The Future of Work and Workers’ Rights
The impact of digital technologies in the labor market and the shifting nature of work in the platform paradigm has emerged as the central peg of focus for our research and advocacy. This year, we have built on the solid foundation of past work, to continue tracking the evolution of this dynamic in multiple ways.
KEY MILESTONES
- Field-building through research. Our team worked on a number of research initiatives tracking this space. Of particular note is our report for the ILO, ‘Platform Labour in Search of Value’, which was released this year. This report, based on primary research and interviews, captures the new strategies being deployed by workers in the digital economy to reclaim their right to decent work and harness the affordances of the platform economy for worker-led enterprises.
- Shaping discourse through popular writing. We also brought out a number of incisive think-pieces and essays around labor issues for our alternative media platform, Bot Populi, as well as for DataSyn, our monthly newsletter.
- Supporting union trainings. We supported trade union capacity-building on key aspects of the digital economy and associated legislation in India and the rest of the world to equip members with information and knowledge resources to navigate the new terrain.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- A podcast series on worker data rights that will unpack the new meanings of labor rights in the digitalizing context
- A May Day series for DataSyn with key labor voices from around the world
- A global strategy event convened in collaboration with international union federations
Digital Trade and E-commerce
As trade becomes the determining factor that shapes the digital economy, our work has focused on the implications of emerging digital trade deals for the right to development. We have joined trade activists to denounce stances espoused by the big powers — cross-border data flow without any controls, restrictions on regulation of transnational digital companies, and intensification of IP rights in digital service value chains
— conditions that will only end up reinforcing Big Tech’s power.
KEY MILESTONES
- Furthering our engagement with UNCTAD. At the 15th session of the crucial UNCTAD Conference in October 2021, our statements underscored the urgent imperative to put distributive justice at the center in data value chains. We were also invited to be expert reviewers for the ‘UNCTAD Digital Economy 2021 Report’ exploring cross-border data flows and their future governance.
- Striving for gender justice in trade. We continued to counter the neoliberal opportunity rhetoric in policy dialogues on gender, trade, and development, highlighting the real concerns on equity and inclusion in the digital economy. To construct a positive agenda, we wrote a briefing paper on a feminist roadmap for e-commerce, also presenting insights at the WTO Public Forum, 2021. We also took part in learning webinars organized by the Gender and Trade Coalition to reflect on digital trade and sustainability.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Engagement with policymakers from developing countries to equip them to challenge hegemonic digital trade discourses of the Global North and resist capitulation at the WTO Ministerial Conference-12
- Strategic advice to civil society groups engaging with the G-20 Digital Economy Agenda and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for e-commerce
- Ongoing tracking of digital trade developments and civil society capacity- building on the data economy and its intersections with trade mandates
- A new line of research on exploring the terms of integration of women’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the global digital marketplace
Dismantling Big Tech
This year, we expanded our work on Big Tech, exploring through writing, research, and advocacy the policy directions necessary to rein in the monopolistic tendencies in the platform economy, and reclaim the potential of data for equitable development.
KEY MILESTONES
- Launching the ‘State of Big Tech’ report. To build strategies to respond to the aggrandizement of Big Tech power, we launched a flagship report inviting contributions from scholar-practitioners. Our volume, slated for release in the second half of 2022, moves past the critique of data capital to identify new horizons for resistance in popular mobilization, discursive alternatives, multilateral and national-level advocacy, alternative techno-governance strategies, and more.
- Engaging with platform regulation. We engaged with important regulatory developments coming out of India and the European Union (EU) with respect to the digital economy and data governance. We made a submission to the European Commission (EC) on the Draft Digital Markets Act, emphasizing the need to move away from an individualistic model of governance in favor of a community approach for rights holders, the necessity for wider data sharing, as well as structural separation across platform layers.
- Confronting the ed-tech leviathan. Through our research, we have been pushing back against the privatized takeover of education through digitalization. Our article for the Economic and Political Weekly examined the implications of Google and BYJU’S partnership on education services, and what this implies for the social role of education.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Bringing together a cohort of Big Tech-and-Society media fellows for DataSyn
- Convening a campaign on ed-tech with national and global civil society
- Engaging with Global Digital Compact process and due diligence regulation for corporations
Data and AI
Infrastructures
The architecture of the digital is often coopted into the private, where narratives of efficiency and seamless convenience are offered upfront, while concerns of privacy and data extraction are pushed to the background. Our work has advocated using data and its associated ecosystem as a knowledge commons through a measured approach that deters flagrant exploitation by the private sector, especially deep-pocketed Big Tech companies.
KEY MILESTONES
- Incubating the Intelligent Infrastructures series. To track developments on digital infrastructures and shape the policy and techno-design ecosystem around it, we launched the Intelligent Infrastructures series. Two papers, on Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) and on financial technologies have been authored as part of the series.
- Forwarding a framework for a semi-commons approach to data governance. As part of the Data Governance Network series of working papers, we outlined a conceptual framework for data governance to enable the social and public value of data to be unlocked.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Convening working group meetings under the Right Digitalization umbrella, for a positive plan of action for digitalization in India
- Advocating for a multilateral framework for data and AI governance
Gender Justice in the Digital Paradigm
Our research and advocacy is focused on constantly interrogating new forms of erosion of the public and the commodification of the private in the digital paradigm and the implications for gender justice. We have continued to strive for a new political grammar of feminist digital justice, building on Southern feminist traditions.
KEY MILESTONES
- Evolving a feminist vision for social media governance. We undertook a pathbreaking India-based study of the typologies of sexism and misogyny on Twitter in India. The research shows how algorithmic amplification on platforms contributes to ‘pile-on’ hate, rendering traditional threshold tests for hate speech completely inadequate. Regulation must, therefore, address gender-based hate as a structural problem of corporate tech design.
