Network Economies
http://editors.cis-india.org
This cluster responds to the range of transformation and restructuring of the economy emerging with, and emergent with, the proliferation of internet and internet-mediated transactions. The term 'network,' in this case, refers to the following: 1) the connectivity (network) infrastructures that underlie and make possible this economy, 2) the economic power and implications of the 'network effect,' and 3) the assemblage of digital and non-digital components and actors that make possible the functioning of such economies. The issues we are interested in include but are not limited to 'sharing economy' and peer-to-peer transactions; digital labour, electronic commerce, and platform economies; digital money and mobile-based banking; and automation, robotics, and 'industry 4.0.'
daily12016-04-20T10:35:35ZParichiti - Domestic Workers’ Access to Secure Livelihoods in West Bengal
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/parichiti-domestic-workers-access-to-secure-livelihoods-west-bengal
<b>This report by Anchita Ghatak of Parichiti presents findings of a pilot study conducted by the author and colleagues to document the situation of women domestic workers (WDWs) in the lockdown and the initial stages of the lifting of restrictions. This study would not have been possible without the WDWs who agreed to be interviewed for this study and gave their time generously. We are grateful to Dr Abhijit Das of the Centre for Health and Social Justice for his advice and help. The report is edited by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, and this work forms a part of the CIS’s project on gender, welfare and surveillance supported by Privacy International, United Kingdom.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Domestic Workers’ Access to Secure Livelihoods in West Bengal: <a href="https://www.parichiti.org.in/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Final%20report_WDW_Lockdown.pdf" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Cross-posted from <a href="https://www.parichiti.org.in/r&p.php" target="_blank">Parichiti</a>.</h4>
<hr />
<h2>Executive Summary</h2>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of women from poor communities work as domestic workers in Kolkata. Domestic work is typically a precarious occupation, with very little recognition in legislation or policy. Along with other workers in the informal economy, women domestic workers (WDWs) were severely impacted by the national lockdown enforced in March, with loss of livelihood and few options for survival.</p>
<p>Parichiti works with WDWs in 20 different locations - slums and informal settlements in Kolkata and villages in south 24 Parganas. We conducted this pilot study from late June to August 2020 to document the situation of WDWs from March onwards, in the lockdown and the initial stages of lifting of restrictions. We interviewed 14 WDWs on the phone to record their experiences during the lockdown and after, including impact on livelihoods. The objectives of the study were to document the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the lives of WDWs, with focus on economic and health dimensions.</p>
<p>We found that most domestic workers in our sample were paid for March, but faced difficulties in procuring wages April onwards. During this period, they faced economic hardships that threatened their survival, with members of their family also involved in the informal sector and experiencing loss of wages. Workers survived on relief received through civil society or by taking loans from banks or informal lenders. Some are now stuck in a debt trap.</p>
<p>Most went back to work from June, but faced several barriers – public transport services continued to be dysfunctional, apartment complexes prohibited entry of outsiders, and employers were reluctant to allow workers into their homes. Employers were wary of workers if they were employed in multiple households or used public transport, forcing workers to adapt to these conditions. Due to these reasons, some workers lost their jobs permanently, while others returned with lower wages or lower number of employers. Workers were well aware of the precautions to be taken at the home and workplace with regards to Covid-19.</p>
<p>Many WDWs were unable to access ration through the Public Distribution System. Some were not enrolled and others were enrolled in the districts they had migrated from. Some were not classified as below the poverty line and were hence not priority households for the state, although they were ‘deserving’ beneficiaries. All of the respondents were affected by Cyclone Amphan, which devastated parts of the state in May 2020. Despite the announcement of a sizeable compensation by the state, those whose homes were impacted were unable to get any relief. WDWs overall tended to not rely on the state for welfare or health services. Many regarded public health systems to have poor quality services, and turned to private services when possible. Both central and state governments fell short of meeting the needs of WDWs during the pandemic, which could potentially have long-term impact on their income and health.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/parichiti-domestic-workers-access-to-secure-livelihoods-west-bengal'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/parichiti-domestic-workers-access-to-secure-livelihoods-west-bengal</a>
</p>
No publisherAnchita GhatakGig WorkResearchNetwork EconomiesPublicationsGender, Welfare, and PrivacyResearchers at Work2020-12-30T10:01:36ZBlog EntryDWRU, BBGS & MKU - The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Invisible Workers of the Household Economy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/dwru-bbgs-mku-covid19-invisible-household-workers
<b>Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRU), Bruhat Bangalore Gruhakarmika Sangha (BBGS), and Manegelasa Kaarmikara Union (MKU) have prepared a report on the invisibilisation of domestic workers under the Covid-19 pandemic and a set of demands directed at the government and resident welfare associations (RWAs) for better, dignified and just treatment of domestic workers in Karnataka. We at CIS are proud to contribute to and publish this work as part of the ongoing 'Feminist Internet Research Network' project supported by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Report: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/files/dwru-bbgs-mku-covid19-invisible-household-workers-report" target="_blank">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<p><em>This report is authored by Geeta Menon, and edited by Aayush Rathi (CIS) and Ambika Tandon (CIS).</em></p>
<hr />
<h3><strong>Introduction</strong></h3>
<p>Up until the first phase of the imposition of lockdown in India, while restrictions were enforced, domestic workers went to work as usual. Domestic workers were aware of the announcements of precautions, but the
employers insisted they come for work disregarding any concerns for workers' safety.</p>
<p>During the phase of strict imposition of the first lockdown, covering the time from March 24, 2020 to the first week of May, several corporate employees “worked from home”. While pictures of employers’ families spending family time, and learning to clean and cook, circulated widely on social media and in press, domestic workers lived in cramped conditions with the fear of rations running out.</p>
<p>In the first 2 weeks of May, a survey of nearly 2400 domestic workers in Bengaluru was conducted by Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRU), Bruhat Bangalore Gruhakarmika Sangha (BBGS), and Manegelasa Kaarmikara Union. Some of the findings from the survey are below:</p>
<ul><li>2084 (about 87%) of the workers were told not to come for work since the lockdown in March and were not sure if and when they would be called to work again.</li>
<li>341 workers in the areas surveyed by BBGS (87%) and 150 workers in the areas surveyed by Manegelasa Kaarmikara Union lost their jobs entirely during the lockdown.</li>
<li>91% of workers lost their salaries for the month of April.</li>
<li>50% of all workers above the age of 50 lost their jobs during the lockdown.</li></ul>
<p>The report also showcases the tyranny and hypocrisy of resident welfare associations (RWAs) and employers. The period of relaxation of the lockdown has again seen RWAs issuing directives that are demeaning to domestic workers and pose insurmountable barriers to domestic workers’ ability to work. For example, several RWAs issued emails advising residents to ask domestic workers to minimise or avoid usage of the lift and take the stairs instead. They also discouraged domestic workers from waiting in the common areas in between shifts. RWAs also invaded domestic workers’ privacy by mandating the disclosure of personal information without any protocols in place to keep this information secure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/dwru-bbgs-mku-covid19-invisible-household-workers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/dwru-bbgs-mku-covid19-invisible-household-workers</a>
</p>
No publisherGeeta MenonCovid19ResearchNetwork EconomiesResearchers at WorkDigital Domestic Work2020-06-19T12:34:22ZBlog EntryRoundtable on India’s Gig-work Economy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This roundtable discussion marks the end of our series on 'India’s Gig-work Economy' published by the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). In this discussion, the researchers reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for research on the topic. Listen to the audio track below or read the transcript for the full discussion.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on September 5, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Full <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/09/CASTAC-roundtable-transcript.docx" target="_blank">transcript</a> of the roundtable in English.</h4>
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<iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q4G4v46ZlOU" frameborder="0" height="315" width="100%"></iframe>
<h3><strong>Excerpts from the roundtable</strong></h3>
<h4>Part 1: On continuities between traditional and newer forms of work in cab-driving</h4>
<p><strong>Anushree (researcher, taxi-driving in Mumbai):</strong> “Something that came out during field work was the flow of workers from traditional services to app-based services which kind of happened in phases and all these platforms have played a different function in the history of this. While the radio taxis were more important in teaching workers to become professionals in the service economy the new platforms have given them a larger customer base and hired access to audience.”</p>
<p><strong>Sarah (researcher, taxi-driving in Delhi):</strong> “Prior to Ola and Uber there were radio cabs, but they were not the same phenomenon obviously. They used to work in specific pockets better, such as the airport route.”</p>
<h4>Part 2: Regulation of platform companies and platform-work</h4>
<p>The State’s response to disruptive technologies in India has always accounted for worker groups as electoral constituents as well. This means that there are no neat divisions between older black and yellow cabs and the newer ride-hailing app-based cabs. To pacify the threatened black and yellow cab drivers, they were accorded a special category on hailing apps as well:</p>
<p><strong>Anushree:</strong> So there were a lot of issues around the emergence of the app-based platforms and services and how they were disrupting the existing arrangements so in a bid to pacify the yellow and black cab drivers who are already operating in the city, these platform companies decided to go ahead and provide access to traditional taxi services as well. But also the related development that happened there is at the Maharashtra state government also provided another app to the black and yellow Cab drivers and as far as I found out during my fieldwork there hasn’t been any resolution on that front and most black and yellow cab drivers also use the State government made app but they also log into apps and every time I tried to book a black and yellow cab using Ola and Uber I could not get one.</p>
<h4>Part 3: On motivations and perceptions of gig-work</h4>
<p><strong>Simiran (researcher, food-delivery work in Mumbai):</strong> “So, I felt that these non app-based workers had difficulty joining apps because they lack domicile proof to prove they live in the city. There is also a perception that one needs to be English speaking. I am not implying that app-based workers have no rural roots or are all English speaking or educated but this is the perception that was held by non-app workers that was interesting.”</p>
