🥇If There’s One Story To Read Today “This Is About Our Ability to Freely Express Ourselves” It’s Republic Day today and we’re commemorating 74 years of India’s remarkable Constitution. The Constitution recognised our right to free speech, which allows us to uninhibitedly write this newsletter for you everyday. That’s a right worth preserving. But, over the years, India’s laws—and politicians’ hubris—have made exercising this right more difficult than needed. The latest entrant: the Indian government’s proposal to outlaw platforms from hosting information its agencies have fact-checked to be ‘false’. The concerns and questions are obvious. Can we trust the government to not censor inconvenient news by calling it ‘fake’? Will the government exercise these powers in a limited way? Has it ever exercised its censorship powers judiciously? We spoke to experts to find out how the amendment challenges “our ability to freely express ourselves, exchange information, have a healthy debate about disagreements and preserve democracy.” 74 years down the line, there’s much more work to be done to remind the government that Indians have rights. [Read] Click here to subscribe to MediaNama Daily and receive the best of tech policy in your inbox. 🗓 Your Tech Policy Agenda Who’s who? The Quantum Hub and Centre for Policy Research are organizing a roundtable discussion on "Intermediary Classification in India" on February 7, 2023. This is a hybrid event. Register here. For Delhi folks: India International Centre is holding a national conclave on ‘Data for Development: Actionable Data for Actionable Insights’ on…
