The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
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Studying Platform Work in Mumbai & New Delhi
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cis-and-apu-studying-platform-work-in-mumbai-and-new-delhi
<b>A report by Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) and Azim Premji University (APU) maps platform work in India and notes from four studies of workers driving taxis and delivering food for platform companies.
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<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Introduction</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With the arrival and rapid spread of gig platforms in India and across the world, scholars across fields – from economics and sociology to digital and new media studies – started to investigate how app-based gig platforms are affecting large and small-scale social and economic transformations. In the ‘first wave’ of gig economy research, scholars questioned the nomenclature itself, debating whether it should be called the ‘sharing economy’, gig economy, or rental economy. The impetus for these debates was, perhaps, that we already had some existing models for the sharing economy that largely drew on the idea of ‘the commons’ – or the general understanding that highly networked environments would offer people the opportunity to share their knowledge and spare resources freely, without charge, thus bypassing established corporate oligopolies as well as national and international laws that restricted free movement and access to knowledge and resources – especially for people from the so-called ‘developing’ world. To that effect, there exists valuable research now that bridges the moment of the sharing economy with the gig economy. For instance, Lampinen and colleagues studied older platforms and communities, like Couch Surfing, which allowed people to host and live on other people’s couches (or in their spare rooms) for no cost. The same set of scholars also studied Air Bnb and offered comparative understandings of how norms and expectations around partaking in (someone’s) idle resources change when the ‘gig logic’ enters the frame and platforms become real-time marketplaces for the exchange of goods and services, as against a temporally slower and more altruistic community-based model of sharing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The ‘second wave’ of gig economy research, mostly originating in and responding to technological,social, and economic developments in North America and Western Europe, has focused on the disruptive effects of gig platforms on employment trends and the future of work. To elaborate, these scholars argue that gig platforms, by offering the promise of flexible work and quick earnings, but not the benefits of full-time, standard employment,are contributing to the ongoing casualisation and precaritisation of work at large. As marketplaces powered by algorithmic decision-making,platforms often argue that the resultant prices as well as earnings are not a product of human or organisational decisions but rather a result of algorithmic decisions and data points. Since these algorithmic systems are ‘black boxed’ or treated as highly confidential intellectual property, there is little scope to audit or ‘peek’ into their workings to understand how or why ‘real-time dynamic surge pricing’ works the way it does. A related host of issues concerns over the employment status of gig platform workers. As critics of platforms have noted, while platform companies classify workers as ‘independent contractors’ or‘vendors’, gig workers satisfy all the requirements of the employment test and thus deserve tobe recognised and compensated as full-time employees. In a landmark case brought forth by gig worker representatives in the UK, the court did recognise platform workers as employees and called for companies to reclassify them as such. Underlying debates around employment classification, compensation, and job security are united by a centralised theme that resonates with labour scholars globally – the (in)formalisation of work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Reclassifying gig workers as full-time employees would further make them eligible for paid sick leave, maternity leave, and other health benefits, and would possibly make them eligible for minimum wage as well, thus leading to the formalisation and increased regulation of gig work.As scholars of platform work (including crowdwork) outside of industrialised countries have noted, even reclassification or simply recognising these jobs as a part of the formal sector may not necessarily translate to similar benefits or increased salaries in the longer term. Juxtaposed against a landscape of ubiquitous informality, as in the case of India, gig work does offer some features and affordances of formal work, such as financialisation, formal contracts, and the ability to at least appeal unfair practices, albeit to a limited degree. However, formalisation for its own sake in traditional legal and economistic terms may neither be possible nor entirely in response to the unique moment of precarity in the global South, where youth unemployment and skill and job misalignment, among other structural issues, inform the horizon of what kinds of futures are possible and how to attain them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, investigating questions of work, futures, and digital participation are not merely about finding answers to challenges in structural economic development and long- and short-term policy-making. The present, so to speak, is far from being determined by, or lived out in, the service of state or corporate visions; it is not the result of what happens between people as they participate on digital platforms. What happens to urban spaces; notions of kinship, publicity, social relationships, and hierarchies; and quotidian understandings of money, desire, aspirations, respect, morals, and justice is equally rich and important when understanding social transformation and the contribution of digital media to social change. Further, rather than approach economic, social, and cultural encounters as separate, we find it valuable to unpack platform encounters and exchanges, as we describe them in this report, as socio-technical and digital-cultural texts that hold within them the working out of macro and micro phenomena. Why and how rural, urban, migrant, and local workers take up gig work and invest in certain kinds of smartphones, cars, scooters, friendships, relationships, and uniforms cannot be attributed only to economic rationality or macro-sociological factors. But, simultaneously, in addition to these material cues, the conversations between gig workers, the norms they hold, and the norms that are in the process of being worked out as they go through their daily motions and emotions, their changing fashioning of the self, the perplexity resulting from daily work within an environment where they get very little information beforehand – all these are important forms of evidence to understand the human-machine encounter within a global South context and the resultant transformation of the self and society. Class, gender, and caste power in urban India are constantly being asserted, challenged, and reworked, not just through visible, large-scale social movements, but also through habits of consumption, intimate conversation, and encounters with the ‘other’. In the field reports that follow, researchers have tried to mine and attend to these daily intimate platform encounters to produce traces of what is ongoing and still being worked out: the process of platformisation and its social, cultural, and digital effects.