<p><strong>Rajendra (researcher, food-delivery work in Delhi):</strong> “In case of the food-delivery workers in Delhi, they push them to deliver orders on time. This pressure makes them violate traffic rules, they ride on pavements, they break traffic signals. This also disrupts the social understanding of how to move in the city.”</p>
<h4>Part 4: On studying the gig-economy in India: how did you recruit, why?</h4>
<p><strong>Noopur:</strong> Why not order and recruit because so many people seem to be taking this pathway to approach gig-economy workers?</p>
<p><strong>Simiran:</strong> “…One thing is that I have never ordered food online so I wanted to keep it a bit blind that way but also the other thing is that I did not want my first interaction with the worker to be as a consumer or in a consumer-provider relationship. So, I was searching on Youtube, looking for city names and looking for search terms such as strikes or protests. Looking for videos about these things and their views on the companies…This was very interesting because there were also people from non-metro cities, from small towns doing this work who were also very eager to speak to me. They were expressive already and wanting to speak…”</p>
<p><strong>Anushree:</strong> “Apart from them fleet owners and union members were very eager to talk to us. They saw the study as a way to put their voice out. I had to establish my identity as well as a researcher. I used Telegram and facebook groups extensively…I think I relied on Telegram the most. It was also surprising that such a diverse set of people were on that platform. I had never used Telegram before this project but the comfort levels of all the people using it was really surprising. Drivers in the union members group was sort of surprising to me, they were posting images from the road, they were posting audio notes, they were moderating conversations in the group. Telegram was my major source of responses and I also got to know what was happening on the ground.”</p>
<p><strong>Sarah:</strong> “So, when you identify as a researcher and ask them these questions there is a certain expectation of allyship. So, I started asking them what they think is a good customer. That was a good entry point to assuring them that I was on their side. Some of them were still very cautious. We were talking about things like drunk women and they would be quick to tell me that not all women are bad. Or not all customers are bad. But discussing customers and their behavior was generally a good way to connect with them…”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/india-gig-work-economy-roundtable</a>
</p>
No publisherNoopur Raval, Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, and Simiran LalvaniGenderDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkFuture of WorkNetwork EconomiesResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:36:34ZBlog EntryFrom Health and Harassment to Income Security and Loans, India's Gig Workers Need Support
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/gig-workers-need-support
<b>Deemed an 'essential service' by most state governments, and thereby exempt from temporary suspension during the COVID-19 lockdown, food, groceries and other essential commodities have continued to be delivered by e-commerce companies and on-demand services. Actions to protect workers, who are taking on significant risks, have been far less forthcoming than those for customers. Zothan Mawii (Tandem Research), Aayush Rathi (CIS) and Ambika Tandon (CIS) spoke with the leaders of four workers' unions and labour researchers to identify recommended actions that public agencies and private companies may undertake to better support the urgent needs of gig workers in India. </b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by <a href="https://thewire.in/business/covid-19-lockdown-delivery-gig-workers" target="_blank">The Wire</a> on April 29, 2020.</em></p>
<hr />
<p>Nearly two weeks ago, news broke that a Zomato delivery worker <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/pizza-man-who-tested-covid-19-positive-also-delivered-food-for-us-zomato-6365513/" target="_blank">tested positive for COVID-19</a> in New Delhi.</p>
<p>As many as 72 families in the south Delhi neighbourhood where he made deliveries have been quarantined, along with 17 other people he worked with. With the luxury of social distancing not extended to delivery workers, the incident further fuelled the apprehensions and uncertainties that they already were contending with. This was only a matter of time.</p>
<p>Deemed an “essential service” by most state governments, and thereby exempt from temporary suspension during the lockdown, food, groceries and other essential commodities have continued to be delivered by e-commerce companies and on-demand services including Swiggy, Zomato, BigBasket, Dunzo, Housejoy and Flipkart.</p>
<p>In choosing to continue operations, these companies have then rushed to enforce measures to put customers at ease. Such measures have included no-contact deliveries, card-only payments, and displaying temperature readings of workers.</p>
<p>Uber and Ola Cabs suspended services in most areas, and announced that in places where they are <a href="https://www.livemint.com/news/india/covid-19-uber-to-offer-cabs-for-essential-services-11586077100965.html" target="_blank">providing essential services</a>, workers have been instructed to wear masks and observe hygiene standards.</p>
<p>Swiggy and Zomato announced they were communicating with workers about safety and hygiene standards. Zomato has more recently <a href="https://twitter.com/deepigoyal/status/1252844887797428230" target="_blank">announced</a> that the company is making the Aarogya Setu app mandatory for workers to receive orders.</p>
<p><a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/covid-19-zomato-sets-up-funds-for-income-starved-daily-wage-workers-in-india/articleshow/74823838.cms" target="_blank">Relief funds</a> have been set up— donations to these funds continue to be solicited from the public and company executives have made grandiose gestures of <a href="https://www.carandbike.com/news/ola-introduces-drive-the-driver-fund-initiative-to-fund-relief-for-driver-community-2201886" target="_blank">contributing their salaries</a> to these funds.</p>
<p><strong>Stark reality</strong></p>
<p>The situation on the ground, however, tells another story. Actions to protect workers, who are taking on significant risks, have been far less forthcoming than those for customers. Workers are also bearing the brunt of arbitrary surveillance measures, like being asked to download the Aarogya Setu app, in addition to scrutiny they are placed under regularly. No such surveillance measures have been placed on customers. The priorities of on-demand service companies are clear: protect the bottom line at the expense of vulnerable workers.</p>
<p>In the absence of any concerted support from the companies, service workers could have looked to the state for relief. None has been forthcoming. Government action has pegged the targeting of relief works and services to those currently eligible for welfare programs and registered under its various schemes. Most gig workers, if not all, are ineligible as a result of the arbitrary conditions underlying these schemes.</p>
<p>We spoke to the leaders of four unions — including the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and the Ola and Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association (OTU)– who represent gig workers across the country about the risks and vulnerabilities that they are having to contend with.</p>
<p>The precariousness characterising gig work could not be starker. A summary of the discussions can be found <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india" target="_blank">here</a>, while the recommendations emerging from these discussions have been shared with government officials and company representatives and can be found in full <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/covid-19-charter-of-recommendations" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p>Below are some of the key recommendations that emerged from these discussions.</p>
<p><strong>Health</strong></p>
<p>Many on-demand service companies have not provided workers with any personal protective equipment (PPE), not even to delivery workers who face heightened risks of exposure to the coronavirus at nearly every step of the delivery process.</p>
<p>Some unions had to take to distributing masks, while many other workers continue to incur repeated costs to safeguard their own health. At a later stage, Swiggy announced that workers would be reimbursed for these purchases, but the process is so tedious that workers have found it untenable.</p>
<p>In addition, health awareness campaigns regarding safety measures and risks were also launched very late into the crisis, and then were not in vernacular languages and could not be comprehended by most workers.</p>
<p>In terms of insurance, most platforms have announced financial assistance for workers who test positive for COVID-19. This is aimed at covering their hospital expenses, as well as providing a daily stipend for a limited period. However, these come short as there are no provisions for OPD consultations or even for the cost of going and getting tested (losing one day’s work and then potentially one more before the results come in).</p>
<p>Additionally, the difficulty and expenses of obtaining a test could place an additional burden on workers — as without proof of a positive test, workers will be unable to access this fund in the first place. This is far from the robust health insurance that must be provisioned to ensure workers’ health and safety. Some platforms have made telemedicine services available for workers and while this is a step in the right direction, it must be backed by more tangible protections like covering part of the costs incurred for treatment.</p>
<p>Unions demand that companies provide adequate PPE to workers free of cost —masks, gloves, hand sanitisers, and soap. If platforms continue to ask workers to log in at significant risks to themselves and their families, provision of safety equipment is the basic minimum requirement that must be met immediately. This should also include a plan to ensure workers’ access to clean and hygienic sanitation facilities, as they may not have access to these on their delivery routes.</p>
<p>In addition, platforms must provide health insurance cover in addition to accident insurance coverage and hospitalisation cover for COVID-19. This should include OPD consultations.</p>
<p><strong>Income security and social protection</strong></p>
<p>With services suspended or demand really low, gig workers have either lost their income or seen it fall drastically — delivery workers’ daily earnings are as low as Rs 150-Rs 300 for a full day’s work.</p>
<p>Almost a month into the lockdown, there is little clarity as to who is eligible for the funds that companies have raised, and in what manner and or what purposes it will be disbursed.</p>
<p>Ola Cabs has offered interest free loans to drivers for relief in the short term, while some Uber drivers have received a Rs 3,000 grant from the company. If disbursed universally this would ensure availability of some liquidity for workers, although at this stage it remains unclear if all drivers are eligible to receive the grant.</p>
<p>Workers and unions are afraid that this grant might only be accessible for workers with high ratings, or those who have logged longer hours especially through the course of the lockdown period. This would effectively penalise workers for going to their homes for the lockdown, or being otherwise unable to work. Unions have estimated that not more than 20 percent of workers continue to remain active through the lockdown period.</p>
<p>Moreover, research has shown that workers are not necessarily aware of the protections made available to them as a result of the legalese that companies couch these terms in.</p>
<p>To ensure income security, platforms must make direct cash transfers to all workers who have logged in for at least two weeks between January and April 2020. This should be fixed according to minimum wage standards for skilled work in each state or at Rs 1,000 per day of the lockdown, and will have to be enforced with retrospective effect.</p>
<p>The former should be treated as an entitlement of workers while a portion of the latter can be asked to be repaid by the workers over the course of the next year. The fiscal responsibility for the cash transfers can be shared with governments. Governments can request the data held by these companies for the transfers.</p>
