Body Politics

Reclaiming our data bodies from the matrix of capital requires us to move beyond a narrow focus on the protection of sensitive personal data towards a feminist data sovereignty approach

 Life account of Manipuri indigenous transgender Shamans. Podcast by Santa Khurai.

Increase in domestic violence, lay-offs, care responsibilities, restrictions on domestic and international movement, economic insecurities, psychological burdens - these are just a few of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in Asia in the last two years. The gendered nature of COVID-19 impacts is obvious and has sparked large feminist responses in the region.

References of trans masculine identities in Indian traditional and mythological stories, though not as recurrent compared with trans feminine identities, did exist

This article looks at the datafication of gender and sexual minorities in different manners, both by the Indian state and the private sector. In this article, the author explores how the state continues to control gender and sexual minorities even in the digital world by turning them into data using archaic understanding of gender and sexuality This article attempts to understand the reinforcement of the state's patriarchal values using a paternalistic approach to the welfare system and the private sector’s tricks to piggyback on the state.

This short piece focuses on sets of people in India whose bodies and desires are viewed as “deviant” – sexual or gender minorities (LGBTIAQ). Beginning with an overview of the ways people from these communities are viewed, the paper sketches some of the terrain covered by this young and vibrant movement and then touches upon some of the fault lines within the movement before concluding.

This article explores how State (data) systems in India are designed to surveil upon and certify the humanness of every transgender person in order to access their basic human rights. The intent is to understand the extent of this need to categorise and qualify human bodies within the binary genders and consequent the struggles and violations experienced by transgender persons, both online and offline.

Over the past few years, there has been a drive towards the digitisation of healthcare in India. Though policy frameworks have begun taking cognizance of this increasing datafication of health, they are responding to it within frameworks, which incentivise further datafication by considering health data to be a commodity. Recognising the intimate interconnections between our bodies and data through a feminist lens, an analysis of the health datafication in India through emerging developments under the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) ecosystem is done, with a focus on private health insurance companies, and the implications for the bodies and rights of patients.

Dr. Rima Ghosh speaks to Shalini Yog Shah about transgender people’s ordeals during the pandemic and what needs to be done.