Smriti Parsheera
About me
I am a lawyer and public policy researcher working on issues at the intersection of technology and society.
I am currently based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil as a Fellow with the CyberBRICS Project at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, a collaborative research project to study digital governance and transformation strategies in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries. Before this, I was involved in setting up and led the technology policy work at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), one of India's leading research institutions in the field of public economics and policy, from 2016-20.
My other policy engagements have included working as a researcher with the investigation unit of the Competition Commission of India, as a project officer in the Government of India -- UNDP Access to Justice Project, and a member of the research secretariat for the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission that was set up by India's Ministry of Finance between 2011-13.
I studied law at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and am currently pursuing a PhD at the School of Public Policy, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
smriti[dot]parsheera@gmail[dot]com
Twitter: @SmritiParsheera
Linkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/smrpar
Private and Controversial: When Public Health and Privacy Meet in India
Published by HarperCollins, January 2023
As the COVID-19 pandemic brought our world to a halt, it illustrated how actions taken for the management of a public health emergency – collection of health data, contact tracing, mandatory testing, vaccine passports, among others – can significantly affect individual liberty, dignity and privacy. This raised numerous questions about how to balance the state’s legitimate public-health interests with the privacy of its citizens.
Set against the backdrop of the recent pandemic, India’s rampant health digitalization initiatives and the ongoing debate on data protection, the essays in Private and Controversial highlight multiple tensions between the fields of public health and privacy. This includes issues of health data governance, reproductive rights, confidentiality rights of HIV-AIDS patients, and the role of community health workers.
As the editor of Private and Controversial I had the opportunity to bring together expert voices from a variety of fields including public health, law, economics, policy and administration, to discuss these issues.
This project was supported by a research grant from the Thakur Family Foundation.
To know more please visit the book's official page or click here for international orders.