<p><strong>Rent and loans</strong></p>
<p>Some states have announced moratoriums on house rent but again there is no explicit mention of gig workers being included in this — and in states where such a move hasn’t been announced, gig workers must continue to pay house rent without having a source of income to rely on.</p>
<p>On the issue of loan repayments, the RBI allowed lending institutions to grant a three-month moratorium on retail loan repayments as a part of its COVID-19 regulatory package. On the one hand, availing of the moratorium will significantly increase the loan tenure and total amount to be repaid. On the other, several gig workers have reported that the enforcement of the moratorium itself has been piecemeal outside of public sector institutions.</p>
<p>Here again they have to make a Faustian bargain. The government should enforce the RBI’s directive strictly so gig workers get some relief.</p>
<p>Further, several companies themselves have leased vehicles to workers, for which payment of EMI must be ceased through the months of March to May to allow workers some relief without requiring the return of vehicles. Currently, EMIs have only been stalled on the condition of returning vehicles.</p>
<p><strong>Harassment</strong></p>
<p>Workers have been subject to harassment and discrimination by the police and customers alike, making it difficult to continue work. Despite the categorisation of delivery as an essential service, companies are finding it difficult to get easy access to movement passes in bulk, which implies that workers are penalised by being unable to work even if they are available. Companies have come out to allege harassment despite clear directions to allow movement of delivery workers, which points to gaps in enforcement.</p>
<p>Further, frequent barricading has implied that workers are not able to complete orders without diversions despite having passes for movement. Meanwhile, companies continue to mandate door-to-door delivery so as to ensure that customers are not inconvenienced at all. In some cases, this has implied that workers have to travel on foot in barricaded areas to deliver orders.</p>
<p>We recommend that companies urgently set up a helpline for workers to address such issues that may arise in delivery. We also recommend that companies proactively work with the government to map hotspots and containment zones and cease delivery in such areas. Thus far, there is no indication of any such measures by companies.</p>
<p><strong>Post-lockdown revival</strong></p>
<p>The lockdown brings to the fore just how vulnerable gig workers are.</p>
<p>This is a direct consequence of the gig work arrangements structured as disguised employment. Deeming workers as independent contractors and self-identifying as technology providers, on-demand service companies have washed their hands of the responsibility of providing labour protections and social security measures despite exerting extensive control over the conditions of work (such as wages, incentives) and the manner of its dispensing (such as the standard of work, hours of work).</p>
<p>Governments, too, have done little to recognise gig workers although they have been added as a category of workers in the draft Social Security code. Relief measures announced by the government exclude them. However, the government needs to intervene urgently in the current situation.</p>
<p>Platforms are likely to recover once the lockdown is lifted —home delivery services like BigBasket and Grofers have already seen their businesses skyrocket.</p>
<p>However, there is an urgent need to rebuild on-demand work as one that isn’t merely in the service of capital. A first step to that would be to reduce commissions to 5% for at least 6 months so that workers can recover financially. The unencumbered spending to capture market share at the expense of workers needs to be curbed. Enforcing these recommendations will require a coordinated effort between governments and on-demand service companies. As consumers, it is also our responsibility to question companies that do not take on the moral responsibilities of extending adequate worker protections.</p>
<p>With unemployment in the country skyrocketing, it may be the case that on-demand work opens up avenues to securing work. It then becomes imperative to ensure any future of work is one that is inclusive and accounts for the systemic changes that are now impossible to ignore.</p>
<p>While social distancing is a choice truly available to a privileged few, we need to ensure that social protection isn’t.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/gig-workers-need-support'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/gig-workers-need-support</a>
</p>
No publisherZothan Mawii (Tandem Research), Aayush Rathi (CIS), and Ambika Tandon (CIS)Gig WorkDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesPublicationsResearchers at Work2020-05-19T06:57:36ZBlog EntryNoopur Raval and Rajendra Jadhav - Power Chronography of Food-Delivery Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/noopur-raval-rajendra-jadhav-power-chronography-of-food-delivery-work
<b> Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Noopur Raval and Rajendra Jadhav is the fourth among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC).</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on August 15, 2019.</em></p>
<p><em>The ethnographic research was conducted by Rajendra and this short essay was collaboratively produced by the field researcher and Noopur (co-PI). The accompanying audio recording has been produced by Noopur.</em></p>
<h4>Summary of the essay in Hindi: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPIfIvp2000" target="_blank">Audio</a> (YouTube) and <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/08/Rajendra-Hindi-Transcript-.docx" target="_blank">Transcript</a> (text)</h4>
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<p>This post presents the observations around the design of temporality within app-based food-delivery platforms in India. It draws on semi-structured interviews by field-researcher Rajendra and his time spent “hanging out” with food-delivery workers who are also often referred to as “hunger saviors” and “partners” in the platform ecosystem in India. Like in the <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/simiran-lalvani-workers-fictive-kinship-relations-app-based-food-delivery-mumbai" target="_blank">earlier post by Simiran Lalvani</a> on food-delivery workers in Mumbai, we also observed that app-based work was structured and monitored along similar lines. However, in this post, we go into a detailed description of how work-time and temporality of work are configured in order to fulfill the promises that app companies make to customers in urban India. Before such app-based services came into existence, there were some popular claims around delivery-time (“30 minutes or free pizza” by Domino’s) but the entire process of food preparation, travel and delivery had not been made as transparent and quantified in a granular way as they are now through popular apps such as Swiggy, Zomato and UberEats. While such companies exist in the other parts of the world and make the promise of “anytime work” to potential workers, as we observed during fieldwork, app-based food delivery-work is anything but flexible. People could indeed start working at any time of the day, but it had real consequences to earn a living wage. While they were free to logout or switch off their app also at their convenience, they would be constantly nudged in the form of calls by warehouse managers as well as through text messages telling them how they were missing out on earnings. It is also important to note that, in India especially, food-delivery as a standardized form of work, exists in a regulatory grey space. In that sense, there is not a lot of clarity on the maximum limit of working hours in a day and in a week. In the following sections, I provide details about how work is structured temporally in this system.</p>
<h3><strong>Shift-based Work</strong></h3>
<p>When Rajendra spoke to workers in the Delhi-NCR region, they reported that they could choose to work different kinds of shifts like part-time (8 AM – 3 PM or 7 PM – 12 AM), full-time (11 AM -11 PM) or ultra full-time (7 AM -11 PM). While workers could pick their timings or slots on weekdays, it was mandatory to work on the weekends. As mentioned earlier, while companies claimed that riders could log in and out at any time of the day, their pay depended on the number of deliveries they make and the hours they worked. But it’s not that simple. It is not just the wholly quantified units (an hour, a day) that become exigent and overbearing; it was in fact how these rules demanded high levels of alertness and care from the workers. Any kind of carelessness, not paying attention (to time, text message announcements) could be detrimental to claiming pay for the work they had done already. For instance, like a worker described, if he even logged out a minute before the end of the shift, he would lose out on his incentive. Another worker added,</p>
<blockquote>If you log off even five minutes before eleven (pm), a call comes from the company and they ask you to log back in immediately.</blockquote>
<p>In such cases, those managing the backend systems even make these calls to shield workers from the eventuality of losing pay and the hassle of resolving disputed payments later by simply urging and pushing workers to stay on-time and online. In that sense, there is not only an expectation of punctuality and always being-on as a desirable thing, but it is also imperative for the workers to meet these expectations while they interact with the app itself.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_NRRJ_01.jpg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_NR-RJ_01" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_NR-RJ_01" />
<h5>Sticker provided by a food-delivery platform to promote its brand. <em>Source: Noopur Raval, author</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<h3><strong>Time of Eating, Time of Sleeping</strong></h3>
<p>Typically, restaurants and food businesses in Indian cities are heavily regulated, especially in terms of closing times. While these rules differ for each city, in and around Delhi, restaurants are expected to close down by 10 pm, and those that seek to remain open for longer need special permissions. With the arrival of app-based delivery companies, the time of food production and consumption has stretched. Also, with the right kinds of permits, cloud kitchens and home-based producers are also allowed to operate through these platforms, thus making multiple food choices and cuisines available until as late as 4 am in the morning. Whose consumption needs are being serviced at these late hours is a question beyond the scope of this post, but it also means that there is opportunity/compulsion for workers to stay up late at night, making deliveries. Not surprisingly, it is also often these late-night shifts that are better incentivized, not just money-wise but also because there is less traffic at night (a constant source of stress in day-time shifts). As other studies have also noted, platform companies, especially food-delivery services that mostly engage bike and scooter riders (Lee et al. 2016) globally, enforce this cruel temporal inversion where being a service-worker in this economy also means working on others’ (customers’) time of leisure and/or comfort. Especially in Delhi, where the winters get brutally cold, ironically, the profitability of delivering hot food increases. However, it is not that straightforward. One worker Rajendra spoke to in March (springtime) explained,</p>
<blockquote>I am not going to work with any of the food delivery company from April onwards because of the hot summer in Delhi, it is very difficult to ride in a day time of summer.</blockquote>
<h3><strong>Temporary Work</strong></h3>
<p>Temporariness is the dominant temporal fate of gig-work at-large—workers in our study (food-delivery as well as ride-hailing) often insisted how gig-work was only temporary until they could become business-owners, find a better job, or fund their education and so on. However, as we observed in food-delivery work, there was also a lot of seasonal movement of workers, a reminder of the contextual, ecological and urban migration continuities that inform, support and shape who comes to the reserve force/waiting zone of gig-work. In classic labour terms, the push and pull factors that move people out of agricultural labour or other kinds of work must be studied with an eye to new forms of easy-entry jobs such as gig-work. On the other hand, there were also other considerations on time such as responsibilities and social obligations to family that made food-delivery work (fast paced, inhering a certain amount of recklessness and the willingness to put oneself at risk) less attractive to some (older men and women with a family) and more to some others (younger single men). This made us think of the way in which Sarah Sharma (2011) emphasizes temporal power over speed discourses (she offers the term ‘power-chronography’) where, the ways in which food-delivery work is temporally arranged, distributed and rewarded, privileges certain actors (the customers but also some kinds of workers) over others in the city’s labour market.</p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
