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CIS FY 2024-25 Financials

Admin — 2025-12-22T03:14:40Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/reports/cis-fy-2024-25-financials

Unrecognised-and-Vulnerable-Social-Protection-pdf

pranav — 2025-06-18T13:06:15Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/unrecognised-and-vulnerable-social-protection-pdf

Unrecognised and Vulnerable: Reviewing social protection instruments for platform workers

Chetna V M and Chiara Furtado — 2025-06-18T13:20:10Z

In this issue brief, Chetna V M and Chiara Furtado reflect on developments in social protection for platform workers in India, issues of exclusions and insufficient coverage for workers, and tensions between existing social protection instruments and the call for labour rights-affirming protections for platform workers.

Platform work is often touted by industry and the state as a form of aspirational employment and opportunity. However, behind this promise lies exploitative working conditions, safety concerns, high operational costs, and inadequate earnings. A key concern is the denial of employment protections, as platform companies are notorious for evading their responsibility by classifying platform workers as “partners” or “micro-entrepreneurs” rather than employees. There has been growing pressure from platform workers’ unions, workers’ collectives, and civil society in the past several years towards recognising and securing platform workers’ rights. This has resulted in steps taken by both governments and platform companies—although substantially limited—to extend social security benefits to platform workers. Currently, in India, social protection instruments available to platform workers are ad-hoc and fragmented across various government and platform initiatives.

This issue brief offers an overview of the various social protection instruments for platform workers designed by governments and platform companies. It highlights exclusions of platform workers in key social protection benefits, discusses challenges in accessing eligible social protections, reveals the insidious role of the design of social protection instruments in denying the legal employment recognition of platform workers. Finally, the brief foregrounds longstanding and unmet demands by platform workers and unions on critical social protections. The social protection instruments discussed in this brief include government responses including the Code on Social Security and the E-Shram portal, the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, state-level legislation, as well platform-specific initiatives.

Read the full issue brief here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/unrecognised-and-vulnerable-reviewing-social-protection-instruments-for-platform-workers

How Concentration Kills Innovation: A Round Table on Investing and Innovating in the Age of Big Tech

Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri — 2025-04-29T16:27:18Z

We are at the cusp of pivotal technological transformation – driven by rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence, computing, robotics, biotechnology, and digital infrastructure, including the next generation of communication technologies. India aspires to be one of the leaders in this technological age, with ambitions of achieving a US$1 trillion digital economy in the near future, and domestic startups are anticipated to be a major driving force behind achieving this milestone and as such have been instrumental in ushering investments from state and market actors, alike.

At the same time, AI continues to ride a wave of popularity fuelled by a surge in corporate investment, an increase in M&A activity, and aggressive hiring strategy. Over the past three years, AI has emerged as the most hyped popular ‘innovation’ of our times, driven largely by the emergence and rapid adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as Open AI’s GPT and Meta’s Llama. Even though, at first glance, AI was touted to disrupt the Big Tech dominance and create a vibrant competitive landscape, it is hard to imagine current AI systems without the Big Tech.

These phenomena of market consolidation and Big Tech dependence raises some important concerns for all involved, but most pertinently for entrepreneurs and investors – who form the core constituency of today’s digital revolution. Some of these concerns reflect the funders’ sectoral interests, and how their choices are affected by the Big Tech’s market consolidation. Other issues relate to the outcomes of these choices, and whether the current arc of innovation excludes, or even harms, certain stakeholders.

To this end, Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri – with research assistance from Girish Chandra and Ayush Menon – conducted an analysis of the three seasons of Shark Tank India, and organised an online roundtable discussion with entrepreneurs, investors, and market researchers. Their analysis, and the subsequent roundtable, aimed to answer the following key questions

How does the startup ecosystem’s dependence on Big Tech affect i) how entrepreneurs think about innovation, and ii) how investors think about funding?
How can regulation be channelled to facilitate innovation in this context?
What role do mergers, acquisitions, and investments play in killing market competition?
Since ‘innovativeness’ remains a subjective concept, what kinds of metrics (proxy or otherwise) does the startup ecosystem usually rely on to identify innovative ideas?