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When we imagined this project, we were responding to some of the gaps as well as the disciplinary orthodoxy of scholarship that dictates platform studies and digital labour scholarship. We deliberately wanted to follow and replicate more generative approaches to the study of capitalisms and platform capitalism in this case. To that effect, we wanted to focus on the life worlds and laboring practices of gig workers, looking beyond the money they make through apps, how they are treated by platform companies, and how they resist their algorithmic management. As we succeeded in some measure through each field report, our aim was to recentre gig platform scholarship around who these workers are as urban dwellers, as gendered, caste, and class-ed bodies navigating Indian city spaces, and how their aspirations, constraints, and understandings of success, money, safety, and respect inform their encounters with the platform company, customers, police personnel, and the app itself.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We, the team at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, as well as co-principal investigator (PI), Noopur Raval, and field researchers, Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, and Simiran Lalvani, are grateful to the Azim Premji University Research Grants Programme for their generous sponsorship and support for the project. This project contributes to thinking about the Future(s) of Work theme that is an active area of inquiry within the university and beyond. To reiterate, digital labour and platform studies scholarship in India and the global South is still at a nascent stage. Since the time we conceptualised, conducted, and analysed this gig work research, more studies have emerged (including studies by other researchers at CIS), and our report adds to this growing field of inquiry. The insights we present far from foreclose the questions or even the lines of inquiry that we open here. The report is structured as follows: we begin by reflecting on the changes in the gig work landscape after the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in terms of how the pandemic has affected working-class communities, and, by extension, those who work in the platform economy. Subsequently, we present individual field reports by three field researchers, Sarah Zia, Simiran Lalvani, and Anushree Gupta, who reflect on their studies of gig work in Mumbai and Delhi, respectively. The report ends with a short conclusion and some methodological reflections that we gathered during the project.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Access the <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/studying-platform-work-in-mumbai-new-delhi.pdf" class="internal-link">full report here</a>.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cis-and-apu-studying-platform-work-in-mumbai-and-new-delhi'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cis-and-apu-studying-platform-work-in-mumbai-and-new-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherAnushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, Simiran Lalvani and Noopur RavalPlatform EconomyGig WorkResearchers at Work2022-05-05T17:13:10ZBlog EntryInternet Researchers' Conference 2022 (IRC22) - Selected Sessions
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-home-selected-sessions
<b>Here is the list of selected sessions and individual presentations for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC22) - #Home. IRC22 will be held online from May 25-27, 2022. The conference announcement, along with details on registration will be published in the first week of May.
</b>
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<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Call for Sessions</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions">List of Proposed Sessions</a></strong></p>
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<p><strong>Selected Sessions and Total Scores</strong> </p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood">#WaitingForFood </a>- Rhea Bose and Nisha Subramanian (85.00)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline">#thismightnotbeonline </a>- Kaushal Sapre; Aasma Tulika (81.88)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr">#GoingHome: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR</a> - Anurag Mazumdar (80.63)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions">#CovidConfessions</a> - Indumathi Manohar (80.63)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identitiesvulnerabilitiesopportunitiesdissentir">#IdentitesVulnerabilitiesOpportunitiesDissent </a>- Saumya Tewari; Manisha Madhava; Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay; Aparna Bose (79.38)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homeandtheinternet">#HomeAndTheInternet </a>- Dona Biswas; Bhanu Priya Gupta (77.50)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein">#LetsMoveIn </a>- Arathy Salimkumar; Faheem Muhammed; Hazeena T; Manisha Madapathy (76.25)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns">#LockdownsAndShutdowns </a>- Michael Collyer; Joss Wright (73.75)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome">#ActFromHome </a>- Maya Sherman; Rai Sengupta (73.75)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism">#SocialMediaActivism </a>- Anushka Bhilwar (69.38)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed">#TransActandWhatFollowed </a>- Brindaalakshmi K (68.75)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identifyingtheideaoflabourinteaching">#IdentifyingtheIdeaoflLaborinTeaching </a>- Sunanda Kar; Bishal Sinha (68.75)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homebasedflexiworkincovid19">#HomeBasedFlexiworkInCovid19 </a>- Sabina Dewan; Mukta Naik; Ayesha Zainudeen; Gayani Hurulle; Hue-Tam Jamme; Devesh Taneja (67.50)</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational">#Involute:Jagged Seams of the Domestic and the Vocational -</a> Akriti Rastogi; Deepak Prince; Misbah Rashid; Satish Kumar (65.63)</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome">#DigitisingCrisesRemakingHome </a>- Vidya Subramanian; Kalindi Kokal; Uttara Purandare (61.88)</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="discreet"> Note: The total scores were derived from anonymous peer selection by all teams and scores by a panel of external reviewers, with both processes given a 50% weightage.</span></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-home-selected-sessions'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-home-selected-sessions</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaIRC22Internet StudiesInternet Researcher's ConferenceResearchers at Work2022-04-26T07:00:30ZBlog EntryFeminist Design Practices
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/artez-platform-aayush-rathi-akash-sheshadri-ambika-tandon-feminist-design-practices