<p>Lee, Do J., et al. “Delivering (in) justice: Food delivery cyclists in New York City.” <em>Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation</em>. Routledge, 2016. 114-129.</p>
<p>Sharma, Sarah. “It changes space and time: introducing power-chronography.” <em>Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks</em> (2011): 66-77.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/noopur-raval-rajendra-jadhav-power-chronography-of-food-delivery-work'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/noopur-raval-rajendra-jadhav-power-chronography-of-food-delivery-work</a>
</p>
No publisherNoopur Raval and Rajendra JadhavDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesPublicationsResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:33:39ZBlog EntryZothan Mawii - COVID-19 and Relief Measures for Gig Workers in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india
<b>CIS is cohosted a webinar with Tandem Research on the impact of the COVID-19 response on the gig economy on 9 April 2020. It was a closed door discussion between representatives of workers' unions, labour activists, and researchers working on gig economy and workers' rights to highlight the demands of workers' groups in the transport, food delivery and care work sectors. We saw this as an urgent intervention in light of the disruption to the gig economy caused by the nationwide lockdown to limit proliferation of COVID-19. This is a summary of the discussions that took place in the webinar authored by Zothan Mawii, a Research Fellow at Tandem Research.</b>
<p> </p>
<em>Re-posted from <a href="https://tandemresearch.org/blog/covid19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india" target="_blank">Tandem Research</a> (April 14, 2020)</em>
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<h3><strong>List of Participants</strong></h3>
<ul>
<li>Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Tasneem Mewa, The Centre for Internet and Society, India (Co-organisers)</li>
<li>Zothan Mawii, Iona Eckstein and Urvashi Aneja, Tandem Research (Co-organisers)</li>
<li>Aditi Surie, Indian Institute for Human Settlements</li>
<li>Astha Kapoor, Aapti Institute</li>
<li>Dharmendra Vaishnav, Indian Delivery Lions (IDL)</li>
<li>Janaki Srinivasan, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore</li>
<li>Kaveri Kaliyanda, The University of Sussex</li>
<li>Pradyumna Taduri, Fairwork Foundation</li>
<li>Rakhi Sehgal, Independent researcher</li>
<li>Shaik Salauddin, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT)</li>
<li>Simiran Lalvani, Independent researcher</li>
<li>Tanveer Pasha, Ola, Taxi 4 Sure and Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association (OTU)</li>
<li>Vinay Sarathy, United Food Delivery Partners’ Union (UFDPU)</li></ul>
<h3><strong>What relief measures do gig workers need during this pandemic?</strong></h3>
<p>The coronavirus pandemic has the world in its grips, and exposed the fragility of our economic systems and societal structures. The ensuing lockdown and physical distancing measures put in place by states to control the spread of the virus has impacted citizens differently and largely along class lines. While white collar workers remain relatively insulated as they work from home and have their essentials delivered, it has laid bare the vulnerabilities faced by India’s largely informal workforce. Since announcing the lockdown and the exodus of migrant workers from cities, the central and state governments in India have announced a number of relief measures for workers. However, those working on on-demand platforms have been excluded, while relief measures announced by a few platforms are inadequate to provide meaningful protection, leaving workers to fall at the cracks. Tandem Research and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) hosted a webinar on 9th April with a group of union leaders and researchers to draft a charter of demands for platforms and government to ensure better protection for gig workers.</p>
<p>We heard from 4 union leaders about the situation facing workers on the ground and the shortcomings of the measures platforms claim to be taking to ensure their workers' safety and protection. This piece recaps some of the issues that were uncovered during the meeting.</p>
<p>Tanveer Pasha, President of Ola, Taxi 4 Sure and Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association (OTU) and Shaik Salauddin, President of the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) pointed out that while Ola Cabs and Uber claim to have instructed drivers on safety and hygiene measures and provided personal protective equipment (PPE), in reality their efforts have been wanting. The unions themselves have been conducting these awareness drives while IFAT purchased masks for drivers in Telangana. On-demand food delivery services have also not provided workers with any PPE, although they have been deemed essential workers and must continue to interact with customers and restaurants as they go about their tasks.</p>
<p><strong>High on the list of concerns facing gig workers was income security and the security of their jobs once the lockdown is lifted</strong>. Transportation companies Uber and Ola cab have suspended services although some drivers in Bengaluru, working with OTU have pivoted to delivering essential goods or transporting healthcare workers. The number of orders on on-demand food delivery services has dropped drastically too. Gig workers are earning little to no money during this time and have little recourse to savings or other safety nets.</p>
<p><strong>Unions are demanding that workers are paid a sum of money to tide them over during this time, which can be paid back to the platforms without interest</strong>. Unions argue that the commissions charged by platform companies can be used to cover these costs and even call for a reduction in the commission after the lockdown is lifted so that workers can recover financially.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.carandbike.com/news/ola-introduces-drive-the-driver-fund-initiative-to-fund-relief-for-driver-community-2201886" target="_blank">Ola Cabs</a> and <a href="https://yourstory.com/2020/03/coronavirus-zomato-feed-daily-wager" target="_blank">Zomato</a> have started funds to support their workers, taking donations from the public and from management, <strong>but workers are yet to see the benefits of the funds</strong>. With little transparency or clarity as to how these funds will operate, unions and workers are left wondering if this is solely a publicity move on the part of platforms. No announcements have been made regarding these funds - who is eligible for the fund? What are the criteria workers will have to meet to receive funds? Will workers have to pay the amount back to the platforms? If yes, will it carry interest? Will workers’ ratings or the hours they’ve logged on the app be used to determine their eligibility?</p>
<p>The government announced a moratorium on EMI and loan repayments, and has directed the RBI to set guidelines. Some state governments have also announced waivers on house rent payments. While these measures should have eased the pressure on gig workers, that hasn’t been the case - <strong>informal lenders and non banking financial companies (NBFC) have continued to ask workers for payments, flouting the RBI guidelines</strong>. In the absence of enforcement from the government, gig workers are unable to reap the benefits of directives designed to relieve the financial pressure they are currently under.</p>
<p><strong>Delivery workers find themselves in a double bind</strong> - they have been deemed essential workers by the government and on-demand services remain up and running. However, with few restaurants remaining open and few orders coming in, they are forced to work long hours for little money, and in risky conditions as roads remain deserted because of the lockdown. Dharmender Vaishnav (Indian Delivery Lions) and Kaveri Kaliyanda (PhD scholar, University of Sussex) raised pertinent questions over the classification of delivery workers as essential workers - <strong>Who are the workers essential for? At what personal cost to their health and safety must delivery workers continue to serve the interests of platforms and their middle class customer base?</strong> This categorisation also allows on-demand food delivery companies to absolve themselves of the responsibility for ensuring workers receive wages - they can claim services continued to operate and shift the blame onto workers for not logging in. Many of the workers who have gone back to their native towns and villages are anxious that their accounts will be deactivated for not logging in.</p>
<p>These issues facing gig workers will be drafted into a set of demands for platforms and government to provide relief. However, many questions remain unanswered. While these measures may address the hardships gig workers face in the short term, it doesn’t address long standing issues that characterise this line of work. The precarity of gig workers stems from the marginal space they occupy in the labour market. As ‘partners’ or ‘independent contractors’, they are not entitled to social protection measures from the government nor are platforms obliged to provide them. Unlike construction workers or domestic workers-who are also informal workers but enjoy recognition of an organised body and some legislative protections-they remain largely invisible to policymakers and government. Getting gig workers this type of recognition will be crucial to ensure their wellbeing. In Karnataka, there are efforts underway to introduce regulations similar to <a href="https://edd.ca.gov/Payroll_Taxes/ab-5.htm" target="_blank">California’s AB5 bill</a> that recognises gig workers as employers eligible for state and employer sponsored benefits. Gig workers have been included in the <a href="https://www.prsindia.org/sites/default/files/bill_files/Code%20on%20Social%20Security%2C%202019.pdf" target="_blank">draft Code on Social Security</a>. However, regulating platforms to make them more accountable and safeguarding worker welfare is long overdue. It is especially urgent at this time - the economic repression that will follow is likely to push more young jobseekers to the platform economy as a stop gap solution in the absence of suitable employment. The conditions of work platforms engender are far from ideal and should not become the model for jobs in the future.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherZothan Mawii (Tandem Research)Gig WorkDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkFuture of WorkNetwork EconomiesResearchers at Work2020-05-19T05:41:57ZBlog EntryAnushree Gupta - Ladies ‘Log’: Women’s Safety and Risk Transfer in Ridehailing
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/anushree-gupta-ladies-log-women-safety-risk-transfer-ridehailing
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Anushree Gupta is the third among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). The essay is edited by Noopur Raval, who co-led the project concerned.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on August, 1, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Summary of the essay in Hindi: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty0a_u9lzCE" target="_blank">Audio</a> (YouTube) and <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/07/Blog-Post-Audio-Transcript-Devanigiri.docx" target="_blank">Transcript</a> (text)</h4>
<hr />