You can read through their findings and key learnings from the roundtable here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/how-concentration-kills-innovation-a-round-table-on-investing-and-innovating-in-the-age-of-big-tech

Concentration and Innovation Roundtable Discussion Note

Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri — 2025-04-29T16:18:31Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/files/concentration-and-innovation-roundtable-discussion-note

Mapping the Legal and Regulatory Frameworks of the Ad-Tech Ecosystem in India

vipul — 2025-04-24T14:52:29Z

The main purpose of regulations in any sector is essentially twofold, one is to ensure that the interests of the general public or consumers are protected, and the other is to ensure that the sector itself flourishes and grows. Too much regulation may possibly stifle the commercial potential of any sector, whereas too little regulation runs the risk of leaving consumers vulnerable to harmful practices.

In this paper, we try to map the legal and regulatory framework dealing with Advertising Technology (Adtech) in India as well as a few other leading jurisdictions. Our analysis is divided into three main parts, the first being general consumer regulations, which apply to all advertising irrespective of the media – to ensure that advertisements are not false or misleading and do not violate any laws of the country. This part also covers the consumer laws which are specific to malpractices in the technology sector such as Dark Patterns, Influencer based advertising, etc.

The second part of the paper covers data protection laws in India and how they are relevant for the Adtech industry. The Adtech industry requires and is based on the collection and processing of large amounts of data from the users. It is therefore important to discuss the data protection and consent requirements that have been laid out in the spate of recent data protection regulations, which have the potential to severely impact the Adtech industry.

The last part of the paper covers the competition angle of the Adtech industry. Like with social media intermediaries, the Adtech industry in the world is also dominated by two or three players and such a scenario always lends itself easily to anti-competitive practices. It is therefore imperative to examine the competition law framework to see whether the laws as they exist are robust enough to deal with any possible anti competitive practices that may be prevalent in the Adtech sector.

The research was reviewed by Pallavi Bedi, it can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mapping-the-legal-and-regulatory-frameworks-of-the-ad-tech-ecosystem-in-india

Mapping the Legal and Regulatory Frameworks of the Ad-Tech Ecosystem in India

vipul — 2025-04-24T14:21:25Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/mapping-the-legal-and-regulatory-frameworks-of-the-ad-tech-ecosystem-in-india

Explainer | Predatory Pricing

Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri — 2025-04-23T13:41:20Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/files/explainer-predatory-pricing.pdf

Emotional Contagion: Theorising the Role of Affect in COVID-19 Information Disorder

Yesha Tshering Paul and Amrita Sengupta — 2025-04-14T05:23:21Z

In this paper, we investigate the underexplored emotional drivers of information disorder, with a particular focus on how it manifested in COVID-19 misinformation in India. While "fake news" has received considerable attention for its impact on elections, marginalized communities, and public health, mainstream information disorder research does not sufficiently prioritise the underlying psychological factors that influence information trust.

By incorporating theoretical frameworks from psychology, sociology, and communication studies, we reveal the complex foundations of both the creation and consumption of misinformation. From this research, fear emerged as the predominant emotional driver in both the creation and consumption of misinformation, demonstrating how negative affective responses frequently override rational analysis during crises. Our findings suggest that effective interventions must address these affective dimensions through tailored digital literacy programs, diversified information sources on online platforms, and expanded multimodal misinformation research opportunities in India.

Click to download the research paper

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/emotional-contagion-theorising-role-of-affect-in-covid-19-information-disorder

PDF - Emotional Contagion: Theorising the Role of Affect in COVID-19 Information Disorder

Yesha Tshering Paul and Amrita Sengupta — 2025-04-14T18:50:02Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/emotional-contagion.pdf

Whose Technology is it Anyway? An exploratory essay on the political economy of India's digital revolution

Abhineet Nayyar — 2025-04-11T15:42:41Z

The story of India's digital journey has become an oft-cited tale of economic success across the globe, inspiring similar experiments in other nations in the Global Majority world - most prominently across sub-Saharan Africa. At home, however, this tale has been used to rapidly normalise the deployment of digital technologies. In this process, these innovations have not just bolstered the state's control over individuals and their actions, but have also enabled the tech elite to extract more value from workers, small businesses, and even consumers.