<b>Aayush Rathi and Akash Sheshadri and Ambika Tandon co-authored a research paper on 'Feminist Design Practices' which was published in a special issue of Apria, a peer-reviewed journal hosted at ArtEZ University. The special issue "Feminist by Design" highlights the work of the Feminist Internet Research Network and its contributions to building an equitable internet through design interventions.</b>
<h3>Abstract</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist and design justice principles can be adopted into research praxis to make knowledge less extractive and more accessible. These principles include making research and outreach more participatory, translating academic knowledge into more accessible forms, and channelling research into action that can challenge patriarchy and other systems of domination.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This paper focusses on the outreach and communication of policy research to outline its potential for producing radical change and translating knowledge across communities. The authors reflect on their experiences of producing research for domestic workers and workers’ collectives in India to highlight challenges and ways forward for accessible research forms.</p>
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<p>To access the full article published in Apria, <a class="external-link" href="https://apria.artez.nl/feminist-design-practices/">click here</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/artez-platform-aayush-rathi-akash-sheshadri-ambika-tandon-feminist-design-practices'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/artez-platform-aayush-rathi-akash-sheshadri-ambika-tandon-feminist-design-practices</a>
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No publisherAayush Rathi, Akash Sheshadri and Ambika TandonGenderResearchPlatform EconomyPeer Reviewed ArticleDomestic WorkResearchers at Work2022-04-16T03:34:51ZBlog EntryInternet Researchers' Conference 2022 (IRC22) - Proposed Sessions
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions
<b>Here is the list of sessions proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 - #Home.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Internet Researchers' Conference 2022</strong> - #<a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-2022">Home - Call for Sessions</a></p>
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<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-digitisingcrisesremakinghome" class="external-link">DigitisingCrisesRemakingHome</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-letsmovein" class="external-link">LetsMoveIn</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-thismightnotbeonline" class="external-link">ThisMightNotBeOnline</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-metaverseinquilab" class="external-link">MetaverseInquilab</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identitiesvulnerabilitiesopportunitiesdissentir" class="external-link">IdentitesVulnerabilitiesOpportunitiesDissent</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-lockdownsandshutdowns" class="external-link">LockdownsAndShutdowns</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-actfromhome" class="external-link">ActFromHome</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covid19vaccinediscourse" class="external-link">COVID19VaccineDiscourse</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homebasedflexiworkincovid19" class="external-link">HomeBasedFlexiworkInCovid19</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-homeandtheinternet" class="external-link">HomeAndTheInternet</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-socialmediaactivism" class="external-link">SocialMediaActivism</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-goinghomeconstructionofadigitalurbanplatforminterfaceindelhincr" class="external-link">“Going Home”: Constructions of a Digital-Urban Platform Interface in Delhi-NCR</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-waitingforfood" class="external-link">WaitingForFood</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-transactandwhatfollowed" class="external-link">TransActandWhatFollowed - Access to care for transgender persons during the COVID-19 pandemic</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-covidconfessions" class="external-link">CovidConfessions: An internet art project</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-identifyingtheideaoflabourinteaching" class="external-link">Identifying the idea of labor in teaching – Negotiating pedagogy at home and inside classroom(s)</a></p>
<p>#<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-session-involutejaggedseamsofthedomesticandthevocational" class="external-link">Involute - Jagged Seams of the Domestic and the Vocational</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc22-proposed-sessions</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminProposed SessionsInfrastructure StudiesInternet Researcher's ConferenceIRC22Researchers at Work2022-04-26T07:07:52ZBlog EntryThe State of the Internet's Languages Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022
<b>The first-ever State of the Internet’s Languages Report was launched by Whose Knowledge? on February 23, 2022 (just after the International Mother Language day), along with research partners Oxford Internet Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society. This extraordinarily community-sourced effort, with over 100 people involved is now available online, with translations in multiple languages. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are over 7000 (spoken and signed) languages in the world, but only a few can be fully experienced online. Challenges in accessing the internet and digital technologies in our preferred languages also means that a vast body of knowledge, especially from and by marginalised communities, is not represented and remains inaccessible to the world, thereby reiterating existing social inequalities. The State of the Internet's Languages report explores these and many other aspects related to ongoing efforts in creating a multilingual and multi-modal internet. Comprising both numbers and stories, the report features contributions in 13 languages, representing 22 language communities from 12 countries, and explores how communities across the world experience the internet.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">Read the full report <strong><a class="external-link" href="https://internetlanguages.org/en/">here</a>. </strong>See more details of the project<strong> <a class="external-link" href="https://whoseknowledge.org/initiatives/state-of-the-internets-languages/">here</a></strong></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/state-of-the-internet-languages-report-2022</a>
</p>
No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-03-07T15:01:11ZBlog EntryTo be Counted When They Count You: Words of Caution for the Gender Data Revolution
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution
<b>In 2015, after the announcement of the SDGs or Sustainable Development Goals, a new global developmental framework through the year 2030, the United Nations described data as the “lifeblood of decision-making and the raw material for accountability” for the purpose of realizing these developmental goals. This curious yet key link between these new developmental goals and the use of quantitative data for agenda setting invited a flurry of big data-led initiatives such as but not limited to Data2X, that sought to further strengthen and solidify the relationship between ‘Big Development’ and ‘Big Data.’</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of those SDG goals (Goal 5) prioritizes gender equality and empowerment of women and girls not only as a standalone goal but also as a crucial factor to realizing the other goals. In response, several academic and non-profit initiatives have begun to interpret and conduct data-led gendered development or the “gender data revolution”. As with other data discourses, the gender-data discourse is also one of ‘speed’, charging ahead using a variety of quantitative and visualization approaches to reveal and eventually solve gendered problems of development.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These interventions also invite some classical critical questions: who is setting the agenda for the gender data revolution and who are its imagined subjects? How are questions of participation and asymmetries of power in developmental research being addressed? How does the gender data revolution address the situatedness as well as incompleteness of data records in the Global South (where most sites of intervention are)? Speaking specifically to the theme of this special issue (‘cross-cultural feminist technologies’), this paper demonstrates how the welfarist discourse of data-led gender development is, in fact, assembled through the overwhelming enumeration of female-identifying bodies in the Global South.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The paper offers critical historical insights from the fields of international development, anthropology, and postcolonial history to caution against both, the possible harms of gender disaggregated datafication as well as the consequences of non-participatory datafication of women, the subjects of the gender data revolution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the full paper <strong><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you.pdf" class="internal-link">here</a></strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This study was undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development network supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, and is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="discreet">The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of their individual authors. Unless the opposite is explicitly stated, or unless the opposite may be reasonably inferred, CIS does not subscribe to these views and opinions which belong to their individual authors. CIS does not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the views and opinions of these individual authors. For an official statement from CIS on a particular issue, please contact us directly.</span></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurRAW PublicationsBig DataResearchers at WorkBD4DRAW ResearchBig Data for Development2022-02-01T01:06:08ZBlog EntryLocating Migrants in India’s Gig Economy: A Scoping Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy-a-scoping-report
<b>Gig workers working for on-demand platform services have been adversely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.</b>
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; ">Cab hailing services came to a standstill in several Indian cities as the central government imposed a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 for over two months, restricting people’s movements. Food delivery and home-based services were deemed ‘essential’ services and continued to operate during the lockdown. They received little support from the platform companies as well as the government to cope with the effects of the health and economic crises. A significant proportion of these workers are migrants from rural and semi-urban areas, who moved to the cities in search of employment. Yet, their lived experiences, aspirations and demands as migrant workers in the gig economy remain unexplored in academic and policy discourse. Against this backdrop, this report examines how the migrant status of the ‘gig’ worker may shape their experience in the platform economy.</p>
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; ">Based on our conversation with platform workers and representatives of platform worker unions based in Jaipur, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, we observe that migrant workers constitute an overwhelming majority on on-demand service platforms. Although migrants may not necessarily migrate to join platforms, their transition to app-based work is motivated by hopes of a lucrative income and incentives. While the transition proved lucrative initially, platform companies began to lower per kilometer rates, reduce incentives and increase their commission. We highlight that the business model of platforms as intermediaries warrants and relies on a free-flowing supply of cheap and easily disciplined labour, which is ensured by the large pool of migrant workers, who act/operate as the ‘reserve army of labour’ for platforms.</p>
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; ">Typically, migrants are engaged in work characterized by informal work arrangements. While engaging in platform work as ‘independent partners’ entails working for a formal enterprise, their working conditions continue to be characterized by informality, such as lack of job security, social security, provision of minimum wage, etc. The modality of platform work is such that there is no scope of human interaction with workers being managed and disciplined by an opaque algorithm which decides the frequency of their matches, ride fares and even allocation. Far from being treated as independent partners, app-based workers are subjected to arbitrary impositions (such as reduction in rates, increase in commission etc.) which they can either concede to, or ‘voluntarily’ leave. Such a work arrangement that is app-mediated and algorithmically-managed underscores the alienation of the platform worker from their employer as well as peers.</p>
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; ">Finally, we highlight the impact of Covid-19 on migrant workers in the gig economy, specifically in the initial months of the pandemic in India. In the absence of meaningful response from platform companies in addressing their concerns, the livelihood of platform-based cab drivers was especially at stake. Those who continued to work incurred significant losses due to drop in incentives as well as increased expenditure owing to rising fuel costs and precautionary hygiene and sanitary measures. As the Covid-19 situation worsened in India, migrant gig workers were faced with the tough choice between remaining a gig worker in the city or returning to their native town or village. Without viable job alternatives, their livelihood continues to hang by a thread.</p>
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<p>Click to <b><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/locating-migrants-in-india-gig-economy.pdf" class="internal-link">download the full report here</a></b> (With inputs from Kaveri Medappa; Edited by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon)</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy-a-scoping-report'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy-a-scoping-report</a>
</p>