<p>Mumbai, India’s financial capital, is also often considered one of the safest cities for women in India, especially in contrast with New Delhi which is infamously dubbed as the “rape capital” within the country. Sensationalised incidents of harassment, molestation and rape serve as anecdotal references and warnings to other women who dare to venture out alone even during the daytime. The Delhi government recently proposed a policy for free transport for women in public buses and metro trains with the objective of increasing women’s affordability and access and to ensure safety in public transportation. [1] Despite such measures to increase women’s visibility and claims to public utilities and spaces, women who use public transport have historically suffered groping and stalking on buses and trains, which uphold self-policing and surveillance narratives. The issue of women’s safety in India remains a priority as well as a good rhetorical claim and goal to aspire to, for public and private initiatives. Ironically, the notion of women’s safety is also advanced to increase moral policing and censure women’s access to public spaces, which also perpetuates exclusion of other marginalised citizens (Phadke 2007). Further, and crucially, whose safety is being imagined, prioritized and designed for (which class of women are central to the imagination of the safety discourse) is often a point of contention.</p>
<p>In this context, ridehailing services offered by Uber and Ola have come to be frequently cited as safer and more reliable options for women to traverse the cityspace, compared to overcrowded buses and trains. Their mobile applications promise accountability and traceability, enforcing safety standards by way of qualified and well-groomed drivers, SOS buttons and location-sharing features. However, it has increasingly become common knowledge that these alternatives are prone to similar, if not worse, categories of crimes against women. While reports of violence against women in cabs have mostly been outside of Mumbai, due to “platform-effects,” such incidents have widespread ramifications for drivers across the country. Cab drivers who operate via cab aggregator platforms have come under heavy scrutiny not only by the corporate and legal infrastructures of aggregator companies but also in the public eye. On the other hand, platform companies independently, and in partnership with city and state administrations, continue to launch “social impact” initiatives aimed at women’s safety as well as employment (through taxi-driving training). [2] Incidents of violence against women present jarring narratives of risk not only for female passengers but also for the platform-workers, both of whom are responsible for abiding by the constructed notions of safety for women in urban spaces.</p>
<p>In this post, I explore women’s presence as workers as well as passengers/customers in the ridehailing platform economy, in the context of women’s safety, situating the analysis with a focus on Mumbai. The related discourses around risk for female commuters give rise to various interventions and women-centric services through female-only cab enterprises and training more women drivers to mitigate this risk. Through these, I will think through the figure of the woman in the ridehailing economy in Mumbai and by extension in India.</p>
<h3><strong>Platforms in Gendered Cityscapes</strong></h3>
<p>Mumbai’s public transport is comprised of the local train network, BEST buses and auto rickshaws, with the metro being the newest addition to the mix. Unlike in most of India, kaali-peelis (black-yellow cabs) have been a permanent feature of Mumbai’s landscape since the 1950s and, taking a cab is not necessarily a luxury. Against this backdrop, platform companies have sought to make the claims of democratizing public transport and providing safer travel options to women in the city.</p>
<p>Cab drivers on ridehailing platforms in Mumbai are usually domestic male migrants or Muslim drivers from within and outside the city, who are more often than not overworked and stressed due to the falling incomes and rising debts. It is important to recognise the ‘veiled masculinities’ (Chopra 2006) which labor to service the emergent platform economy and the hierarchies of caste and class which are sustained through their labor. The incongruence between the masculinity of a working class man and the demands of the service economy (Nixon 2009) exacerbates emotional pressures in customer-facing services, which can offer an explanation for angry outbursts and conflicts between drivers and customers.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_01.jpg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_01" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_01" />
<h5>Uber’s ad on a billboard in Mumbai promises earnings of more than Rs. 1 lakh per month. Using a woman’s image illustrates the extent of their potential for transforming lives and livelihoods. <em>Source: Drivers’ Union Telegram Group</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>While Uber and Ola claim that a large number of women drivers work on their platforms, actual experiences of passengers and the male drivers I spoke to, suggested otherwise. Ironically, mass driver-training programs are seen as a quick way to make low-skilled and migrant male workers employable in Indian cities while, despite public-private partnerships to train women, it has been impossible to retain women drivers due to stereotypical perceptions of gender and persistent social stigma. [3] This made the ridehailing passenger woman (upper middle class, affording professional) a stakeholder to design for, while female drivers (but all female workers) appeared as liability for platforms.</p>
<p>These narratives speak directly to the construction of insecurity and risk for women (Berrington and Jones 2002) on public transport systems as they highlight vulnerabilities due to public exposure of women’s bodies. Pandering to a moral panic standpoint and creating personalised or ‘inside’ safe spaces for women to manage risk (Green and Singleton 2006), these platforms can then be imagined as a boundary-setting exercise. Access to public spaces is encouraged but it is delimited by confining the woman’s body to a singular vehicle in the custody of the cab driver. Autonomy and access afforded by the platform manages to transform women—particularly upper class and upper caste women who can afford these services—into potential customers. Their agency is bounded though by tasking the driver to ferry her across the otherwise hostile cityscape filled with ‘unfriendly bodies’ (Phadke 2013). The production of the city’s gendered space goes hand in hand with the confinement/erasure of female bodies in the public space as they embody patriarchal norms even in a city as ‘progressive’ as Mumbai. As demonstrated by studies mapping the movement of women in the city (Ranade 2007), the spatio-temporal factors lend themselves to creating gendered bodies in order to keep patriarchal norms intact. These norms, as I argue in this post, are detrimental not just to women but also other marginalised sections of the urban population, in this case platform workers.</p>
<h3><strong>Terms of Safety</strong></h3>
<p>Male drivers’ social identities as lower class, lower caste individuals do not inspire confidence in the standards of safety boasted by these companies in the eyes of their predominantly upper caste and upper class customer base. Risk to female passengers is further exaggerated due to the closed space in which the service is provided, highlighting the proximity to a potential aggressor by way of these platforms. In specific situations wherein a female passenger is inebriated or is travelling alone at night, drivers report being extra cautious and helpful towards her. Many respondents proudly mention going out of their way to make sure women get home safely, for instance, prolonging waiting time or escorting them to the entrance of their residential buildings or involving the security guard at the gate.</p>
<p>However, there have also been cases wherein the driver has been under scrutiny either by an overly careful passenger or by the public. One driver reported being surrounded by a crowd at a traffic signal, only to realise that he was being suspected of foul play with the female passenger who had fallen asleep on the backseat of the car. In contrast to their western counterparts, the class differences between drivers and passengers in India exacerbate doubts, fears and insecurities in India which tend to take a caste-purity angle as well. The woman’s body undergoes an exchange of custody in these instances wherein she is deemed incapable of taking care of herself and requires external assistance. Imagining a deterrence effect of ridesharing services (Park et. al 2017) reinforces the logic of guardianship and protectionism for the woman. The risk of carrying her in the vehicle in these situations is borne by the cab driver, operating under a framework of overbearing protectiveness which holds him culpable for any misgivings, assumed or otherwise.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_02.jpg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_02" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_AG_02" />
<h5>Cautionary listicles advise women to not take a cab alone at night, carrying pepper sprays/umbrellas as tools for self-defence, refrain from conversations with drivers or talk continuously on the phone, among other things. The onus of the woman’s safety is either on the individual herself or the driver who is ferrying her. Moreover, the driver is a likely assailant whom the woman should guard against as well. <em>Source: <a href="https://www.hellotravel.com/stories/10-ways-for-women-to-ensure-safety-when-boarding-cab" target="_blank">HelloTravel</a></em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Notions of safety and risk are embodied in everyday interactions in urban spaces and mediated by disparate infrastructures of knowledge across distinctions of caste, class and gender. These distinctions define constraints which govern social interactions between actors of these categories. Interactions between lower caste or Muslim men and upper caste/class women are circumscribed by what Tuan (1979) describes as ‘landscapes of fear’. Be it the apprehensions about sharing a ride with a passenger of the opposite sex (Sarriera et. al 2017) or reports of gang-rapes by cab drivers, the boundaries of social conduct are laid out clearly by constructing narratives of risk and safety. The protection of the female body and her sexual safety is not her responsibility alone but that of the society as a whole. The so called preventive measures for rape and violence against women produce the dichotomies of frailty and strength (Campbell 2005) in so far as they project the woman as always at risk with the shadow of a potential assault always looming large.</p>
<p>When asked about interactions with women as customers or fellow drivers, drivers performed exaggerated respectability for women. The catch in these narratives however was that drivers justified and extended respect only to ‘good’ customers, where a ‘good’ woman was a certain kind of a moral actor.</p>
<p>Given the prevailing discontent with redressal mechanisms for workers on the platforms, it was not surprising to witness a group of drivers at the Uber Seva Kendra (help centre) in Mumbai, debating whether they should be accepting requests from any female customers at all. Drivers also had to attend mandatory training sessions for ‘good conduct’ with customers wherein they underwent behavioral correction and gender sensitisation lessons. [4] The gendering of the platform economy is baked into these instructions and trainings that reproduce male drivers as figures of safety and constant positive affect.</p>
<h3><strong>Gender, Safety, and Enterprise</strong></h3>
<p>In my fieldwork, I also came across a slew of ventures run by fleet owners and others that sought to service women passengers and employ women drivers exclusively. Claiming to fill in the gaps of inadequate vetting mechanisms in existing platforms, these alternate ventures purportedly smoothened out some anxieties by eliminating the risk of interacting with a man from different socio-economic strata. The premium charged by these companies was telling of the value of safety and affordability of these services for a large section of their intended audience, namely women with higher disposable incomes residing in metropolitan cities.</p>
<p>On the flipside, these enterprises encouraged women to break stereotypical perceptions about women drivers, also giving a nod to increasing and diversifying opportunities of employment for women. However, these ideas remained attractive only in principle and fizzled out sooner or later as most of these ventures did not succeed. A severe capital crunch due to unsustainable business models, limited funding options and lack of substantial supportive ecosystems for training and upkeep are possible reasons for failure. [5] Even so, the idea of a women-centric service continues to remain valuable because of the promise of safety which is produced through considerations of class, caste, gender and religion (Phadke 2005). Any alternative to avoid interaction with men from a lower class or caste background or from another religion (especially Hindu/Muslim in Mumbai) is welcome in a society which is deeply stratified and entrenched in caste-class systems of religion and economy alike.</p>
