Center for New Economics Studies

Last time, we asked what you agreed to. This time, we follow the money. Well, the data. Okay, both.

That "I Agree" tap doesn't just disappear into the void. It sets off a whole journey: your data gets passed around, packaged, and sold, and you're never invited to the after-party. In this episode, Prof. Aneesha Dev and Sahasra trace where your data actually goes, what consent really means when it's a pop-up you dismiss in half a second, and what that click ends up costing you.

We also go deeper on data brokers, the industry that profits off your digital footprint and has somehow stayed weirdly quiet about it. Why is it so silent? Who benefits from that? And what does it mean for the rest of us? Spoiler: not great, but we've got receipts.

Then we get into the Kunal Kamra case and the Fact Check Units: what happens when the government gets to decide what counts as "misinformation" about itself, and can direct platforms to take content down. Think POFMA, but make it desi. Referee and player, same jersey.

But we don't leave you spiralling. We end on the fix. Your UPI payment is guarded like the crown jewels, while your personal data gets a "we value your privacy" banner and good vibes. Why is money held to a gold standard and privacy isn't? What if we moved privacy into the same bucket? We make the case that we can, and that there's still hope for the state to show up on the right side of this one.

Press play before your next "accept all."

🎧 New episode out now.

You tap "I Agree" without reading it, every single time. We all do. Champions of informed consent, honestly. But this episode is about what that one tap actually hands over; and it's more than you'd think.

In this episode, Prof. Aneesha Dev sits down with Sahasra and they get into who's really deciding what you see, what you believe, and what you're allowed to say online. These are people and entities you definitely didn't vote for. Like the one guy who bought a website and somehow rewired the internet for 500 million people overnight. No big deal.

We talk about why reporting harassment online feels like shouting into the void, while getting flagged yourself happens at the speed of light. We get into the billion-dollar data broker industry that knows an unsettling amount about you and has never once introduced itself. And we talk about the cookie banner that makes "accept all" one click and "manage preferences" a six-click maze. A design choice, definitely not an accident.

We also unpack the Kunal Kamra case: what happens when the government gets to be both the referee and the player in deciding what counts as "fake news" about itself.

No boring lecture energy. Just the stuff worth knowing before you tap "Agree" for the 400th time this month.

🎧 New episode out now.

In this episode of Vichaar, we speak with Swetha C Sudhakar, Founder and Director of Born2Win Social Welfare Trust, Chennai, one of India's most concrete examples of trans-led welfare work in action. From chronic underfunding and the failures of the Garima Greh scheme to the gap between Pride Month MoUs and genuine workplace inclusion, Swetha takes us through what it actually means to build economic dignity for transgender individuals from the ground up and why welfare designed outside the community will never serve the community.

In this episode of Azaad Awaaz's Vichaar, we sit down with Prof. Sayantan Datta, a transfeminine genderfluid academic and writer, to talk about the messy, urgent realities of gender identity in India today. From the personal lens shaped by their own lived experience to the socially constructed nature of gender itself, Prof. Datta reflects on how far or how little the transgender rights movement has come since their landmark piece on 'sexed' brains nearly a decade ago, unpacking the gap between constitutional promise and everyday exclusion in education, healthcare, and employment, the politics of mandatory medical procedures under the Trans Bill, and why any real conversation on trans rights has to reckon with caste, class, disability, and region. A candid layered conversation on identity, exclusion, and what justice actually requires. Tune in!

Exams, friendships, and Career - where does mental well-being fit into this or it is simply neglected?

In this episode, our host, Parth sits down with Dr. Vaishali Miglani, Team Lead Psychiatrist at Sukoon, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, to talk about something every college student feels but rarely has words for - the Exam-Social-Job Triangle.

Three pressures that are each considered completely normal, yet combine into one very real, very physical reaction.

We ask the questions nobody usually asks out loud. What does hustle culture silently do to a young mind? When does "I'm just stressed" actually become a clinical signal your body is sending you? And what is the one thing you can do tonight, at 1 AM, when everything feels like too much?

