March 2020 and a national lockdown on account of the Covid-19 pandemic was put into effect, some stewards utilized the skills learned through the project to organize and coordinate online to undertake relief measures in their communities.

As digitalization rolls out a new world ‘(dis)order’, the power of digital platforms and their implications for people’s lives and livelihoods cannot be ignored. Neither can the ignorance on the subject. That is why the work that IT for Change does on digital rights and democracy in a data-driven world is absolutely critical. Its analysis in bits and bytes breaks down the complex issue with unmatched clarity and commitment. It is THE voice to be heard to get it right and enable positive, transformative change.

Shalini Bhutani

Legal Researcher and Policy Analyst

Bot Populi

In June 2019, we set up Bot Populi, an alternative media outlet, in partnership with six other global organizations. Formally launched at the RightsCon Summit in Tunis, Bot Populi has been conceived of as a space to reframe human rights and social justice debates in the digital paradigm while foregrounding the missing Global South perspectives. Between June 2019 and March 2020, the project team published 37 contributions in the form of essays, interviews, and videos, including three themed issues on competition in the digital economy; agritech and platformization; and an ongoing Feminist Data Future series. As the world grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic, we started work on two themed issues that would keep alive the conversation on how this crisis could further authoritarian interests across the world.

I have had the opportunity to work with IT for Change since 2019. The organization has reached out to help with the efforts of app-based drivers and delivery partners to organize and pursue policy-level changes for improving their working conditions, securing labor rights, and ensuring decent work overall. I believe a collaborative endeavor of traditional trade unions/global union federations with organizations like IT for Change is necessary during these uncertain times.

Basudev Barman

Network Coordinator, Ola and Uber Organizing Campaign, ITF Delhi Office

The ITfC team with their fellow participants at IGF 2019.

Advocacy and writing

In 2019, we continued to engage with the digital civic space in India by actively writing in the media and being part of key policy processes. ITfC engaged in depth with the Personal Data Protection Bill process. We developed and sent a submission to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, which argued for broadening the scope of public interest claims in data, and safeguarding personal data from re-identification (in case of anonymized data) and executive overreach.

Over the year, our research team members wrote on topical issues such as content takedowns and political ad funding on social media. We contributed a chapter in an edited anthology of essays titled Communicating for Change, advocating for the idea of institutional learning as a way forward for deepening democracy and enhancing the sensibilities of state institutions to recognize diverse forms of claims-making.

Critical forums at national and global levels

Some of our key engagements from the past year are as follows:

In May 2019, Nandini Chami was a panelist on Responsible Access to the Internet: Improving Digital Inclusion for All Participants at the Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF), organized by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
In June 2019, at the RightsCon Summit, Deepti Bharthur spoke at a panel on Defining Meaningful Access: An Expanded Approach to Connectivity, organized by the Alliance for Affordable Internet. She also participated in a panel on Network Propaganda in a Comparative Perspective: A South-North Dialogue about Democracy, Privacy and Free Speech, organized by ITS Rio and InternetLab.
At the same event, Ira Anjali Anwar spoke at a session on Ending Impunity for Online Violence Against Women in Politics, organized by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) and the Carter Center.
In November 2019, Nandini Chami spoke at a panel on Inclusion and Legitimacy in Multistakeholderism at ICANN at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin.
In February 2020, Sarada Mahesh and Gautham G. from the Spoorthi project made a presentation on the role of community-led data and design for Whose Street is it, Anyway?, at a Design Dialogue organized in Bengaluru.
In the same month, Anita Gurumurthy was a panelist at a day-long conference on Internet Governance in India: People, Purpose and Process, organized by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) with support from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). This paper was written as part of the consultation process.
Finally, in February, Anita Gurumurthy participated in a capacity building workshop in Colombo, Sri Lanka for activists, researchers, and social movements on digital economy and society, where she focused on key concepts such as data governance, Big Tech, the changing nature of the state and gender, and online violence.

Stewards from *Spoorthi* at the Digital Storytelling Workshop.

Impact

The impact of our work in the domain of digital rights and democracy was reflected in many ways. A significant achievement of our action research project, Spoorthi, was an API-based linkage of our spatial data platform with the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB). Complaints from the community, collected on the pilot data platform, were directly reflected in the BWSSB’s grievance system through this linkage. While the grievance filing itself had to be put on hold due to the pandemic, the linkage of a community data platform with official channels of grievance redressal can potentially strengthen citizens’ claims to services and generate intelligence and data that directly speak to the community’s context.