In this exploratory essay, Abhineet reiterates that technology's presumed benefits are not, and have never quite been, an inevitable consequence of progress. By presenting a historical view of the industrial revolution and the green revolution, the piece instead shows that the outcomes of any innovation depend crucially on the choices made by the political and economic elite of the time. Consequently, to truly reflect the interests of the country's masses, the essay calls for India's digital revolution to also take this insight into account.

The central thesis of the essay is borrowed from Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson's 'Power and Progress', and its substantiation for the various historical moments is done through secondary material.

Click here to download the research

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/whose-technology-is-it-anyway-an-exploratory-essay-on-the-political-economy-of-indias-digital-revolution

Whose Technology is it Anyway?

Abhineet Nayyar — 2025-04-11T15:26:57Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/files/whose-technology-anyway

Emotional Contagion: Theorising the Role of Affect in COVID-19 Information Disorder

Yesha Tshering Paul and Amrita Sengupta — 2025-04-14T18:51:27Z

Click to download the research paper

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/emotional-contagion-theorising-role-of-affect-in-covid-19-information-disorder

Emotional Contagion: Theorising the Role of Affect in COVID-19 Information Disorder

Yesha Tshering Paul and Amrita Sengupta — 2025-04-14T10:51:56Z

Click to download the research paper

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/emotional-contagion-theorising-the-role-of-affect-in-covid-19

Navigating the Digitalisation of Finance: User experiences of risks and harms

2025-04-10T05:49:23Z

Our study unpacks the experiences of marginalised users navigating the digitalisation of finance. Through a survey of 3,784 users, 18 interviews and 7 focus group discussions, our study’s findings highlight user experiences of risks and harms while accessing digital financial services, unpacking experiences specifically of persons with disabilities, transgender persons, gender and sexual minorities, elderly persons, women, regional language-first users, and persons facing digital and economic vulnerabilities.

Read the full report here

Executive Summary

The last couple of decades have seen significant changes in the financial ecosystem in India, both within the fintech sector and with respect to digital financial inclusion. The rapid growth in the reach of banking services to previously unbanked citizens through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana has been followed by digitalisation in financial and public services.

However, a commensurate increase in digital and financial literacy has not followed, and rates of access to digital devices and the internet are still growing for many user groups, like rural women and regional language speakers. From the proliferation of fraudulent schemes and cybercrime to regulatory loopholes and inadequate consumer protections, the landscape of online financial services in India presents numerous risks. Factors such as weak cybersecurity measures, data breaches, lack of awareness among users, and the absence of comprehensive regulations create a fertile ground for financial scams. Simultaneously, rapid digitalisation of financial services, especially post demonetisation and the COVID-19 pandemic, has also brought to the fore concerns around omissions and exclusion of sections of users from databases, and a steep learning curve in adapting to this new digital ecosystem.

These combined factors open up users to a range of potential financial risks and harms, with differential impact on specific marginalised and vulnerable groups. With this understanding, we use the term digital financial harms to refer to adverse financial outcomes and other related detrimental consequences in the use of digital financial services.

Through this study, we aim to situate these experiences in a continuum of harms within a rapidly digitalising financial ecosystem. By exploring questions of access, accessibility and language we hope to bring aspects of cybersecurity, digital and financial literacy and design justice into conversation with each other. While some research has aimed to understand technology-facilitated gender based violence, financial fraud, misinformation, and other forms of digital risks in siloes, the correlations between these risks online remain severely understudied. In this report, we focus on the experiences of groups long marginalised within the financial system, to recommend that their needs are centred in shaping digital financial services.

Key questions guiding our research were:

How were digital financial risks understood and experienced by users of digital financial services across groups? What factors have amplified risks for marginalised and at-risk user groups?
What potential vulnerabilities, risks and harms have emerged relating to digital financial services around device and internet access, accessibility, challenges with use, exclusions from digitalised social protection, and forms of social engineering and digital financial fraud?
How accessible were digital financial service providers’ and governments’ reporting and grievance redressal systems?
What role should fintech platforms, social media platforms, banking and financial institutions, government, and regulatory bodies play in reducing digital financial risks across the ecosystem?