No publisherKaarika Das and Srravya CRAW ResearchGig WorkResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-01-04T15:06:08ZBlog EntryGender and gig work: Perspectives from domestic work in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/lse-ambika-tandon-october-21-2021-ambika-tandon-gender-and-gig-work
<b>Platforms have the potential to be instrumental in protecting workers rights, but the current platform design is not optimised to protect workers’ interests especially those of women in the gig economy, argues Ambika Tandon, a senior researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society in India and an author of the report on ‘Platforms, Power and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India’.</b>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Digital labour platforms, broadly defined as digital interfaces that enable the exchange of goods or services, have grown exponentially in cities across the world. In sectors such as transportation and delivery, Uber and similar platforms have achieved dominant status, while in other sectors platforms are still making inroads to transform consumption patterns. Researchers at India’s Centre for Internet and Society, sought to understand the impact platforms have had on the paid domestic and care work sector in India, given its importance for women workers. The workforce in this sector is largely constituted of women from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi (or caste-oppressed) and low-income groups, with a long history of socioeconomic and legal devaluation and lack of recognition. In this context, platforms have positioned themselves as intermediaries that will improve wages and conditions of work, pushing the sector towards formalisation.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">To assess the impact of digital platforms on processes of recruitment and placement and on organisation and conditions of work, we undertook 60 in-depth interviews between June and November 2019. We chose two metropolitan cities, New Delhi in north India and Bengaluru in south India, as our field sites. These are key nodes in the migration corridors of domestic workers in the country. We spoke to workers who were searching for hourly or regular work through platforms, representatives of platform companies and state and central governments, as well as domestic workers unions. We found that platform design breeds and amplifies exclusion and discrimination along the lines of gender and caste, among other social characteristics.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Gig.png" alt="Gig" class="image-inline" title="Gig" /></p>
<h3 class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Uber for domestic work</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We found that the function of digital platforms in the sector is contingent on the historical organisation of domestic work, rather than any fundamental re-organisation of the supply chain. U<a href="https://datasociety.net/library/beyond-disruption/">nlike in the global North</a>, platforms in India have thus far been unable to ‘gig-ify’, that is, break up most tasks that constitute domestic work – including child and elderly care and cooking – into short-term granular services that have been standardised. Domestic workers continue to find regular term full-time placements through marketplace platforms, which only connect employers to workers with no other role in determining work conditions. <a href="https://helpersnearme.com/">HelpersNearMe</a> and <a href="https://helper4u.in/">Helper4u</a> are examples of platforms that play this role by listing profiles of workers and making these available to employers. These placements are no different from work in the ‘offline’ sector, with complete informality and very little standardisation around hours, wages, and task constitution. As compared to this, on-demand platforms that offer short-term gigs (similar to the Uber model) have grown exponentially in the ‘deep’ cleaning segment by marketing it as a professional service with higher value than ‘regular’ cleaning services.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">The function of digital platforms in the sector is contingent on the historical organisation of domestic work, rather than any fundamental re-organisation of the supply chain.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cleaning gigs provided by on-demand companies have higher hourly wages than ‘regular’ cleaning services in the traditional sector. But accessing these opportunities requires workers to have regular access to a smartphone throughout the day, to be able to accept or reject tasks and receive payments through a mobile application or web-portal. Women workers from low income families <a href="https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2018-10/A_Tough_Call.pdf">have very low levels of digital access</a>, with most phones being shared between families and controlled by male members. Also, the use of technical equipment such as vacuum cleaners and chemicals has led to deep cleaning being viewed as a masculine task. As a result, almost all cleaning workers we identified in the on-demand sector were men, even though cleaning is a feminised job role in the traditional economy. Some cleaning workers we spoke to did not identify as domestic workers at all, but rather viewed their work as holding a higher status than traditional cleaning. This trend of masculinisation of a job role coinciding with higher wages and social status has also been seen in other sectors globally, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/13/magazine/women-coding-computer-programming.html">such as software programming</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Gig.png" alt="Gig" class="image-inline" title="Gig" /></p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Promises and risks of low-tech platforms</h3>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">One of the reasons that women workers are more likely to find work through marketplace platforms rather than on-demand agencies is because they only require workers to have a basic or feature phone for one-time registration, and subsequently to answer calls from potential employers or the platform. Most platforms in this category do not intervene in task allocation or terms of work, which are negotiated directly between workers and employers. Algorithms and digital interfaces then only facilitate matching, as opposed to on-demand work where all aspects of the job are determined by the platform. This allows women workers to register using shared family phones, or those of their friends, neighbours, and in the case of one of our respondents, her landlady’s phone number. These platforms then may be able to provide placement opportunities to workers who are unable to find work through word-of-mouth networks. This is especially crucial as a result of the unemployment crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, unlike with the on-demand model, these platforms do not offer increased wages or provide better conditions of work.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Although marketplace platforms provide an additional route into finding opportunities in the sector, they also codify employers’ biases through their design. All marketplace platforms and digital placement agencies we reviewed – upwards of 20 companies – provide demographic filters to employers for filtering workers’ profiles. These include information on workers’ gender, age, religion, state of origin, and in one case, even caste. While practices of employing workers based on demographic characteristics are <a href="https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/publications/WCMS_378058/lang--en/index.html">rampant in the sector historically</a>, platforms build them in by design and market them as a key feature of what they are able to offer employers. These open up direct avenues for employers to discriminate against workers from minority religions and oppressed castes. It also reinforces gendered occupational segregation, as employers seek out women workers for feminised roles such as cleaning and care work, and men for tasks such as gardening and plumbing.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">Power structures endemic to the domestic work sector continue to thrive in the platform economy, as do gender and caste-based occupational segregation.</p>