The data campaign conducted by the stewards on the issue of drinking water supply also prompted action by officials of the BWSSB, who subsequently visited the community to explore the process of connecting its water lines to the main supply. Additionally, Spoorthi has been incredibly successful in bringing together a cohort of young leaders, who, with an arsenal of digital tools and literacy at their disposal, have been able to hone their leadership skills and work with local governance systems beyond the scope of the project. Stewards have adapted the methods learned during the course of the project to undertake other data exercises. During the lockdown, stewards from the neighborhood of MRS Palya replicated the strategies of the data campaign on water supply to document the condition of main water lines and taps in their own neighborhood and generate data to advocate with the BWSSB for initiating repairs.

In the global space, our magazine Bot Populi has, in a short time, defined itself as important space of engagement for those interested in issues of digital justice. Since its launch, the number of unique visitors on the site has been rising steadily, standing at 5,011 as of March 2020. The total number of visitors stood at 14,908. Of these, 85 percent were new visitors, reflecting the platform’s growing readership.

IT for Change is our go-to partner when it comes to digital rights and democracy. Its global expertise, grounded in Southern experience along with a strong feminist bent, is greatly valued. With the Covid-19 crisis accelerating digitization while democratic safeguards lag and the digital divide yawns wide, IT for Change can help us all understand what is at stake and what action is needed.

Fiona Dove

Director, Transnational Institute

Plans for 2020-21

In 2020-21, ITfC will kick start a new line of work focused on AI and its intersection with citizenship in India. With support from International Development Research Center (IDRC), our research will unpack and articulate progressive frames for data and algorithmic governance in state-citizen engagement, focusing on issues such as welfare automation, AI in public health programs, law enforcement, data infrastructure projects, etc. We will produce research papers and input into key national legislative processes as part of this project.

We will also continue the work done under Spoorthi through new sources of funding. We have already received some preliminary interest on this, and will look to expand the scope of the project to new communities and areas.

With Bot Populi, we expect to expand our readership base by keeping the content pipeline active in the coming months. Commitments made as part of ITfC’s project grants in 2020-21 are expected to yield a number of long-form essays, think pieces, investigative and analytical articles, and multi-media stories in the coming year. These outputs will support and help develop three tracks in particular: Big Tech Watch, New Precariat, and Feminist Observatory of the Digital.

IT for Change’s work has been key to understanding the times we live in and how to face the future. The speed at which the digital economy is evolving often leaves us unable to think clearly about the underlying economic processes. In these debates, not only is democracy at stake, but also the digital industrialization of peripheral countries. IT for Change is a beacon to refer to, in the midst of this digital storm, in order to think and strategize for years to come.

Sofía B Scasserra

Asistente Principal en Cuestiones Económicas y de Comercio Internacional, Secretaría de Asuntos Internacionales, FAECyS (World Labour Institute)

September 21, 2020September 25, 2020

Data and the Digital Economy

Our policy research and advocacy efforts in relation to the digital economy have focused on identifying appropriate directions for the governance of platforms, data, and AI technologies from the standpoint of equity and social justice. In global and national policy dialogues, we have consistently articulated the rights of marginalized people and groups in the rapidly platformizing and datafying economy, underscoring the linkages between data justice and the right to development.

Research

Concluding our multi-country project on the platform economy

In 2019-20, IT for Change (ITfC) concluded the final phase of its multi-country research project, Policy Frameworks for Digital Platforms. This project, supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, has been able to provide a first-of-its-kind, development-focused perspective on platformization, foregrounding a Global South outlook and drawing from examples, illustrations, and models that do not always make their way into the mainstream discourse. The synthesis report and other outputs from this project have been well received by various academic communities and policy circles.

In an end-of-project national workshop convened in New Delhi in August 2019, we were able to bring together key players and stakeholders from the digital rights and policy community, social movements, unions, governments, lawyers, as well as the private sector in India. The former secretary of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) referred to our meeting as a first-of-its-kind dialogue and was keen that our insights be taken on board by the IT and telecom departments.

Other research on platformization

The positive buzz around our global platform economy project also opened up a slew of new research opportunities for us to extend our work in this domain. In July 2019, we were invited, and subsequently chosen, to author a report on the trends and impacts of platform models in the tourism sector in India by TourismWatch, a special desk of Bread for the World. The report was released at the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, a time when global travel had come under greater scrutiny. It not only provides an intricate and deep-dive analysis into the invisible but paradigmatic shifts of platformization that are unfolding in the tourism sector, but also advocates for smaller and sustainable models of digitally-aided tourism. An India–specific policy brief, which was released for small and medium tourism enterprises, has been well received and utilized by industry bodies in their advocacy with the government.

In September 2019, ITfC was also chosen for a research project for the International Labour Organization (ILO) involving a mapping of alternative models of platform organization, focusing on workers in on-demand work, micro-work, and e-commerce platforms. The (forthcoming) report provides a sharp and incisive analysis into the changing nature of work in the context of the platform economy and points to the need for a new agenda for labor in a post-Covid world – one that centers workers’ rights to data.

We were invited to contribute to the Transnational Institute’s State of Power series, for which we developed an essay titled The Intelligent Corporation: Data and the Digital Economy.