This was a mixed methods study, consisting of a review of available literature in the field, followed by quantitative and qualitative data collection through surveys and in-depth interviews. The report highlights the experiences of persons with disabilities, gender minorities, the elderly, low income users, and regional language first users; to better understand how discrimination, exclusion or slow redressal processes may increase their risk or cause disproportionate harm when using digital financial services. It discusses users’ experiences of fraud in the context of an evolving regulatory ecosystem, as well as practical challenges users face with redressal systems.

Key findings include:

Access to digital financial services, still requires improving access and accessibility of physical and phygital banking services, and good internet connectivity.
Even among mobile phone owners, many users still rely on shared devices, particularly among women and persons with disabilities.
There is a high need for support in utilising net banking services, with 60% of surveyed netbanking users mentioning that they sought help to conduct online banking transactions. Migrating to digital financial services is not a purely digital journey for users who are still building comfort with digital interfaces, or those whose languages are deprioritised in the development of digital financial platforms.
Age, gender, and income were significant factors in the access to the internet, and adoption of digital financial services. For instance, women and transgender persons over 45 years were less likely to have a Unified Payments Interface (UPI) account. Women, transgender persons, and disabled users of UPI were also more likely to be infrequent users compared to the rest of the sample.
Over reliance on digital platforms for the administration of direct benefit transfer programmes results in challenges and risks of exclusions for beneficiaries.
While awareness of common forms of fraud is high, awareness of security protocols, Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements and markers of trustworthy banking and non-banking institutions is low.
Irrespective of the amount of money lost during frauds, it caused significant financial and emotional burden, especially for low-income persons.
In the absence of monitoring frameworks, bad actors within the financial system are able to exploit vulnerabilities like the dependence of account holders on banking correspondents.
Gender and sexual minorities, and women face disproportionate impacts of harm in the event of financial loss, including the consequences of image-based sexual abuse, victim blaming, domestic violence and limits on financial independence.
Ineffective grievance redressal for cybercrimes is a major deterrent to reporting.
Digitalisation and the use of assistive technology have allowed some persons with visual impairments to gain relative levels of independence in managing their own finances and conducting transactions. However, implementation of accessibility policies and features remains uneven, and is marred by the continued exclusion and discrimination within traditional banking services.

Based on these findings, this report offers a set of recommendations addressed to stakeholders within the financial ecosystem such as banking and other financial institutions, regulatory bodies, fintech companies, cybersecurity professionals, as well as social media platforms and civil society organisations working on digital inclusion, safety and literacy. The recommendations offer nuanced perspectives on how digital financial harms can be prevented and mitigated based on our interactions with various stakeholders during the research process.

Key recommendations emerging from the study are:

Create meaningful connectivity and access to digital platforms by improving public infrastructure and addressing the challenges associated with shared devices and mediated use.
Improve platform design to engender trust; increase accessibility and usability through assessment and better implementation of available technologies, regular design audits and facilitate availability in Indian languages.
Building awareness and capacity across user and stakeholder groups through customised and inclusive programming, working in partnership with communities.
Centre consumer protection in regulatory interventions and approaches to law enforcement, by implementing robust time-sensitive reporting and redressal mechanisms, placing accountability on financial institutions, and monitoring and curbing fraudulent activity.
Encourage transparent governance and public oversight by measuring and evaluating digital public infrastructures to maximise their public value.

Contributors

Research design and/or report writing: Amrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Vipul Kharbanda

Research advice and/or review: Antara Rai Chowdhury, Janaki Srinivasan, Nayantara Sarma, Palak Gadhiya, Pallavi Bedi, Sameet Panda, Semanti Chakladar, Shashidhar K J, Shweta Mohandas, and Taranga Sriraman

Research and/or data analysis support: Chetna V M, Pallavi Krishnappa, and Yesha Tshering Paul

Data analysis: Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, and Nishkala Sekhar

Research tool translation: Aravind R (Kannada), Balaji J (Tamil), Bhaskar Bhuyan (Assamese), Nettime Sujata (Bangla), and Suresh Khole (Marathi)

Research tool pilots: Raveenaben (Megha Cooperative, SEWA), Sunaben (Megha Cooperative, SEWA), and Raja Mouli N

Data collection (survey): D-Cor Consulting

Data collection (focus group discussions): D-Cor Consulting; Jnana Prabodhini, Pune; Transgender Rights Association, Chennai; and Subodh Kulkarni

This work is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/navigating-the-digitalisation-of-finance