When the report of the Rajya Sabha committee to "study the alarming issue of pornography on social media and its effects on children and society” was presented before India’s upper house of Parliament this February 3, 29-year-old Berlin-based Dr Feroza Sanjana (pictured) was one of the team that drafted the report. "I was assigned the task which was overseen by Dr Amol 
Deshmukh of the HERD Education and Medical Research Foundation in Nagpur,” she told Parsiana on March 18, 2020. Her role required the conduct of "preliminary legal and policy research, review international practices and examine whether India’s existing laws and technological measures were adequate.” Recommendations were included in the report, she wrote in an email.
The cross-party committee charged with the study of the menace of child pornography included members of parliament Prof Rajeev Gowda, Jairam Ramesh, Dr Amar Patnaik and Jaya Bachchan, among others. The members organized meetings with the union ministries for women and child development, electronics and information technology, and home affairs. Bodies like the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India were included in the committee’s deliberations. They also "invited (online platforms) Google, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Sharechat to provide their position... It was also my responsibility to synthesize and incorporate their analy-ses,” wrote Sanjana. "It is now up to the ministries to take the recommendations further,” she stated.
She obtained her doctorate from Freie University, Berlin in November 2019, on "explaining the puzzling popularity of bilateral investment treaties among developing countries, despite these treaties having serious costs for them.” According to Sanjana, these treaties have come into focus in recent times owing to some controversial dispute settlement clauses. Her thesis "argued for a more rigorous evidence based approach to policy making,” she wrote. Sanjana conducted her field work in Brazil and Chile. Her curriculum vitae refers to a stint as a research scholar at Stanford University on a full grant fellowship. She has degrees in politics and philosophy from the London School of Economics and the School for Oriental and African Studies.
Born in Delhi to Vindhya and Jimmy Sanjana, she schooled at Nagpur before completing her masters in mass communications from Bombay’s St Xavier’s College. Her parents and grandparents Rati and Rusi Sanjana live in Nagpur too.
Sanjana tied the knot with Christopher Wippe, who she "knew for many years,” in Germany on September 12.
Dilnavaz E. Bhagwagar