Although I have known of IT for Change and its work for close to two decades, it was only last year that I got to work directly with them. The committed team of women with whom I worked were strategic in their approach with strong grasp of issues pertaining to technological change and workers’ rights. I enjoyed working with this motivated, hardworking and highly skilled group of researchers and activists and I would not hesitate to join forces with them again.

Simel Esim

Programme Manager-Enterprises Department, International Labour Office

Participation in the Data Governance Network

As part of the Data Governance Network (DGN), a two-year, India-focused research initiative helmed by the IDFC Institute, ITfC team members engaged in conceptual research work that explored economic rights, especially collective rights, to data. During 2019-20, we produced multiple research outputs, including a paper on Data and Digital Intelligence Commons, which examined collective data rights of communities and expanded on the term ‘community data’ being employed in Indian policy documents. A policy brief based on this paper outlined a framework law to establish community data ownership and use it as a basis for mandating data sharing where required. In Breaking up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers , we analyzed the limitations of current efforts to regulate the power of Big Tech and proposed a new digital economy-centred regulatory paradigm.

As part of this project, in December 2019, we organized a roundtable at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore. The event brought together over 40 actors from various backgrounds and fields, ranging from technologists, policymakers, legal scholars, and students. The keynote address was made by Prof. Dr. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice Chancellor, NLSIU.

IT for Change has taken a pioneering role in formulating a progressive agenda of what digital justice could look like globally. With its impressive conceptual work on community data rights and data commons, IT for Change has greatly contributed to the international debate on the future architecture of data governance.

Sarah Ganter

Expert, Global Digital Economy, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Concluding our series on AI and Development

Recognizing that the governance of AI technologies is the next frontier of the data debates, with support from Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) India, we published a set of research papers scoping the outlook for AI in India – moving beyond a liberal framing of human rights in AI governance to an expansive reflection on the interrelated impacts of AI on civic-political rights, socio-economic rights, and the right to development. These papers – spanning sectors such as education, fintech, agriculture, ports and logistics, and global governance – were released in 2019 as part of FES India’s research series on AI in India.

Advocacy

Engaging on data governance in national policy debates

Over the year we engaged extensively with civil society groups and movements as well as the industry in India, on why economic rights to data should matter to them. We co-convened two consultations: one on e-commerce with major trade unions in India and another on data issues with the global trade union Public Services International (PSI). We also co-convened data-related meetings and meeting tracks with groups advocating for trade justice in India, including those working with traders, farmers, and workers. Our work in mobilizing civil society groups against the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) played a part in India opting out of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), signaling a win for many farmers’ and traders’ groups.

IT for Change's deep expertise on the digital economy in general and the complex concept of "data" in particular, has been extremely useful in shaping our understanding and positioning on e-commerce negotiations in the area of trade negotiations, both in the WTO and RCEP. Their knowledge of technical issues combined with a deep understanding of the political dynamics of the digital economy gives IT for Change a unique perspective that is very valuable for development organizations such as ours.

Ranja Sengupta

Senior Researcher and Trade Coordinator, Third World Network

In September 2019, ITfC was invited to be part of the new high-level committee on non-personal data helmed by the Ministry of Electronics Information and Technology (MeitY), which will be bringing out a report on non-personal data in 2020, to serve as a springboard for deliberating legislation on the regulation of such data.

In addition to these efforts, we have consistently written in the media on the need for economic and collective rights to data. Articles and interviews by team members have been carried in mainstream media outlets including the Hindustan Times, The Hindu, T he Wire, as well as alternative spaces such as Himal Southasian.

Making a dent in global data governance spaces

In 2019-2020, we attained greater momentum in our work on digital justice through critical research and advocacy efforts. For the UNCTAD Digital Economy Report , 2019, ITfC contributed a background paper on the role of data, which was instrumental in shaping the report’s views on collective approaches to data. In July 2019, we were part of a panel put together to mark the India release of this report, where the head of the UNCTAD Digital Economy Report team acknowledged the organization’s key role in conceptualizing the economic role and value of data.

We also took forward our work on labor rights in the digital economy. We were invited to address the Asia Pacific Regional five-yearly assembly of PSI in Bali in September 2019 and were the only external organization invited to the PSI executive members meeting in Geneva in January 2020.

Members of the IT for Change team waiting to discuss the ‘Digital Justice Manifesto’ at the Just Net Coalition booth at the Internet Governance Forum, 2019 in Berlin.

In November 2019, on behalf of the Just Net Coalition (JNC), ITfC co-hosted a global meeting in New Delhi, which saw participation from a range of civil society actors interested in trade issues. This was to prepare for the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial which was scheduled for June 2020 (and was subsequently canceled on account of the pandemic).

