Internet Democracy Project

Aadhaar has been pitted as the snake oil of choice for various problems in society, including that of gender biased sex selection. In two proposals, one by Maneka Gandhi and another by two doctors, the tracking of women’s pregnancies is advocated as the means to monitor and curb the practice of gender-biased sex selection. But both these proposals seek to normalise surveillance of the bodies, decisions and data of women and girls, under the garb of ensuring their welfare. Ramya Chandrasekhar traces the various harmful consequences of using surveillance as the instrument of choice to eliminate the practice of gender biased sex selection, in a piece first published in the Indian Express.   More

The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences (‘SRVAW’) issued a call for input and information on online violence against women – particularly on the manner in which legal frameworks, courts and intermediaries in different countries recognise online abuse and provide redressal mechanisms for the same. The Internet Democracy Project made a submission outlining India’s fairly comprehensive legal framework for online abuse. We believe that the focus of all stakeholders should not be on the creation of more laws to address online abuse, since such an approach disregards the influence of prevailing social norms on the interpretation and implementation of laws in India. We therefore, made suggestions for the adoption of more non-legal measures instead.   More