The idea behind the annual IIIT-D Digital Delhi Conclave is a simple one: to create a public platform to discuss the evolution of information technology and its implications for sustainable development of the national capital region.
As an institution recognised for its cutting-edge research and teaching in information technology, we are very well placed to initiate fresh dialogue around the rise of information technology and how they can contribute to fulfilling key sustainable development goals (SDGs) in urban India, especially in Delhi. Moreover, as a public institution, located in the heart of this bustling India’s largest metropolis, we see our role as an agenda setter for issues of AI and IT and how they related to the key sustainable development goals (SDGs) for our shared future.
In the 2019 inaugural edition of IIIT-Delhi's Digital Delhi Conclave the theme was health for all. The conclave brought together industry leaders, national and international technology and AI developers, public intellectuals, government officials and policymakers.
In the second edition we plan to go a step further and also aim to invite the best and brightest of academic thinkers, ranging from a host of technology, science and humanities disciplines, and promote networking opportunities to develop new pathways to achieve Delhi’s sustainable development goals.
The agenda for this year’s annual conclave revolves around the theme of sustainable cities and communities in the national capital. In the daylong event, hosted online and spanning across various media channels and webpage of IIIT-Delhi, we aim to bring together academics, technologists and social policy and development experts to deliberate and showcase themes concerning the role of IT in Delhi’s sustainable future.
The Developing DiverCities is a workshop that will introduce participants to the DiverCity Web Archive initiated at the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The unique online project is built around an interactive website(http://divercity.tiss.edu) that hosts a group of compact online archives which allow the users to access and explore a particular issue or theme through different perspectives and materials produced and curated collaboratively by the students and faculty.
In the workshop participants will learn how to develop similar archives for Delhi and understand the value of developing projects that actively seeks to resist the politics of forgetting central to the realisation of the project of creating a homogenised and sanitised ‘world-class’ city at the expense of its vulnerable communities and their histories and their geographies.
Smart Cities are the future and smart cities are fueled by data. However, data is sensitive and requires carefully calibration of methodology to protect the interests of residents of Smart Cities from threats. This talk engages with issues of data protection, data access and control and its implications for the smart city project.
From the time that modern industry came to India, there also grew a concern around the pollution of air. In part, this was for aesthetic reasons, with the imperial administrative elite keen to ensure that Oriental cities did not look and feel like English industrial towns. In time, an emerging Indian middle class also took up the challenge of ensuring pollution free cities, prompted as much by health concerns as by notions of economic efficiency. My presentation shall look at the articulation of these concerns over time and the technological options that have been periodically proposed to deal with the issue. The first part of the presentation shall look at air pollution and its proposed solutions in colonial cities - greater use of electricity, better design of chimneys that could disperse smoke at a height and use of better combustion engines. The second part shall look at more recent interventions, from the choice of alternative fuels for transport to the proposal for smog towers. Through all this I shall seek to underline the social nature of technological choices made towards the management of urban air.
This panel focuses on urban mobility in Delhi and explores the patterns and consequences of introduction of digital infrastructure in the sphere of urban mobility. Mobility, its unique character and pace shapes the urban space and community. Frequency, density and pace of movement of goods and people in urban spaces shape the experience of the urban. How the urban space and community integrates certain kinds of movement in its planning, how mobility planning in urban spaces needs to negotiates with community resilience, how people move from one place to another in a city, what is the economy of urban mobility, are all questions that can help shape our understanding of the urban space better. Since the logic that shapes transportation infrastructure, also defines the ways in which communities navigate and negotiate the urban space, it is central to the organisation of urban communities.
The worsening quality of air in the city, peaking during the onset of winter, remains a curious subject- one which led to much furore but has not translated into wide social or political change on the ground. As a public good, the quality of air is presumed to affect everyone equally and consequently support for improving its quality is presumed to be unanimous. However, the past few years have highlighted the conflictual terrain of measuring, studying and legislating on air. Disputes on the primary source, the unequal consequences of air pollution, and social tensions that shape legislation indicate that pollution is an issue that requires wider and collaborative consideration. The panel brings together experts from domains of technology, social science and policy to discuss the problems but also the possibilities present in thinking through the current crisis of pollution.