Building on the engagements and discussions of a two-day global strategy workshop convened in Bangkok in March 2019, JNC worked on and developed the Digital Justice Manifesto, a policy document articulating principles for an equitable and just digital economy. The manifesto was formally unveiled at a pre-event of the International Governance Forum (IGF) in Berlin in November.

Ahead of the launch of the manifesto, we organized an international workshop titled Data and Digital Intelligence as People’s Resources: Reclaiming Freedom and Control in a Data-Based Society on November 23-24, 2019 in Berlin. Supported by FES and Bread for the World, this meeting sought to connect a global network of actors committed to equity and social justice, to discuss how these values could be imbibed into future strategies for global data governance, especially with regard to the regulation of data as an economic resource.

An important outcome of the two-day global strategy meeting was the setting up of working groups addressing various themes such as e-commerce and trade, agroecology, health, labor rights, etc., which will coordinate and collaborate on research and advocacy strategies to take forward the agendas arrived upon at the meeting.

Parminder Jeet Singh speaking at a panel discussion on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, organized by the SFLC.

Critical national and global forums

Members of ITfC organized, participated, and made their voices heard at a number of events this year at the national and global levels.

We organized a satellite event titled, What Do Social Movements Need to Do in the Age of Data? Towards a Digital Justice Manifesto, at Rights Con 2019.
In June 2019, Parminder Jeet Singh was invited to give the keynote speech at the ILO meeting of delegates on Decent Work in the Digital Age.
In June 2019, Anita Gurumurthy attended a strategy event organized by the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, where she spoke about Surveillance Capitalism and Digital Futures.
In September 2019, Anita Gurumurthy was invited to attend a civil society organizations’ (CSO) strategy convening on Built for Purpose: Charting the Future of Asia’s Civil Society in Transformative Times, organized by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation at the Rockefeller Bellagio Centre.
In October 2019, at the WTO Public Forum, the organization’s representatives were part of a panel on Value Creation and Capture in a Digital Economy, hosted by the UNCTAD.
In November 2019, at the IGF Berlin, we organized A Tutorial on Public Policy Essentials of Data Governance.
In January 2020, we attended a meeting on health data issues with respect to WHO’s Digital Health Strategy, organized by the Public Health Movement in Geneva.
In February 2020, Parminder Jeet Singh was a co-panelist, along with Justice (Retd.) Srikrishna, on a discussion on the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, organized by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC).
In January 2020, Anita Gurumurthy was on the panel titled Data Governance at Crossroads at the Public Policy Forum and Public Policy LITFest organized by the SKOCH Group.
In February 2020, Anita Gurumurthy delivered a keynote at a conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society in New York City, organized by the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Anita Gurumurthy at the Public Policy Forum and Public Policy LITFest organized by the SKOCH Group.

Impact

Our research and advocacy work in the domain of data governance and the digital economy continued to make its mark in critical policy spaces and platforms, as well as with key stakeholders and actors.

The impact of our research on the platform economy and economic rights to data is reflected in the translations (Spanish and French) undertaken pro bono by different organizations; requests from multilateral agencies for further research; requests by Foundations like Rockefeller and Ford for capacity building of their grantees; and attention from policymakers and trade negotiators across the Global South.

For instance, following a presentation of our research at our national workshop in New Delhi, we were invited to be part of the MeitY’s new committee on non-personal data. Additionally, WTO Ambassadors of two major developing countries have sought ITfC’s support in developing a framework for economic governance of data. Our work on data commons has fed into and shaped the approaches of major organizations such as Foundation Botnar and the Public Health Movement on data issues in health. We have been brought on a six-member Data Policy Circle of the global Universal Health Coverage Coalition to develop recommendations for health data governance.

Another significant impact of our work has been in the area of labor. We have been able to embark on new lines of research and advocacy collaboration in engaging with international unions such as the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), UniGlobal Trade Union, PSI, and International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Our work has considerably influenced how global union federations have begun to see data rights of workers – not only in terms of privacy and surveillance, but also in terms of economic rights to data. PSI has invited us to extend our framework to specific sectors such as education, health, and welfare service delivery.

IT for Change has provided invaluable expertise and advice to PSI on the effects of digitalization, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence and the consequences for public services and workers. More importantly, IT for Change is interested in helping workers get real control over their digital and work lives. They are genuine partners with workers organizations, always keen to listen and understand and look for where we can together make the biggest difference.

Daniel Bertossa

Assistant General Secretary, Public Services International

In academia, learnings from our research have traveled far and wide and resonated with various communities of stakeholders. At the national level, ITfC has had an opportunity to strengthen ties with the Indian academia and institutions such as IIT-Bombay and Azim Premji University and expose students and faculty to the cutting edge issues in the global political economy of data and the digital. Internationally, members of the project team have been invited to participate in virtual presentations to the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) as well as classroom lectures and webinars, including to students of global political economy at Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto. Our platform project synthesis report has been included as required reading for a forthcoming course in the University of Toronto.

