By Osama Manzar Osama Manzar is founder and director of Digital Empowerment Foundation. He is also Board Advisor to Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) of World Wide Web Foundation. For a decade, with the rapid digitalisation across sectors, we have been talking about digital inclusion and exclusion, but it was only when the Covid-19 induced…
Krishna Ram lives with his wife in Barmer, Rajasthan. He has no children and has already been retired for a year and so. There were mistakes in his Aadhaar card, because of which he was not able to receive his pension. Since the problem were beyond his understanding, he had already given up on this…
I, Lakshmi, belong to Alwar district in Rajasthan. I do stitching work to feed my family, me and my husband are not educated enough to understand English. Last week, my husband bought a smart phone on which we do nothing more than listening songs, YouTube browsing and watching serials. One fortunate evening, Poonam came to…
A Life Changing Journey Lockdown caused by Covid-19 crisis has resulted in reverse migration of unprecedented nature and scale. The situation has given rise to social and economical challenges that has impacted all sections of the society in urban and rural India, and will lead to further deterioration if it is not understood well and…
Diverse colours of threads that not so long ago adorned the streets every morning have stopped appearing. People singing and the sounds of the looms working is getting fainter by the day. Hundreds of looms have paused and the condition of weavers and artisans is deteriorating. “Essential items have become costlier. Now, getting food is…
The global healthcare crisis has led to the decline of multiple sectors across countries and communities. Stories about families unable to perform last rights, hospitals reaching patient capacity, unavailability of hospital beds, exhausted and overworked healthcare workers, migrants travelling long distances to reach home, among gut wrenching incidents of apathy have made our realities somber.…
By ASHEEF IQUBBAL Asheef Iqubbal is a research executive at New Delhi’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, which works on digital development, access, and digital rights. It has been more than two years since Manisha Devi, 35, applied for a correction in her ration card, the document that 814 million Indians officially classified as poor must have…
COVID-19 has posed one of the biggest challenges across the globe. Almost every country has been under lockdown to prevent its infection and following the social distancing norm. In India too, the lockdown was announced by the Central Government in different phases from March 25, 2020 onwards, which is now being continued by the state…
Lakme Fashion Week has launched a campaign- All About India- to showcase stories that portray resilience and the desire to innovate to combat tough times. In this phase of the campaign, they will highlight artisans and their work towards making self-protective masks for the masses. The aim is to highlight how they form the backbone…
Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence–powered virtual assistant developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home device. Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations. DEF has partnered with Google and have Selected Assistant Community Leads (ACLs) to drive digital literacy initiative with access to information with Google Assistant. “Assistant Community Leads…