<p class="selectionShareable" style="text-align: justify; ">Platforms have been making claims of formalising the informal sector, especially in global South economies, through increasing efficiency in matching workers to employers. Despite having the potential to be instrumental in protecting workers rights, currently platform design is not optimised to protect workers’ interests. Power structures endemic to the domestic work sector continue to thrive in the platform economy, as do gender and caste-based occupational segregation. To be able to nudge the sector towards formalisation, platforms need to directly intervene in power structures and co-design with workers, rather than merely functioning as digital recruiters. This could imply adopting practices such as removing demographic details where not relevant, introducing written contracts and minimum wage floors for placements, and addressing gender gaps in some segments of the digital economy.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><em>This work forms part of a project on ‘Platforms, Power and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India’, supported by the Association for Progressive Communications. You can read more about the project <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india">here</a>, and find the full project report <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-pdf">here</a>. <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india"> </a></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><em><em>This article gives the views of the author and does not represent the position of the Media@LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.</em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog first published on LSE website can be accessed <a class="external-link" href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2021/10/21/gender-and-gig-work-perspectives-from-domestic-work-in-india/">here</a></p>
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No publisherambikaGenderGig WorkResearchers at Work2021-12-07T02:11:49ZBlog EntryAI in the Future of Work
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/oes-ambika-tandon-ai-in-the-future-of-work
<b>Artificial Intelligence and allied technologies form part of what is being called the fourth Industrial Revolution.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some analysts <a href="https://workofthefuturecongress.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/w25682.pdf">project the loss of jobs</a> as AI replaces humans, especially in job roles that consist of repetitive tasks that are easier to automate. Another prediction is that AI, as preceding technologies, will <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---cabinet/documents/publication/wcms_647306.pdf">enhance and complement</a> human capability, rather than replacing it at large scales. AI at the workplace includes a wide range of technologies, from <a href="https://www.infosys.com/human-amplification/Documents/manufacturing-ai-perspective.pdf">machine-to-machine interactions on the factory floor</a>, to automated decision-making systems.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some analysts <a href="https://workofthefuturecongress.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/w25682.pdf">project the loss of jobs</a> as AI replaces humans, especially in job roles that consist of repetitive tasks that are easier to automate. Another prediction is that AI, as preceding technologies, will <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---cabinet/documents/publication/wcms_647306.pdf">enhance and complement</a> human capability, rather than replacing it at large scales. AI at the workplace includes a wide range of technologies, from <a href="https://www.infosys.com/human-amplification/Documents/manufacturing-ai-perspective.pdf">machine-to-machine interactions on the factory floor</a>, to automated decision-making systems.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Studying the Platform Economy</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The platform economy, in particular, is dependent on AI in the design of aggregator platforms that form a two-way market between customers and workers. Platforms deploy AI at a number of different stages, from recruitment to assignment of tasks to workers. AI systems often reflect existing social biases, as they are built using biased datasets, and by non-diverse teams that are not attuned to such biases. This has been the case in the platform economy as well, where biased systems impact the ability of marginalised workers to access opportunities. To take an example, Amazon’s algorithm to filter workers’ resumes was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G">biased against women</a> because it was trained on 10 years of hiring data, and ended up reflecting the underrepresentation of women in the tech industry. That is not to say that algorithms introduce biases where they didn’t exist earlier, but that they take existing biases and hard code them into systems in a systematic and predictable manner.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Biases are made even more explicit in marketplace platforms, that allow employers to review workers’ profiles and skills for a fee. In a study of platforms offering home-based services in India, we found that marketplace platforms offer filtering mechanisms which allow employers to filter workers by demographic characteristics such as gender, age, religion, and in one case, caste (the research publication is forthcoming). The design of the platform itself, in this case, encourages and enables discrimination of workers. One of the leading platforms in India had ‘Hindu maid’ and ‘Hindu cook’ as its top search term, reflecting the ways in which employers from the dominant religion are encouraged to discriminate against workers from minority religions in the Indian platform economy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another source of bias in the platform economy are rating and pricing systems, which can reduce the quality and quantum of work offered to marginalised workers. Rating systems exist across platform types - those that offer on-demand or location-based work, microwork platforms, and marketplace platforms. They allow customers and employers to rate workers on a scale, and are most often one-way feedback systems to review a worker’s performance (as our forthcoming research discusses, we found very few examples of feedback loops that also allow workers to rate employers). Rating systems <a href="https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Discriminating_Tastes_Customer_Ratings_as_Vehicles_for_Bias.pdf">have been found</a> to be a source of anxiety for workers, as they can be rated poorly for unfair reasons, including their demographic characteristics. Most platforms penalise workers for poor ratings, and may even stop them from accessing any tasks at all if their ratings fall below a certain threshold. Without adequate grievance redressal mechanisms that allow workers to contest poor ratings, rating systems are prone to reflect customer biases while appearing neutral. It is difficult to assess the level of such bias without companies releasing data comparing ratings of workers by their demographic characteristics, but it <a href="https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Discriminating_Tastes_Customer_Ratings_as_Vehicles_for_Bias.pdf">has been argued</a> that there is ample evidence to believe that demographic characteristics will inevitably impact workers ratings due to widespread biases.</p>