We have also delivered keynote addresses and talks at various international conferences where learnings from our research projects have been welcomed and shared. Notably, one of our papers, Economic Rights O ver Data, published in the Development journal, was featured in the Syllabus, a weekly set of curated articles anchored by Evgeny Morozov, one of the foremost thinkers, globally, on data issues. The article also appeared in the year-end selection of the Syllabus’ recommended readings for 2019.

IT for Change's research and advocacy bring unique perspectives rooted in justice and individual and community rights. We appreciate their approach to evidence-based policy interventions in moving towards an equitable data economy. I wish them the best and look forward to our continued collaboration.

Sushant Kumar

Principal, Beneficial Tech Investments, Omidyar Network

Plans for 2020-21

In 2020-21, we will embark on exciting new projects that build and strengthen our current research and advocacy footprint. On the heels of our platform economy research, we have been awarded new grants to further our work in this domain by the Omidyar Network, as well as by IDRC for an action research project on gender and the future of work. As part of DGN, we plan to undertake research on topics such as the constitutional basis of data sharing, governance of non-personal data, community and local ownership of health data, and workers’ data rights. Building on the workshops organized in 2019, in the year ahead, we will also be setting up working groups to develop strategy papers and advocacy plans for JNC‘s overall strategy.

Our work in the coming year will tackle the Covid-19 context and use this moment of flux to think of a new direction for the digital economy. ITfC will seek to engage progressive actors in an exercise to construct alternative digital frameworks, pathways, and institutional arrangements for a post-Covid world.

It has been a privilege for the ETC Group to work with, learn from, and fight together with colleagues at IT for Change on digital rights and global governance of technology. We are very impressed by the brilliant minds that make up the organization, inspired by their commitment, and awed by their willingness to collaborate. We look forward to continue linking arms with you in unmasking the challenges ahead in this brave new world and towards creating a saner, fairer, and kinder future.

Neth Daño

Co-Executive Director, ETC Group

September 18, 2020October 7, 2020

Team

Our Team

At IT for Change, individuals from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, professional expertise, and skill sets work with a shared commitment towards progressive social change. Working across a multitude of settings, whether in schools, government agencies, multilateral and international agencies, or the community, our team brings innovative ideas to our field projects, coalition building, consulting, and research and advocacy projects.