<h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
<p>The pervasiveness of the discourses of safety and risk in the ride hailing space became apparent to me during field research. Respondents indicated a heightened awareness of my gender, referring to me as “madam” and taking measures to ensure my safety. They advised me to use a separate phone to interact with drivers and moderated my interactions with drivers on the Telegram group (run by one of the Unions in Mumbai). Union representatives were also diligent in moderating the group to filter out abusive language as a token of respect for women. My apprehensions in interacting with drivers, most of whom were older men from a lower class/caste community, were also indicative of my social conditioning as an upper class and upper caste woman. Self-policing and boundary setting in both physical and virtual interactions, while necessary to some extent, were often rendered useless as the shifting of risks became apparent to me in my interactions with the drivers.</p>
<p>In this piece, I have tried to show how gendered norms govern the construction of safety and risk which in turn regulate social interactions. Limiting exposure in a personal cab as opposed to a public bus/train also heightens considerations of intimacy and proximity to a potential aggressor (often from a marginalised sociocultural background). Women-centric cab services mitigate this by promoting the image of the female driver who breaks social norms. However, these services dwindle till they completely disappear due to a capital crunch or insufficient infrastructural support. Patriarchal contexts reaffirm the woman as a risky object by highlighting narratives of vulnerabilities and insecurities in the ridehailing space. Besides the woman, the cab drivers are held accountable for bearing this risk and ensuring her sexual and physical safety. These patriarchal hierarchies of protectionism are sustained by platform workers’ affective labour which lubricate the wheels of the platform economy.</p>
<h3><strong>Endnotes</strong></h3>
<p>[1] <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/free-rides-for-women-only-the-starting-point-say-activists/article28111938.ece" target="_blank">https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/free-rides-for-women-only-the-starting-point-say-activists/article28111938.ece</a></p>
<p>[2] <a href="https://www.olacabs.com/media/in/press/ola-foundation-launches-drive-to-enable-sustainable-livelihoods-for-500000-women-by-2025" target="_blank">https://www.olacabs.com/media/in/press/ola-foundation-launches-drive-to-enable-sustainable-livelihoods-for-500000-women-by-2025</a></p>
<p>[3] <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/soniathomas/girl-power" target="_blank">https://www.buzzfeed.com/soniathomas/girl-power</a></p>
<p>[4] <a href="https://yourstory.com/2018/11/uber-gender-awareness-sensitisation-driver" target="_blank">https://yourstory.com/2018/11/uber-gender-awareness-sensitisation-driver</a></p>
<p>[5] <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bo4534H8mOWo0oG6VQ0xbM/As-demand-for-womenonly-cab-services-grow-challenges-loom.html" target="_blank">https://www.livemint.com/Companies/bo4534H8mOWo0oG6VQ0xbM/As-demand-for-womenonly-cab-services-grow-challenges-loom.html</a></p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
<p>Berrington, E. and Jones, H., 2002. Reality vs. myth: Constructions of women’s insecurity. Feminist Media Studies, 2(3), pp.307-323.</p>
<p>Campbell, A., 2005. Keeping the ‘lady’ safe: The regulation of femininity through crime prevention literature. Critical Criminology, 13(2), pp.119-140.</p>
<p>Chopra, R., 2006. Invisible men: Masculinity, sexuality, and male domestic Labor. Men and Masculinities, 9(2), pp.152-167.</p>
<p>Green, E. and Singleton, C., 2006. Risky bodies at leisure: Young women negotiating space and place. Sociology, 40(5), pp.853-871.</p>
<p>Nixon, D., 2009. I Can’t Put a Smiley Face On’: Working‐Class Masculinity, Emotional Labour and Service Work in the ‘New Economy. Gender, Work & Organization, 16(3), pp.300-322.</p>
<p>Park, J., Kim, J., Pang, M.S. and Lee, B., 2017. Offender or guardian? An empirical analysis of ride-sharing and sexual assault. An Empirical Analysis of Ride-Sharing and Sexual Assault (April 10, 2017). KAIST College of Business Working Paper Series, (2017-006), pp.18-010.</p>
<p>Phadke, S., 2005. ‘You Can Be Lonely in a Crowd’ The Production of Safety in Mumbai. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12(1), pp.41-62.</p>
<p>Phadke, S., 2007. Dangerous liaisons: Women and men: Risk and reputation in Mumbai. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.1510-1518.</p>
<p>Phadke, S., 2013. Unfriendly bodies, hostile cities: Reflections on loitering and gendered public space. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.50-59.</p>
<p>Ranade, S., 2007. The way she moves: Mapping the everyday production of gender-space. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.1519-1526.</p>
<p>Raval, N. and Dourish, P., 2016, February. Standing out from the crowd: Emotional labor, body labor, and temporal labor in ridesharing. In Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 97-107). ACM.</p>
<p>Sarriera, J.M., Álvarez, G.E., Blynn, K., Alesbury, A., Scully, T. and Zhao, J., 2017. To share or not to share: Investigating the social aspects of dynamic ridesharing. Transportation Research Record, 2605(1), pp.109-117.</p>
<p>Tuan, Y.F., 2013. Landscapes of fear. U of Minnesota Press.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/anushree-gupta-ladies-log-women-safety-risk-transfer-ridehailing'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/anushree-gupta-ladies-log-women-safety-risk-transfer-ridehailing</a>
</p>
No publisherAnushree GuptaDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesPublicationsResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:29:12ZBlog EntrySarah Zia - Not knowing as pedagogy: Ride-hailing drivers in Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Sarah Zia is the second among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). The essay is edited by Noopur Raval, who co-led the project.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on July 18, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Summary of the essay in Hindi: <a href="https://youtu.be/KSYcT8XD0H4" target="_blank">Audio</a> (YouTube) and <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/07/CASTAC_Sarah_audiotranscript.docx" target="_blank">Transcript</a> (text)</h4>
<hr />
<p>Ride-hailing [1] platforms such as Olacabs and Uber have “disrupted” public transport in India since their arrival. It has been almost seven years since app-based ride-hailing became a permanent feature of urban and peri-urban India with these aggregators operating in over a 100 Indian cities now. Akin to the global story, much has happened – there was a period of boom and novelty for passengers and drivers, then incentives fell. Ride-hailing work has become increasingly demanding with reduced payouts. But what hasn’t received enough attention (especially outside the US) is how these platforms create a deliberate regime of information invisibility and control to keep the drivers constantly on their toes which works to the companies’ advantage. What then are the implications of this uncertainty, which is fueled by app design as well as by the companies’ decision that drivers need little or no information about users? How does service delivery operate in a context where those actually delivering it have little or no idea about the workings of the system?</p>
<h3><strong>When algorithms make us not know</strong></h3>
<p>Algorithmic interactions form the core of the technology in ride-hailing apps through which service seekers and providers interact. As Lee et al. (2015) describe, “Algorithmic management allows companies to oversee myriads of workers in an optimized manner at a large scale, but its impact on human workers and work practices has been largely unexplored… Algorithmic management is one of the core innovations that enables these (cab-riding) services.”</p>
<p>Algorithms are procedural logics that produce different effects depending on the data they receive and the outputs they are optimized for (Wilson, 2016). Moreover, platform companies are not transparent about how their business logics contribute to these “optimizations”, which makes it difficult for all the stakeholders (passengers, drivers, police personnel, etc.) to make an accurate assessment of their functioning. This essay, then, explores how the lack of transparency around algorithmic structures not only prohibits drivers from knowing completely and surely about their work (“why did I get this ride?”, “why did my ratings drop?”) but also how they build tactics of coping and earning from a place of unknowing. Algorithms act as a regulator of work and their inherent structure constrains drivers from knowing fully about their work. Unknowing thus has two aspects: first, drivers do not have access or means to gather information; second, it is difficult to be sure of the existence of the said information in the first place.</p>
<p>In my research on ridehailing in the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), there were three things that I asked drivers about which led to ambiguous and inconsistent replies: how rides were allocated, how fares were determined and how ratings worked. While some drivers told me upfront they did not know how these systems worked, others offered explanations that they had devised or heard from somewhere else. For instance, not knowing what they will make per trip means that drivers plan their day in terms of target earnings instead of number of trips. Nearly all drivers I spoke to said they aimed to make Rs 1500-2000 (approx USD 20-25) per day in order to break even, irrespective of whether that goal requires 10 or 15 trips in a day. Yet not knowing what the next trip will earn them means they can’t refuse rides easily. Many drivers expressed discomfort about this fact, especially when compared to other means such as auto-rickshaws and traditional cabs where drop destination is known beforehand and fares can also be pre-negotiated, Unlike ride-hailing drivers, auto rickshaw drivers have the right to refuse passengers.</p>
<p>Many drivers now call passengers after accepting their booking to find out the destination. According to some drivers, this call also helped them understand the kind of passengers they were about to get and sometimes even allowed re-negotiation of the drop location to a mutually convenient spot if it was originally in a congested area. They also felt that assessing passengers before a trip was important so that they could act as mediators in the information gatekeeping process, because the passengers would have seen the fare already. For a driver, the lack of information added many layers of constant negotiation in a single trip—starting from the call to find out the destination to conversations during the trip to gauge potential earnings to finally suggesting alternative drop locations if there are any constraints in accessing the original destination—before they can claim their rightful earnings.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01.jpeg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_01" />
<h5>Ridehailing drivers only get the user’s name and pickup location as details about an upcoming trip. <em>Photo by Noopur Raval</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Knowing the terms of work—such as when work ends and begins, how the good jobs are being allocated and to whom, and an explanation of one’s income—is a foundation of formal and informal work. Such information is crucial because it allows us to separate our work and personal lives. Knowledge of these obviously quantifiable parameters can help drivers plan their earnings and investments and, crucially, when they can take a break based on much more or less work they have to do in order to meet their income targets.</p>
