Pandemic: A Wake-Up-Call to Fact Checking
Risk Communication and Community Engagement is a project by DEF that has actively intervened in dealing with the pandemic at the village level by creating awareness about the precautions and busting the myths. In this regard, the youth of the village have proved to be great carriers of the message who have engaged to help their community understand the social and health related aspects around COVID-19. The centre coordinator, Sunita Nishad from Raipur district, shares, “By involving the youth of the village through the youth club, the misconceptions related to the vaccine measures to avoid COVID-19 were cleared in the community. Wide public awareness on these subjects was made possible by training and authenticated information provided by the organisation. Read More

Commodified Digitalisation in Education
Last month, the government of Andhra Pradesh signed an MOU with the edtech giant BYJU's, to have their online courses integrated into the AP school system, as well as signing them on to develop curriculum for schools in the state. State CM Jagan Mohan Reddy claims that the initiative is set to be an equaliser, as the content is already available to children from private schools and others who could afford it- only that it comes at a hefty pricetag of Rs 25,000 per year, something out of the reach of most. Now, it will be available to government school students for free. Further, the government also to give tabs so that digital experience and digital knowledge is available to the children,” he said. It is not just Andhra. The former education minister of Maharashtra, before the fall of the Maha Vikas Aghadi, Adithya Thackarey had also signed an MOU with BYJU's for their state. Read More

Tales from Community Networks
How do people at the margins get ensured of connectivity? This is something we at Digital Empowerment Foundation have been working on since 2002, and our work goes well beyond advocacy. Every year, DEF co-hosts an Annual conference, the Community Networks Xchange, where experts, policymakers, stakeholders on the ground, and civil society gather in discussing how community networks (CNs) can be deployed efficiently in providing last mile connectivity. For a brief on CNs, this earlier chapter of TypeRight goes into it in detail: With the state moving away from public utilities including transportation, communication and education and handing them over to the private sector, there is little profit or 'RoI' to be gained by investing in connectivity in these geographic and societal margins. Read More

The assault on disinformation fighters and relentless efforts for digital inclusion
When last week's chapter was about to be published, the news had just broken out of the arrest of India's known fact-checker, journalist, and co-founder of Alt-News, Muhammed Zubair. Since then, the story has further developed, revealing a lot of problems with democracy, and privacy that companies promise. Zubair's arrest then was on charges of insulting religious sentiments, for a 2018 tweet which was a screenshot from an even older movie, reported and complained by a twitter account that was less than a year old. The account that reported it, reported to become non-existent; but again reemerged. Further adding to the controversy, as the hearing for Zubair's bail was being held in court, the Police seems to have leaked the order to the media much before its actual declaration. Read More

This is an excerpt from the book The New Normal: How to Survive a New World Order. In the months following the ‘lockdown’ there has been a spurt of webinars discussing what it is that the judiciary will have to do in a post-Covid world; how technology can be used to get the process of administration of justice as close to ‘digital’ as possible. Whether it is the judiciary or any other sector when we talk about adjusting with a ‘post-Covid’ world what we mean is that since Covid-19 has made physical human proximity, especially in large groups, fatal in the worst-case scenario and inconvenient in the best-case scenario, how do we carry on with equal efficiency without such gatherings. We naturally turn to technology and ‘digital’ for answers. Read More

Kalapuri collaborates with roughly 150 female artisans in the thriving village of Yalgud, some 30 kilometres from Kolhapur, to create imitation jewellery inspired by traditional Maharashtrian designs. The women have a great deal of expertise and curiosity to learn new things. Majority of them are from the Jain community with sound financial background. Some are pursuing their higher education, some have already earned bachelor’s degrees, and most have completed their 12th grade. Aishwarya Patil, one of the cohort members, is pursuing a PhD in nanotechnology. They view craft through the lens of social agency and independence and had the same perspective towards the Digital Literacy training by Creative Dignity (CD) and Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF). Though the majority of them belong to households with smartphones, they have never had access to them because; either the men in the family didn’t think they were necessary or the women lacked the knowhow. This has forced women to rely on family members to be able to use the technology. Hence we had the belief that their confidence, self-worth, and merit would increase manifold as they learned more about the digital world. From June 21 to June 24, 2022, 25 to 30 women craftsmen in Yalgud received the contextual digital literacy training under Mr.Vikas Bhalerao from DEF, supported by Mr. Raju Bhagoji and Mr. Shridhar Vaidya from team Kalapuri. Bhakti Tirthani, from CD was there to learn and experience the training with the artisans, understand how they were grasping things, what the challenges were,to solve doubts and speak about modules like photography, catalogue making, using social media, etc. when required. Following brief introductions on the first day, the women showed us their new Common Facility Centre (CFC)... Read More