Members of Governing Body

Geetha Narayanan, Secretary

Srilatha Batliwala, President

Padma M Sarangapani, Treasurer

Executive Directors

Anita Gurumurthy

Parminder Jeet Singh

Director

Gurumurthy Kasinathan

Bengaluru Team

Amrita Vasudevan, Research Associate

Ananda D, Program Associate

Anand Desai, Consultant

Anusha Hedge, Program Associate

Anusha R Hegde, Account Assistant

Anushka Mittal, Research Assistant

Aparna K, Senior Program Associate

Bharath R, Project Associate – IT

Bhavna Jha, Research Associate

Deepthi S Kotian, Accounts Assistant

Deepti Bharthur, Senior Research Associate

Elizabeth Dominic, Research Assistant

Girija M P, Program Assistant – Education

Ira Anjali Anwar, Research Associate

Jai Vipra, Research Assistant

Karthik K, Project Associate – Education

Khawla Zainab, Research Associate

Kishor K S, Project Assistant – Technology

Meenakshi Yadav, Communications Associate

Nandini Chami, Deputy Director

Nitesh Kumar, Project Intern – IT

Prakriti Bakshi, Communications Intern

Prasanna Kumar Gowda B. K.,
Office Administration Assistant

Preeta Pattar, Project Associate

Purnima Singh, Communication Assistant

Radhika Belkhede, Design Intern

Rakesh B, Project Associate – IT

Sadhana Sanjay, Research Assistant

Sandeep Prakash, Senior Accounts Officer

Sarada Mahesh, Project Associate

Shreyas Hiremath, Project Assistant- IT

Sohel Sarkar, Senior Communications Associate

Sumanashree S, Program Assistant – Education

Sunil C, Program Assistant

Sushma G, Program Assistant – Education

Tamilarasi, Support Staff

Valli, Support Staff

Vedavathi, Program Assistant – IT

Veera Nagi Reddy, Accounts Officer

Vinay Narayan, Research Assistant

Yogesh K S, Technical Associate

Mysuru Team

Anupama Suresh, Program Coordinator

Harisha N, Project Associate

Mangalamma, Project Associate

Shabharisha M, Technical Associate

Shreeja K, Project Associate

Somashekara U T, Project Associate

Tilak, Project Assistant and Driver

September 18, 2020September 25, 2020

Publications

Research papers and reports

Gurumurthy, A. & Bharthur, D. (2019). Impact of digitalisation in the ports sector. FES India. Available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/15910-20200116.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Bharthur, D. (2019). Taking stock of Artificial Intelligence in Indian agriculture. FES India. Available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/15808.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Bharthur, D. (2020). Techno-disruptions and travel: Examining the impact of platformisation in the Indian tourism sector. Tourism Watch. Available at https://www.tourism-watch.de/system/files/document/Analyse95.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2019). Development justice in the digital paradigm: Agenda 2030 and beyond. Development, 62(1–4), pp. 19–28. Available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-019-00203-6.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2019). Digital public goods: A precondition for realising SDGs. SEF and Peace Foundation. Available at https://www.sef-bonn.org/fileadmin/SEF-Dateiliste/04_Publikationen/GG-Spotlight/2019/ggs_2019-04_en.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2019). From ill-founded delusions to real possibilities: An e-commerce agenda for women’s empowerment. Digital Justice Project. DAWN & IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/IT-for-Change-Gender-and-e-commerce-Oct2019.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2019). The wicked problem of AI governance. FES India. Available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/15763.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2020). The intelligent corporation: Data and the digital economy. State of Power Series. Transnational Institute. Available at https://longreads.tni.org/the-intelligent-corporation-data-and-the-digital-economy/.

Gurumurthy, A., Bharthur, D., Chami, N., Vipra, J., & Anwar, I.A. (2019). Platform planet: Development in the intelligence economy. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Report-Platform%20Planet_Development_in_the_intelligence_economy.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A., Chami, N., & Alemany, C. (2019). Gender equality in the digital economy: Emerging issues. Digital Justice Project. DAWN & IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/gender-equality-in-the-digital-economy.

Gurumurthy, A., Vasudevan, A., & Chami, N. (2019). Born digital, born free? A socio-legal study on young women’s experiences of online violence in South India – Executive summary. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/1662/Executive_Summary_Born%20digital-Born-free%20.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A., Vasudevan, A., & Chami, N. (2019). Born digital, born free? A socio-legal study on young women’s experiences of online violence in South India – Synthesis report. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/1662/Born-Digital_Born-Free_Synthesis-Report%28DRAFT%29.pdf.

Gurumurthy, A., Vasudevan, A., Chami, N., & Mahesh, S. (2019). Getting it right online: Young women’s negotiations in the face of cyberviolence in Karnataka. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Karnataka_Report_Righting-Gender-Wrongs.pdf.

Kasinathan, G. (2019). Digital technology in the education sector. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/digital-technology-education-sector.

Kasinanthan, G. (2020). Making AI work in Indian education. FES India. Available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/15953.pdf.

Singh, P. J. (2019). Data and digital intelligence commons: Making a case for community ownership. Data Governance Network. Available at https://datagovernance.org/files/research/ITFC_Parminder_Data_Commons_-_Paper_2.pdf.

Singh, P. J. (2020). Economic rights in a data-based society: Collective data ownership, workers’ rights, and the role of the public sector. FES and PSI. Available at: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/16034.pdf.

Singh, P. J. & Gurumurthy, A. (2020). Data sharing requires a data commons framework law: A policy brief. Data Governance Network. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Data%20Sharing%20Requires%20A%20Data%20Commons%20Framework%20Law%20DGN%20Policy%20Brief.pdf.

Singh, P. J. & Rani, U. (2019). Digital platforms, data, and development: Implications for workers in developing economies. Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal, 41 (1), pp 101-122. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Digital Platforms%2C Data%2C and Development Implications for Workers Developing Economies_CLL%26PJ.pdf.

Singh, P. J. & Vipra, J. (2019). Economic rights over data: A framework for community data ownership. Development, 62(1), pp. 53-57. Available at http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41301-019-00212-5.

Vipra, J. (2020). Regulating AI in the finance sector in India. FES India. Available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indien/15975.pdf.

Advocacy

Gurumurthy, A. (2020). Internet governance in India: People, purpose and process. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/internet-governance-in-india-people-purpose-process.

Gurumurthy, A., Jha, B. (2019). IT for Change’s submission to the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on Privacy. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/it-for-changes-submission-to-un-special-rapporteurs-report-on-privacy.

IT for Change. (2020). Submission on the Draft Amendment to Intermediary Guidelines Rules 2018. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/index.php/submission-on-draft-amendment-to-intermediary-guidelines-rules-2018.

IT for Change. (2020). Submission on the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/IT%20for %20Change_Submission%20on%20the%20Personal%20Data%20Protection%20Bill%202019_Feb%202020.pdf.

Research and policy analysis contributions to IT for Change’s projects

Aguirre, M. & Garcia-Rivadulla, S. (2019). Peer to peer lending platforms as tools for financial inclusion in Uruguay – Policy overview. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Policy-Overview-Uruguay.pdf.

