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CIS FY 2024-25 Financials

Admin — 2025-12-22T03:14:40Z

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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

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nivas — 2025-05-27T00:45:02Z

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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