<p>Furthermore, as drivers showed me, ride-hailing companies spontaneously change the revenue model for “driver-partners” (as they are called) by sending them an SMS right before the change happens, thereby altering trip and mileage targets frequently to keep a degree of unknowability in drivers’ work. This unknowability disincentivizes drivers from going off the road as per their will and helps maintain a steady supply of cabs on the road. As Alex Rosenblat has demonstrated in her study of US Uber and Lyft drivers, they are compelled to accept rides without knowing their profitability. While the app design gives them an option to “choose” to accept or reject a ride, drivers are constrained by lack of adequate information pertaining to the trip as well as the rider in making this choice. The ‘information asymmetry’, as Rosenblat calls it, also feeds into drivers’ mistrust of the companies and their policies (Rosenblat, 2018). Moreover, these feelings and the uncertainty fed by unknowing were not limited to drivers. Passengers also noticed that a ride between two points could cost different prices at different times of day and they were not sure why or how this cost was calculated.</p>
<h3><strong>Unknowability as a form of knowing: A pedagogy of coping</strong></h3>
<p>As I observed in my interactions with drivers online and offline, new drivers often struggled with the degree of uncertainty and unknowability while more experienced drivers had accepted ‘not knowing’ and the opacity of the system as features of their work.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02.jpg/image_preview" alt="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SZ_02" />
<h5>Not knowing enough about how much will a ride earn them means drivers are forced to be on the roads, often without a break. <em>Photo by author</em>.</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Similar to what Rosenblat, Gray et al. and others have observed in the US, in India drivers were constantly engaged in meaning-making through communicative labor, i.e., sharing their experiences with other local drivers online and offline. Agreeing, reassuring, and repeating that drivers actually do not know enough through these discussions also gave them shared confidence in their own abilities and how they were approaching work despite being firmly rooted in unknowing. For instance, when I asked one Uber driver about how ratings worked, they said that all 5-star drivers were matched with 5-star passengers. Another Uber driver said that the higher a passenger’s ratings, the less time they would have to wait for pick-up.</p>
<p>Other forms in which this kind of unknowing manifested was the lack of a fare chart or any minimum or uniform rating system, leaving drivers to offer their own interpretations and coping strategies. For instance, a driver pointed out how very few rides are likely to be available in a specific suburb during hot afternoons and therefore he avoided dropping passengers to that location after 2PM.</p>
<p>How, then, does one learn to cope with such unknowable systems as a worker? And what values does such a pedagogy of coping with algorithmic opacity imbibe? In my fieldwork, apart from answering my questions, drivers were extremely interested in talking about the companies, including news about companies’ stock value, their futures, profits, etc. A persistent rumour in the field was that Reliance, the country’s largest telecom provider, was soon coming up with a competitor ride-hailing app, suggesting that there could be an incentive boom again. In online Facebook groups, drivers often discussed company CEOs’ salaries, comparing them to their own. On the flipside, when videos of ride-hailing and food-delivery drivers getting beaten up or arrested or cheated surfaced, drivers would comment with advice on how to safeguard oneself, how to deal with errant customers and so on. I interpret these practices of making sense of long and short-term work, framed as responses to constant ambiguity and uncertainty, as the development of an “algorithmic gut”.</p>
<p>This gut responds to the anxieties produced by platform infrastructure through a keen awareness of the shifts, the tweaks, the changes and the errors. And it orients how drivers approach and cope with their work by acknowledging that there is a lot unknown (and unknowable) in this kind of daily work. It also guides how drivers focus on the short-term (daily) goal of making profit, such as by tuning into peer groups both online and offline where grievances are discussed, collective action planned, and floating rumours assessed. This gut is an affective, sensorial attunement to how platforms are allocating and shifting power among drivers and plays a generative role in guiding drivers’ work decisions.</p>
<h3><strong>Conclusion</strong></h3>
<p>Uncertainty is an embedded part of a ride-hailing cab’s model of service delivery. For ride-hailing drivers, this ambiguity translates into less control over everyday negotiation of work as well as planning of financial assets for the future.</p>
<p>In my interactions, I discovered that drivers are certain that they will never know more than the company. What this has led to is a driver who is cynical but not entirely pessimistic. Drivers acknowledge that while companies and their structures may be problematic, what will keep them employed is passengers’ appetite for a service like this. They would like to imagine the future of their work but are cognizant of the dual challenge of the present: making money while struggling for self-preservation in order to perform immediate activities. Drivers are cognizant of an ambiguous future and even hesitant to engage in long-term planning. For now, they would prefer better earnings and greater control over how they perform labour. Hence, their focus is on devising specific strategies for known, short-term challenges instead of running after an unknown future.</p>
<h3><strong>Endnotes</strong></h3>
<p>[1] Uber and homegrown Ola both started operations in India as ride-hailing services with the sharing options being added in 2015. Hence, the term ride-hailing has been used to describe these services which also includes ride sharing.</p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
<p>Davis, Jenny L. 2014. “Triangulating the Self: Identity Processes in a Connected Era.” Symbolic Interaction 37 (4): 500-523.</p>
<p>Dodge, Martin and Kitchin, Rob. 2005. “Codes of life: identification codes and the machine-readable world.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2005 (23): 851-881</p>
<p>Gray, Mary L., et al. 2016. “The Crowd is a Collaborative Network.” Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work & social computing. ACM, 2016.</p>
<p>Kitchin, Rob. 2017. “Thinking critically about and researching algorithms.” Information, Communication & Society 20 (1): 14-29.</p>
<p>Lee, Min Kyung, et al. 2015. “Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data-Driven Management on Human Workers.” Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.</p>
<p>Rosenblat, Alex & Stark, Luke. 2016. “Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers.” International Journal of Communication 10: 3758–3784.</p>
<p>Ruckenstein, Minna and Mika Pantzar. 2017. “Beyond the Quantified Self: Thematic exploration of a dataistic paradigm.” New Media & Society 19(3): 401-418.</p>
<p>Willson, Michele. 2016. “Algorithms (and the) everyday”. Information, Communication & Society 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1200645</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/sarah-zia-not-knowing-as-pedagogy-ride-hailing-drivers-in-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherSarah ZiaDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesPublicationsResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:35:21ZBlog EntrySimiran Lalvani - Workers’ Fictive Kinship Relations in Mumbai App-based Food Delivery
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/simiran-lalvani-workers-fictive-kinship-relations-app-based-food-delivery-mumbai
<b>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Simiran Lalvani is the first among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). The essay is edited by Noopur Raval, who co-led the project concerned.</b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally published by the <a href="http://blog.castac.org/category/series/indias-gig-work-economy/" target="_blank">Platypus blog</a> of CASTAC on July 4, 2019.</em></p>
<h4>Summary of the essay in Hindi: <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/07/Role-of-fictive-kinship-in-Mumbai-Hinglish-audio.mp3" target="_blank">Audio</a> (mp3) and <a href="http://blog.castac.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/07/Fictive-Kinship-Gig-Work-Transcript.docx" target="_blank">Transcript</a> (docx)</h4>
<hr />
<p>Anthropologists have studied the role of kinship relations at the workplace in terms of how employers (De Neve, 2008) and workers use them (Parry, 2001). By contrast, digital labour scholars focus more on economic wellbeing and questions of fair work. But we know from the work of Mauss, Hart (Hart, 2000; Mauss, 2002) and others that all economic exchanges are also social relations. Additionally, economic and moral logics are different manifestations of the same ‘kernel of human relationships’ (Kofti, 2016). In the context of app-based food delivery work in Mumbai, workers’ actions and decisions were guided by them putting themselves in another’s shoes. Such moral acts of understanding and having understood were, as I will demonstrate, instances of Max Weber’s conception of verstehen or interpretative understanding which was important to understanding individuals’ participation in social relationships. This led me to explore gig-workers’ kinship relations at work, and their role in the existence and reproduction of these workers and this ‘new’ work.</p>
<p>This essay unpacks the values and expectations from the kinship term <em>bhai (brother)</em> in order to understand the morality invoked through its usage by app-based food delivery workers in Mumbai. In doing so, it considers the implications of such kinship sedimentations on the experience of workers in the gig economy, their negotiation with the discipline imposed by the employer and the experience of women workers who operate out of these kinship ties. I was compelled to notice the figure of the <em>bhai</em> – a male friend or acquaintance who would not only recruit but also provide various kinds of support on the job, helping app-based platforms maintain their workforce. I also interviewed female delivery workers in Mumbai and noticed that this brotherhood did not extend to them in the same way.</p>
<p><em>Bhai</em> is a Hindi word for ‘brother’ but in Bambaiyya Hindi (a non-canonical form of Hindi spoken in Mumbai) it signifies an influential or respected male figure who offers support and is trustworthy due to relatedness. <em>Bhai</em> and variations like <em>bhaiyya</em> lubricate daily transactions between auto-rickshaw drivers, grocers, watchmen or any unrelated man and woman with a sociality of kinship.</p>
<h3><strong>The role and functions of understanding by bhais in gig work</strong></h3>
<p>Acts of brotherly help and disciplining reveal that material actions are intertwined with an ethic of care, thereby illustrating the role of kinship as central to the economic work in the gig economy. Historically, the informal work of food delivery in Mumbai has been organised along the lines of caste, region (Quien, 1997) and familial networks. Within gig work, belonging to the city is a requirement as <em>bhais</em> recruit, advice and protect new joinees from their neighbourhood or communities as older brothers. Team leaders who occupy a position between the worker and the middle management at these companies are <em>bhais</em> that discipline, control and maintain the workforce for the company.</p>
<p>Prior to joining, newbies would ask friends about their experience and even make deliveries with their friends to understand the work. Bhais offer support by riding pillion, arriving at ‘unsafe’ delivery locations at night or assisting a worker if the customer was drunk or unwilling to pay for their order.</p>
<p>Like other gig work communities that network to produce tacit knowledge about work (Gray, Suri, Ali, & Kulkarni, 2016) the relationships of brotherhood in food delivery help workers gain knowledge about the rules of the company, while also helping them <em>find a way</em> around the rules. A <em>bhai</em> might offer to make an ID on behalf of those who were unable to do so due to lack of documents or offer an existing ID to those who may have been disabled or blocked by the company.</p>
<p><em>Bhais</em>, on the basis of relatedness due to experience of gig work, understand the needs of other gig workers. I suggest that this is <em>verstehen</em> and not simply a reflexive <em>understanding</em> since they, much like sociologists, also <em>understood</em> the nature of the situation (Tucker, 1965) that creates this relationship of relatedness and the importance of such a relationship in sustaining their future in this work as well as the future of this work.</p>