Aguirre, M. & Garcia-Rivadulla, S. (2020). Peer to peer lending platforms as tools for financial inclusion in Uruguay – Research report. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Uruguay-Research-Report.pdf.

Bentley, C. & Maharika, I. F. (2019). Making travel platforms work for Indonesian workers and small businesses – Policy overview. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Making-Travel-Platforms-Work-for-Indonesian-Workers-and0ASmall-Businesses.pdf.

Bentley, C. & Maharika, I. F. (2020). Making travel platforms work for women, small business holders, and marginalized workers in Indonesia’s tourism sector – Research report. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Indonesia-Research-Report.pdf.

Bentley, C., Maharika, I. F., Pratiwi, Y., Wacano, D., & Nazaruddin, M. (2019). Making travel platforms work for Indonesian workers and small businesses – Policy brief. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Indonesia-Policy-Brief.pdf.

Chen, J. Y. (2019). Digital platforms for ride-hailing and food-delivery services in China. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Digital-Platforms-for-Ride-Hailing-and-Food-Delivery-Services-in-China.pdf.

Chen, Y. (2019). Recommendations on digital platforms for ride-hailing and food delivery services in China. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/China-Policy-Brief.pdf.

Chen, J. Y., Sun, S. P., & Qiu, J. L. (2020). Deliver on the promise of the platform economy. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/China-Research-Report.pdf.

Devika, J., Vijayakumar, C., Mini, D. S., Resmi, P. S., & Alexander, E. (2019). Walking on eggshells: A study on gender justice and women’s struggles in Malayali cyberspace. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/Kerala-Report_Righting-Gender-Norms%20%281%29.pdf.

Ducato, R., Marique, E., Strowel, A., & Wattecamps, C. (2019). Protection of users in the platform economy: A European perspective. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EU-Policy-Brief-.pdf.

Ganesh, M. I. (2019). Tipping the scale: Notes on the topologies of Big Data platforms. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Tipping-the-Scale0ANotes-on-the-Topologies-of-Big-Data-Platforms.pdf.

Garcia, L. & Pacis, J. (2019). Directions for the platform economy in the Philippines. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Philippines-Policy-Brief.pdf.

Garcia, L., Barrameda, T., Pacis, J., & Barrameda, A. S. (2019). Digitization and domestic work: The policy environment in the Philippines. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Policy-Overview_Philippines.pdf.

Garcia, L., Barrameda, T., Pacis, J., & Barrameda, A. S. (2020). Cleaning ladies on demand: Are local digital platforms transforming domestic work in the Philippines?. IT for Change. Available at: https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Philippines-Research-Report.pdf.

Hintz, A. (2020). Data policies: Towards citizen-centric regulation. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Hintz-Final.pdf.

Hintz, A. & Brand, J. (2019). Data policies: Regulatory approaches for data-driven platforms in the UK and EU – Policy overview. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Policy-Overview_UK_EU.pdf.

Hintz, A. & Brand, J. (2020). Data policies: Regulatory approaches for data-driven platforms in the UK and EU – Research report. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/UK-Research-Report.pdf.

Mare, A., Chiumbu, S., & Mpofu, S. (2020). Investigating the operational and labor policy frameworks for ride-hailing platforms: Case of Uber and Taxify in South Africa. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/South-Africa-PDF.pdf.

Mare, A., Chiumbu, S., & Mpofu, S. (2020). Operational and labor policy frameworks for ride-hailing platforms in South Africa: Policy insights. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/South-Africa-Policy-Brief-1-1.pdf.

Ogunyemi, K. (2019). Towards inclusive platformization in Nigeria. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nigeria-Policy-Brief.pdf.

Ogunyemi, K., Onyeajuwa, M., Adeola, O., Aneke, U., Nwogu, C., Akagha, O., & Ajibola, A. (2020). Nigeria’s platform economy: A state of play report. IT for Change. Available at: https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nigeria-Policy-Overview.pdf.

Ogunyemi, K., Onyeajuwa, M., Adeola, O., Aneke, U., Nwogu, C., Akagha, O., & Ajibola, A. (2020). Towards platformization in Nigeria – The regulatory framing. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Nigeria-Research-Report.pdf.

Ramaseshan, G., Ramasamy, S., Sangeetha, M.R., Prabha, S., Krishna, N., & Kumar, S. (2019). Towards a safer cyberzone: A study on gender and online violence in Tamil Nadu. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/sites/default/files/add/TamilNadu-Report_Righting-Gender-Wrongs.pdf.

Reilly, K. (2019). Data power structures in Canada: Towards maximizing public value. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Canada-Policy-Brief.pdf.

Reilly, K. & Muñoz-Nieves, C. (2020). Data and the platform economy in Canada: A policy state-of-play report. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Canada-Policy-Overview-1.pdf.

Valente, M. G. & Luciano, M. (2020). Bits and film: Policy for digital platforms in media and audiovisual markets in Brazil. IT for Change. Available at https://itforchange.net/platformpolitics/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Brazil-PDF.pdf.

