Anita Gurumurthy

2020

This paper discusses how the platform economy – dominated by a few firms – is extractivist, exploitative and expedient. It is based on an unsustainable model with scant regard for natural resources, and is built on the back of a global division of labor that bears the marks of race, class, gender, and geography. The paper emphasizes the…

2020

Parminder Jeet Singh and Anita Gurumurthy co-authored a policy brief titled, ‘Data Sharing Requires a Data Commons Framework Law’, based on the paper 'Data and Digital Intelligence Commons'. The paper examined the current non-governance of aggregate non-personal data, and presented a new approach that involves treating a large part of such data…

2020

Anita Gurumurthy spoke at an online conference entitled "Countering the Effects of the Pandemic: Women’s Viewpoints" organized by the "women and girls" working group of the Civil BRICS as a run up to a BRICS civil society forum happening later this year.

Anita spoke about "Feminist Pathways to Digital Transformation Post-Pandemic – Some…

2020

Anita Gurumurthy participated in a session on Technology and Surveillance for the Janta Parliament, a virtual peoples' Parliament, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020. Some of the participant organisations and individuals presented resolutions before the parliament that were voted on at the end of the session. IT for Change presented a resolution on a…

2020

This is the third issue paper, written by Anita Gurumurthy, for the Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

The platform economy -- dominated by a few firms -- is extractivist,exploitative,and expedient. It is based on an…

2020

Disasters are gendered. They play out differently for men, women, and gender non-conforming people. So also the COVID-19 pandemic. In the domestic-private spaces, an incredulous increase in levels of violence against women during these weeks, a “shadow pandemic” — as the UN Under-Secretary-General referred to it — has laid bare the patriarchal…

2020

On March 24, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an advisory to States, asking them to treat e-commerce as an essential service. A few days before, industry body CII had urged the Centre to exempt e-commerce (delivery and shipment) from Covid-19 preventive measures. Being listed as an…

2020

In October and November 2018, during the Great Indian Festival season in India, online retail giants — Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm Mall — sold goods worth $4.3 billion (Rs 29,947 crore), 43 percent higher than the last year.

Traders in physical retail must now reckon with the rather disconcerting reality of e-commerce. The press note…

2020

The human body is asserting itself more than as a performative spectacle on the streets. From Hong Kong to India, Catalonia, Lebonan, Chile and many more, the body is a signifier of bio-power and hope, defeating surveillance, courting arrest and deliberately seeking the system’s panoptic gaze.

The proliferation of protests suggests a…

2020

The glass is half full.

Voices of resistance to power are everywhere. Students and young people are taking to the streets; women are infiltrating public discourse; and the unlikely activist is joining popular uprisings. Social movements are rejecting tokenism and ‘woke-washing’ from corporations, demanding that governments deal with the…