This one is for every college student who has convinced themselves, and everyone around them, that they are doing just fine. Watch till the end. This conversation might name something you've been carrying for a long time.

In this episode of Interlinked, hosts Chanakya and Aaliyah sit down with Professor Ish Maini, an interdisciplinary researcher, legal consultant, and storyteller to explore one of the most quietly radical tensions in human experience: the gap between what language promises and what it can never fully deliver.

We examine how the precision of law and the fluidity of storytelling pull in opposite directions, and what falls through the cracks between them. Professor Maini brings his view as both a lawyer and a writer to questions about silence, noise, and the ‘unspoken’ asking whether hesitation, rhythm, and the spaces between words carry more truth than the sentences themselves.

From how law constructs consent rather than capturing it, to how digital archives can be erased overnight as a new form of silencing, this episode challenges the assumption that cleaner language means clearer meaning.

Join us for a conversation that sits at the intersection of linguistic theory, legal philosophy, and the politics of storytelling and asks why the most important things we say are often the ones standard grammar simply cannot handle.

What happens when someone who’s spent their entire career performing decides to write about their own life? Before Instagram, before personal branding, and before “curated authenticity” became part of our vocabulary, we read autobiographies. This episode, featuring Ms. Meghna Gangadharan, dives into the autobiographies Indian actresses, more specifically - Hansa Wadkar, Zohra Segal, and Madhur Jaffrey - to explore how they documented themselves on the page. We discuss how these women used their autobiographies not as honest confessions, but as carefully crafted performances of selfhood, managing public image while navigating the moral scrutiny faced by actresses in 20th-century India. We invite you to a thought-provoking conversation about celebrity, gender, authenticity, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

In this episode of Vichaar, we speak with Kiran Moghe, a trade unionist and long-time labour activist associated with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). Drawing from decades of work with organisations such as the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and the Pune Zilla Ghar Kamgar Sanghatna, Moghe reflects on the structural invisibility of domestic workers, the stigma attached to their labour and the systemic interests that subsidise care work for households and the state alike.

The discussion traces the pathways that push women into domestic work—from rural distress and limited education to the perceived flexibility and relative stability of urban employment—while exposing the everyday vulnerabilities they face, including long working hours, lack of leave, false accusations and the absence of social security. Moghe also highlights the challenges of unionising an unorganised, household-based workforce and the persistent shift in state policy from recognising workers’ rights to distributing welfare benefits. Ultimately, the conversation argues for the urgent need to regulate domestic work as work—bringing dignity, rights, and accountability into the intimate economies of care.

This episode of InterLinked to delves into the importance of the role of films in telling stories of truth in India. In discussion with Professor Nalamala Chandra Bhanu Murthy, the director of the upcoming movie “Bharathapuram”, a story based on the caste atrocities in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in the 1980’s, the episode looks at what telling a historical story through art in India may look like. In a country where oppression is often suppressed, art becomes of tremendous importance in conveying stories otherwise not told by society. The making of this art, be it of any kind, is therefore the theme of this episode.

What do you do when educated, urban, and supposedly progressive people your age say things that are deeply sexist, casteist, or homophobic? How do you respond when the very people who claim to support equality are the ones reinforcing oppression?

In this episode, I share real statements from 18-21 year olds that left me speechless. Dr. Sindhu Rajasekaran, scholar, author of the bestseller Smashing the Patriarchy and her latest book Forbidden Desires, and curator of The Subjective Space, helps me understand where these beliefs come from and, more importantly, how to respond to them. We go beyond just criticizing what’s wrong and focus on practical questions: How do you actually challenge someone when they say something harmful? What do you do when it’s a professor or someone with power over you? And how do you keep fighting when the person saying these things is someone you love?

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion on rape, caste-based violence including untouchability, homophobia, and stigmatization of sex workers.