<h3>Searching for a Solution</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is clear that platform companies need to be pushed into solving for biases and making their systems more fair and non-discriminatory. Some companies, such as Amazon in the example above, have responded by suspending algorithms that are proven to be biased. However, this is a temporary fix, as companies rarely seek to drop such projects indefinitely. In the platform economy, where algorithms are central to the business model of companies, complete suspension is near impossible. Amazon also tried another quick fix - it <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight-idUSKCN1MK08G">altered the algorithm</a> to respond neutrally to terms such as ‘woman’. This is a process known as debiasing the model, through which any biased connections (such as between the word ‘woman’ and downgrading) being made by the algorithm are explicitly removed. Another solution is diversifying or debiasing datasets. In this example, the algorithm could be fed a larger sample of resumes and decision-making logics from industries that have a higher representation of women.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another set of solutions could be drawn from anti-discrimination law, which prohibit discrimination at the workplace. In India, anti-discrimination laws protect against wage inequality, as well as discrimination at the stage of recruitment for protected groups such as transgender persons. While it can be argued that biased rating systems lead to wage inequality, there are several barriers to applying anti-discrimination law for workers in the platform economy. One, most jurisdictions, including India, protect only employees from discrimination, not self-employed contractors. Another challenge is the lack of data to prove that rating or recruitment algorithms are discriminatory, without which legal recourse is impossible. <a href="https://datasociety.net/pubs/ia/Discriminating_Tastes_Customer_Ratings_as_Vehicles_for_Bias.pdf">Rosenblat et al.</a> (2016) discuss these challenges in the context of the US, suggesting solutions such as addressing employment misclassification or modifying pleading requirements to bring platform workers under the protection of the law.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist principles point to structural shifts that are required to ensure robust protections for workers. Analysing algorithmic systems from a feminist lens indicates several points in the design at which interventions must be focused to ensure impact. The teams designing algorithms need to be made more diverse, along with integrating an explicit focus on assessing the impact of systems at the stage of design. Companies need to be more transparent with their data, and encourage independent audits of their systems. Corporate and government actors must be held to account to fix broken AI systems.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Ambika Tandon is a Senior Researcher at the <a href="https://cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet & Society (CIS)</a> in India, where she studies the intersections of gender and technology. She focuses on women’s work in the digital economy, and the impact of emerging technologies on social inequality. She is also interested in developing feminist methods for technology research. Ambika tweets at <a href="https://twitter.com/AmbikaTandon">@AmbikaTandon</a>.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog was originally <a class="external-link" href="https://ethicalsource.dev/blog/ai-in-the-future-of-work/">published in the Organization for Ethical Source</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/oes-ambika-tandon-ai-in-the-future-of-work'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/oes-ambika-tandon-ai-in-the-future-of-work</a>
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No publisherambikaCISRAWResearchers at WorkArtificial IntelligenceFuture of Work2021-12-07T01:51:42ZBlog EntryPracticing Feminist Principles
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/practicing-feminist-principles
<b>AI can serve to challenge social inequality and dismantle structures of power.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Artificial intelligence systems have been heralded as a tool to purge our systems of social biases, opinions, and behaviour, and produce ‘hard objectivity’. However, on the contrary, it has become evident that AI systems can sharpen inequalities and bias by hard coding it. If left unattended, automated decision-making can be dangerous and dystopian.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>However, when appropriated by feminists, AI can serve to challenge social inequality and dismantle structures of power. There are many routes to such appropriation – resisting authoritarian uses through movement-building and creating our own alternative systems that harness the strength of AI towards achieving social change.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Feminist principles can be a handy framework to understand and transform the impact of AI systems. Key principles include reflexivity, participation, intersectionality, and working towards structural change.</strong> When operationalised, these principles can be used to enhance the capacities of local actors and institutions working towards developmental goals. They can also be used to theoretically ground collective action against the use of AI systems by institutions of power.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Reflexivity</strong> in the design and implementation of AI would imply a check on the privilege and power, or lack thereof, of the various stakeholders involved in an ecosystem. By being reflexive, designers can take steps to account for power hierarchies in the process of design. A popular example of the impact of power differentials is in national statistics. Collected largely by male surveyors speaking to male heads of households, national statistics can often undervalue or misrepresent women’s labour and health. See Data2x. “<a class="external-link" href="https://www.data4sdgs.