In the media

Bharthur, D. (2019, July 5). On RightsCon and the long con of digital policy multistakeholderism. Bot Populi. Available at https://botpopuli.net/on-rightscon-and-the-long-con-of-digital-policy-multistakeholderism.

Gurumurthy, A. (2019, July 5). Digital economy deserves more. BusinessLine. Available at https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/digital-economy-deserves-more/article28298825.ece.

Gurumurthy, A. (2020, March 3). In a new world order driven by AI, we need to rewrite the rules of data capitalism. Open Democracy. Available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/new-world-order-driven-ai-we-need-rewrite-rules-data-capitalism/.

Gurumurthy, A. (2020, March 10). How to make AI work for people and planet. Open Democracy. Available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/how-make-ai-work-people-and-planet/.

Gurumurthy, A. (2020, February 24). Between Big Data and Big Brother. Bot Populi. Available at https://botpopuli.net/between-big-data-and-big-brother.

Gurumurthy, A. & Vipra, J. (2019, April 5). Misleading takedowns: Facebook needs to be a lot more transparent when it comes to banning pages, groups. Tech2. Available at https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/misleading-takedowns-facebook-needs-to-be-a-lot-more-transparent-when-it-comes-to-banning-pages-groups-6392971.html.

Gurumurthy, A. & Chami, N. (2020, January 6). Why the debate on e-commerce must move beyond FDI rules. Hindustan Times. Available at https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-the-debate-on-e-commerce-must-move-beyond-fdi-rules/story-EXARY80i3n0RQJZLiQj6PN.html.

Gurumurthy, A. & Jha, B. (2019, November 19). Debating political ads on social media is Facebook, Twitter’s way to derail issue; what’s needed is legislation, not bans. Firstpost. Available at https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/the-debate-on-political-ads-on-social-media-is-just-a-distraction-the-law-cannot-be-used-to-legitimise-private-censorship-7666501.html.

Gurumurthy, K. (2019, September 2). Digital technology in the education sector. ALAI. Available at https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/200760.

Mahesh, S. (2019, September 5). How a low-income community in Bengaluru used data to demand a bus route. Citizen Matters. Available at https://bengaluru.citizenmatters.in/bengaluru-old-baiyappanahalli-bmtc-bus-route-data-campaign-37240?fbclid=IwAR1vhLq7HhZEokl7JBGdR1FWD5VpEm2zdTd-xKlTqnNB6jZS1nK27mp8lgM.

Mittal, A. (2020, January 14). Has India’s privacy bill considered the dangers of unrestricted processing of ‘anonymised’ data?. The Wire. Available at https://thewire.in/government/privacy-bill-anonymous-data.

Singh, P. J. (2019, July 2). India should aim for a digital non-alignment. Hindustan Times. Available at https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/india-should-aim-for-a-digital-non-alignment/story-ViT3PTiuo5j6dKUvt94YpO.html.

Singh, P. J. (2019, July 9). Looking beyond privacy: The importance of economic rights to data. The Wire. Available at https://thewire.in/tech/data-privacy-digital-economy.

Thin, L. (2020, February 25). Booking platforms disrupt tourism value chains in India. Tourism Watch. Available at https://www.tourism-watch.de/en/focus/booking-platforms-disrupt-tourism-value-chains-india.

Vipra, J. (2019, June 27). What’s up with Libra? Concerns about Facebook’s new cryptocurrency. The Wire. Available at: https://thewire.in/tech/libra-facebook-new-cryptocurrency.

Forthcoming

Gurumurthy, A. (2020). Institutional listening: An essential principle for democracy in digital times. In (Eds). J. Tacchi & T. Tuffte. (2020). Communicating for change. Palgrave-London.

Kasinathan, G., Anand D., & Karthik K. (forthcoming). Democratizing translation using digital methods. In Language and language teaching. Azim Premji University.

Kasinathan, G. & Ranganathan, S. (forthcoming). Technology and right to education. In Mehendale, A., Jain, M., and Mukhopadhyay, R. (Eds.) Education changes and right to education: Essays on emerging issues.

Mittal, A. (2020). Exploring the constitutional tenability of data sharing policies. Data Governance Network.

Singh, P.J. (2020). Breaking up Big Tech: Separation of its data, cloud and intelligence layers. Data Governance Network Working Paper 09.

Category: Uncategorized

2020-21 Financial Statements

Go back to Annual Report

Financial Statements

Balance Sheet as on 31st March, 2021

Income and Expenditure Account for the year ended 31st March, 2021

Go back to Annual Report

Annual Report 2020-21

List of Abbreviations

Prakriye

Gender

Gender Justice in the Digital Society

Education

Digital Rights and Democracy

Data and the Digital Economy

Team

Publications