<h3><strong>Leaning on brotherhood to ‘safely’ deliver food as gig workers</strong></h3>
<p>Companies push a narrative of how working-class, male food delivery workers are safe to interact with because this work leads to working class men now arriving at the doorstep of the protected middle-class domestic sphere. Discourses of safety and trustworthiness are crucial to companies due to the middle-class, Indian anxiety around the separation of working-class men, considered dangerous and potential perpetrators of crime, from middle-class women, the victims of such crimes (Phadke, 2007).</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SL_01.jpg/image_preview" alt="A sign written in Hindi reads " class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SL_01" />
<h5>In India, leaving one’s footwear outside before entering ‘sacred’ spaces like homes and temples is considered respectful. A notice outside an Uber Dost office in suburban Mumbai reads jootey-chhapal baahar nikaley or please leave your footwear outside – revealing an extension of the sacredness associated with familial spaces to the work place. (Image credit: author)</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>Since working class men are considered dangerous occupants of public space, how do workers feel safe and carefree in the everyday? The <em>bhai</em> who <em>understands</em> offers material support, protects and guides workers but <em>is also understood</em> as enabling a carefreeness in workers that makes this work and working-class men’s navigation of the public possible. Consider the case of Adarsh, an 18-year-old app-based worker who makes deliveries using a bicycle. Workers started helping him by offering to drop him to the delivery location on their motorcycles if they were headed in the same direction. As he described to me, he felt at ease knowing someone had his back: <em>Abhi ye log support ke liye rehte hai toh apne ko tension nahi rehta hai chalo bhai support ke liye apne peeche khada hai. (One does not feel tense if one knows that there is a brother backing one up)</em>.</p>
<h3><strong>Exclusions from brotherhood in the gig economy</strong></h3>
<p>App-based food delivery has opened up the historically male-dominated line of work to women in India but that has not insulated it from patriarchal norms.</p>
<p> </p>
<img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SL_02.jpg/image_preview" alt="A banner outside a Domino's pizza franchise in India seeking delivery personnel reads: VACANCY (Only for boyys)" class="image-left image-inline" title="CIS_APU_DigitalLabour_PlatypusEssays_SL_02" />
<h5>Food delivery work in Mumbai has historically been male dominated work – be it the ubiquitous dabbawallas (carriers of home-cooked meals) or those working as delivery ‘boys’ in udupis, restaurants, fast food companies and with hawkers. (Image credit: author)</h5>
<p> </p>
<p>One married woman worker expressed her discomfort with male riders referring to women workers as <em>bacchi</em> (Bambaiyya slang for younger brother) since it collapsed a sense of formality and familiarity that could be acceptable to young, unmarried girls. Women workers were aware that women have a high attrition in food delivery. They cannot afford to reject kinship constructions because such relations make work possible and tolerable in the everyday so they modulate the correct amount of kinship ties with a ‘respectable distance.’</p>
<p>The brotherhood of workers is not uniform or homogeneous since men’s ability to participate in this fictive kinship can be constrained either due to their identities or inability to support strikes.</p>
<p>Brotherhood absorbs risks for workers and allows workers to be <em>bindaas</em>, presenting an opportunity for tactical resistance. Leveraging brotherhood as a <em>platform</em> (Gillespie Tarleton, 2010), workers would strike and companies having understood the role of brotherhood too, would offer the position of 'team leader' to leaders of such strikes. Most <em>bhais</em> chose moral and affective bonds of brotherhood over such a 'promotion.'</p>
<p>Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities, however there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. Such a display of <em>verstehen</em> by the delivery workers is a response to engaging with a world of work that continuously measures one’s credibility and ties it to material rewards. It can be read as an attempt to secure an income and guard one’s sense of self.</p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
<p>De Neve, G. (2008). ‘We are all sondukarar (relatives)!’: Kinship and its morality in an urban industry of Tamilnadu, South India. Modern Asian Studies, 42(1), 211–246. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X0700282X">https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X0700282X</a></p>
<p>Gillespie Tarleton. (2010). Politics of Platforms. New Media and Society, 12(3). <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738">https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444809342738</a></p>
<p>Gray, M. L., Suri, S., Ali, S. S., & Kulkarni, D. (2016). The Crowd is a Collaborative Network. Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing – CSCW ’16, 134–147. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819942">https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819942</a></p>
<p>Hart, K. (2000). Kinship, Contract and Trust: The Economic Organization of Migrants in an African City Slum. In D. Gambetta (Ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (pp. 176–193). University of Oxford.</p>
<p>Kofti, D. (2016). Moral economy of flexible production: Fabricating precarity between the conveyor belt and the household. Anthropological Theory, 16(4), 433–453. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499616679538">https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499616679538</a></p>
<p>Mauss, M. (2002). The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. London: Routledge.</p>
<p>Parry, J. P. (2001). Ankalu’s Errant Wife: Sex, Marriage and Industry in Contemporary Chhattisgarh. Modern Asian Studies, 35(4), 783–820. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X01004024">https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X01004024</a></p>
<p>Phadke, S. (2007). Dangerous Liaisons: Women and Men: Risk and Reputation in Mumbai. Economic and Political Weekly, 42(17), 1510–1518.</p>
<p>Quien, A. (1997). Mumbai’s Dabbawalla: Omnipresent Worker and Absent City-Dweller. Economic and Political Weekly, 32(13), 637–640.</p>
<p>Tucker, W. T. (1965). Max Weber’s Verstehen. The Sociological Quarterly, 6(2), 157–165. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1965.tb01649.x">https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.1965.tb01649.x</a></p>
<p> </p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/simiran-lalvani-workers-fictive-kinship-relations-app-based-food-delivery-mumbai'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/simiran-lalvani-workers-fictive-kinship-relations-app-based-food-delivery-mumbai</a>
</p>
No publisherSimiran LalvaniDigital LabourResearchPlatform-WorkNetwork EconomiesResearchers at WorkMapping Digital Labour in India2020-05-19T06:25:54ZBlog EntryCOVID-19 Charter Of Recommendations on Gig Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/covid-19-charter-of-recommendations
<b>Tandem Research and the Centre for Internet and Society organised a webinar on 9 April 2020, with unions representing gig workers and researchers studying labour rights and gig work, to uncover the experiences of gig workers during the lockdown. Based on the discussion, the participants of the webinar have drafted a set of recommendations for government agencies and platform companies to safeguard workers’ well being. Here are excerpts from this charter of recommendation shared with multiple central and state government agencies and platforms companies.</b>
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<em><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india" target="_blank">Summary of discussions</a> from the COVID-19 and Gig Economy webinar, authored by Zothan Mawii, Tandem Research</em>
<hr />
<h3><strong>Contributors</strong></h3>
<ol>
<li>Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon and Tasneem Mewa, The Centre for Internet and Society, India</li>
<li>Aditi Surie, Indian Institute for Human Settlements</li>
<li>Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami, IT for Change</li>
<li>Astha Kapoor, Aapti Institute</li>
<li>Dharmendra Vaishnav, Indian Delivery Lions (IDL)</li>
<li>Janaki Srinivasan, International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore</li>
<li>Kaveri Medappa, University of Sussex</li>
<li>Pradyumna Taduri, Fairwork Foundation</li>
<li>Rakhi Sehgal, Gurgaon Shramik Kendra</li>
<li>Sangeet Jain, Researcher</li>
<li>Shaik Salauddin, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT)</li>
<li>Shohini Sengupta, Assistant Professor of Research, Jindal School of Banking and Finance</li>
<li>Simiran Lalvani, Independent researcher</li>
<li>Tanveer Pasha, Ola, Taxi 4 Sure and Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association (OTU)</li>
<li>P. Vignesh Ilavarasan, Researcher and professor, IIT Delhi</li>
<li>Vinay Sarathy, United Food Delivery Partners’ Union (UFDPU)</li>
<li>Vinay K. Sreenivasa, Advocate, Alternative Law Forum</li>
<li>Zothan Mawii, Iona Eckstein and Urvashi Aneja, Tandem Research</li></ol>
<h3><strong>Context</strong></h3>
<p>The nationwide lockdown in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on ‘gig workers’ working for on-demand service platforms such as those providing ride-hailing, home-based work and food delivery services and also e-commerce companies. Those driving for on-demand transportation companies have lost their source of livelihood as services remain suspended.</p>
<p>Workers for on-demand delivery and home-based services, on the other hand, have been deemed “essential” and continue to work although demand has fallen drastically. Earnings for delivery workers have fallen to as low as INR 100-300 per day for a whole day’s work. Workers face a high risk of contracting COVID-19 due to their exposure to multiple customers. Apprehensions are rising after a <a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/pizza-man-who-tested-covid-19-positive-also-delivered-food-for-us-zomato-6365513/" target="_blank">delivery worker for Zomato</a> tested positive for COVID-19 in New Delhi. Demand has fallen further but delivery workers must continue to put themselves and their families’ health and safety at risk with limited or no provisions for personal protective equipment or other safety measures <a href="https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/swiggy-zomato-customer-advisory-coronavirus-outbreak-covid-19-india-2193038" target="_blank">offered by companies</a>.</p>
<p>The relief works announced by the central and state governments do not specifically provide for ‘gig workers’. At the same time, the measures announced by on-demand service companies are inadequate, ambiguous and inconsistent. The eligibility, manner and quantum of relief and the process of availing relief is unclear to workers.</p>
<p>We urge you to bolster the socio-economic and healthcare protections for ‘gig workers’ in India in light of the outbreak of COVID-19. Any efforts aimed at directing relief to ‘gig workers’ will have to be combined, involving the central and state governments and on-demand service companies.</p>
<p>We suggest that the measures adopted incorporate the recommendations outlined below. The recommendations have been drafted after discussion between civil society actors including labour unions from delivery and transportation sectors, researchers, and activists. A summary of the discussions leading to this charter of recommendations can be found <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/zothan-mawii-covid-19-and-relief-measures-for-gig-workers-in-india" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<h3><strong>Charter of Recommendation on Gig Work</strong></h3>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/covid19-charter-image-1/" alt="null" width="85%" /></p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/covid19-charter-image-2/" alt="null" width="85%" /></p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/raw/covid19-charter-image-3/" alt="null" width="85%" /></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/covid-19-charter-of-recommendations'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/covid-19-charter-of-recommendations</a>
</p>
No publisherAayush Rathi and Ambika TandonResearchers at WorkGig WorkDigital LabourCovid19ResearchPlatform-WorkFuture of WorkFeaturedNetwork EconomiesHomepage2020-05-13T08:53:02ZBlog Entry