- Campaign to bring the violence of data extractivism into focus. For 16 Days of Activism, an annual international feminist campaign on elimination of gender-based violence, we organized a Twitter chat with Breakthrough India demanding accountability of big social media platforms for gender-based cyberviolence. The campaign gained over 1,000 impressions per tweet on Twitter.
- Convening feminist dialogues on digital economy and society. In September 2021, we organized a roundtable on Platform Planet: A Feminist Digital Justice Exploration, bringing together 18 feminist scholars-activists and researchers. The cutting-edge debates at the workshop culminated in a special issue for our digital magazine, Bot Populi that racked up over 1,700 reads.
- Developing proof of concept models for alternative platform enterprises. In collaboration with LabourNet, Vrutti, and SEWA Cooperative Federation, we are excited to be rolling out an action research on worker-centric platform services.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Organizing a virtual global conference centered on feminist visions of social media governance
- Producing a resource guide for the judiciary and lawyers in India on rights-based redress to victims of gender-based cyberviolence
- Undertaking research on the Indian judiciary’s response to online gender-based violence
- Engaging with global and national policy debates on digital and data innovation — a theme aligned to the upcoming CSW in 2023
Prakriye Field Center for Community Informatics and Development
Since 2005, our Prakriye field center has been engaged in leveraging new digital technologies for socio-political empowerment of women and adolescent girls from marginalized communities in three sub-districts of rural Mysuru. Two strategies are at the heart of the Prakriye center’s efforts: a network of seven community information centers that are the nodes of a women-centered information and knowledge ecosystem at the grassroots; and a para-counselling service comprising 37 gender help desks providing a first port of call for emergency responses to domestic violence.
KEY MILESTONES
- Providing redress for gender-based violence. Our gender help desks provided first point of support to over 700 women and girls facing various forms of gender-based violence across our operational area. The service was a vital lifeline during the pandemic when lockdowns had led to an intensification of violence within households.
- Deploying digital pedagogies for empowerment education. Our digital media pedagogies using video and audio stories, integrated voice response (IVR) messaging, and participatory production of video stories were able to support 900 women, 644 men, 659 women, and 90 adolescent girls in acquiring critical perspectives on gender cultural norms, and women’s rights to full citizenship.
- Enabling entitlements access through community information centers. Our information centers, operated by young women infomediaries from local communities and supported by 19 community mobilizers, reached out to over 10,000 members of local communities connecting women and men from the margins to vital social security schemes and livelihood programs.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Internal impact evaluation of our work for strategic consolidation in the post-pandemic context
- Creating village-level support groups of women and girls to take up local civic-public issues and provide peer solidarity in times of crisis
- Grassroots dialogues between community and local public institutions for strengthening entitlements access and the service delivery ecosystem, with particular attention to new challenges in digital welfare systems
Education and
Technology
The long shadow of the pandemic continues to expose and accentuate the stratification in the Indian school system, while giving impetus to an unchecked, unaccountable digitalization in education that robs the sector of its public nature. Our work continues to respond to these challenges.
KEY MILESTONES
- Working with educators on integrating technology in learning. Our ongoing teacher-development programs, including workshops, on-site, and online courses have benefited more than 2,300 in-service and pre-service teachers in several states across India. Our focus is on supporting teachers to engage with critical perspectives on technology in education, in addition to teaching them to integrate digital tools and methods in their practice.
- Strengthening institutional perspectives on community participation in education. We contributed to a position paper on community participation in school education as part of a Government of Karnataka committee on implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. We stressed on the emancipatory possibilities of digital technologies in collectivizing parents and community members, as well as in opening the information about their schools, available in the education system, to their scrutiny, for greater transparency and accountability.
- Shaping discourse on digitalization in education. We deepened discussions around crucial issues such as AI in education, safe reopening of schools, mapping education during Covid-19, and more at conferences and panel discussions hosted by major educational stakeholders and organizations, such as the Comparative Education Society of India, Right to Education Forum (RTEF), and as a part of the National Coalition on the Education Emergency. We also took these discussions to digital rights forums such as RightsCon.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Expanding our work on adolescent girl empowerment through the second phase of the 'Hosa Hejje Hosa Dishe' program, forming 'Kishori clubs' (for adolescent girls) in around 300 schools in five districts of Karnataka, where a key focus will be reducing the girl drop-out rate in education, and preventing early marriages
- Collaborative work with state government agencies in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and teacher education institutions in Karnataka, on technology in school and teacher education. Partnering with the Government of Kerala for building a public AI model in education founded on values of teacher agency, community accountability, and critical pedagogy.
- Expanding work with the NCEE on equity and inclusion in digitally-integrated education
Planet, People, and
Well-being
This year, we worked with a committed focus to track and shape emerging debates on digitalization in health, food systems, and agriculture, advocating for community-centered data rights in these sectors. We have also underscored equitable distribution of data value as a key governance consideration in sectoral policies.
KEY MILESTONES
- Policy advocacy for democratized data infrastructures in health. We engaged with policy consultations announced by the National Health Authority (NHA) in India on the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM). We recommended strong data use limitations to safeguard public health datasets from corporate appropriation.
- Working towards farmer-centric data models in agriculture. We also responded to the public consultation announced by the Indian Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare on their white paper for the India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA). We made a clear pitch for farmer centricity in policymaking, prevention of corporate capture of core digital agriculture ecosystems, and decentralization and federation of farmers’ community data.
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
- Forging a civil society platform in India focused on farmer-centric digitalization in agriculture, under a Right Digitalization umbrella initiative
- Deepening our local-to-global advocacy on food systems, agro-ecology, and data justice in partnership with traditional groups working on these issues