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/Gender%20Data%20-%20Data4SDGs%20Toolbox%20Module.pdf">Gender Data: Sources, Gaps, and Measurement Opportunities</a>,” March 2017 and Statistics Division. “Gender, Statistics and Gender Indicators Developing a Regional Core Set of Gender Statistics and Indicators in Asia and the Pacific.” <a class="external-link" href="https://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/Framework-and-Indicator-set.pdf">United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2013</a>. <span>AI systems would need to be reflexive of such gaps and plan steps to mitigate them.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Participation</strong> as a principle focuses on the process. A participatory process would account for the perspectives and lived experiences of various stakeholders, including those most impacted by its deployment. <strong>In the health ecosystem, for instance, this would include policymakers, public and private healthcare providers, frontline workers, and patients. A health information system with a bottom-up design would account for metrics of success determined by not just high-level organisations such as the World Health Organisation and national governments, but also by providers and frontline workers</strong>. Among other benefits, participation in designing AI systems also leads to buy-in and ownership of the technology right at the outset, promoting widespread adoption.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Intersectionality</strong> calls for addressing the social difference in the datasets, design, and deployment of AI. <strong>Research across fields has shown the perpetuation of inequality based on gender, income, race, and other characteristics through AI that is based on biased datasets.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The most critical principle is to ensure that AI systems are working to challenge inequality, including inequality perpetrated by patriarchal, racist, and capitalist systems. Aligning with feminist objectives means that systems that have objectives that do not align with feminist goals – such as those that enhance state capacities to surveil and police – would immediately be excluded. Systems that are designed to exclude and oppress will not work to further feminist goals, even if they integrate other progressive elements such as intersectional datasets or dynamic consent architecture (which would allow users to opt in and out easily).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We must work towards decreasing social inequality and achieve egalitarian outcomes in and through its practice. Thus, while explicitly feminist projects such as those that produce better datasets or advocate for participatory mechanisms are of course practicing this principle, I would argue that it is also practiced by any project that furthers feminist goals. Take for example AI projects that aim to reduce hate speech and misinformation online. Given that women and other marginalised groups are often at the receiving end of violence, such work can be classified as feminist even if it doesn’t actively target gender-based violence.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All technology is embedded in social relations. Practicing feminist principles in the design of AI only serves to account for these social relations and design better, more robust systems. <strong>Feminist practitioners can mobilise these to ensure a future of AI with inclusive, community-owned, participatory systems, combined with collective challenges to systems of domination.</strong></p>
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<h3>References</h3>
<p>Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.</p>
<p>Link to the original article <a class="external-link" href="https://feministai.pubpub.org/pub/practicing-feminist-principles/release/1?readingCollection=c218d365">here</a></p>
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No publisherambikaGender, Welfare, and PrivacyCISRAWResearchers at WorkArtificial Intelligence2021-12-07T00:54:54ZBlog EntryAre India’s much-lauded startups failing their women workers?
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers
<b>Recent protests outside Urban Company’s head office highlight the gendered nature of work in the country’s digital economy.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On October 8, more than 100 women beauty workers gathered outside the head office of <a class="link-external" href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/startups/urban-company-hit-by-protests-promises-to-enhance-partners-earnings/articleshow/86925941.cms" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Urban Company in Gurgaon</a> to protest against their work conditions. The firm, an on-demand platform for home-based services, initially responded by clamping down on protesters, threatening to block their IDs and inviting police action on them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After continued pressure from workers and media, the company reaffirmed its commitment to “giving a voice to the voiceless” and eventually announced some measures to partly meet workers’ demands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was arguably the first widely-reported instance of women working with digital platforms publicly organising to take collective action. A deeper look at their demands sheds light on the gendered nature of work under India’s much-lauded tech startups.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Women’s labour market decisions are structured around trade-offs between paid work and unpaid care work at home. They also face constraints around physical mobility, security and negative familial attitudes towards their work. Digital platforms have been touted as game-changers that will increase women’s workforce participation and earnings, because of the flexibility their model offers to workers to control their work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/F.png" alt="Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, far from increasing workers’ agency, platform models continue to reinforce gender norms and fail to account for factors that shape women’s work. The recent protests are a reminder that there is much to be corrected if work on platforms is to enhance women’s economic outcomes.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block">Flexibility for whom?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The term “flexibility” can be understood in various ways. From the workers’ perspective, it is usually understood as the ability to choose when and how much to work. Most platforms, including Urban Company, advertise this as one of their goals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, from the firms’ perspective, it could mean minimising input costs while achieving high labour turnover and service quality. Platforms deploy a range of strategies to manage workforce flexibility and match concurrent demand. Key among these is the system of ratings that determine the number of leads offered to workers and may also be used to coerce them into working longer hours and performing unpaid tasks to satiate customer demands.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In Urban Company’s case, workers’ ratings are determined not just on the basis of customer feedback, but also the rates at which workers accept or cancel tasks. This becomes antithetical to increasing flexibility – workers find themselves compelled to work longer hours to meet incentives and avoid penalties. Women who find work through the app have significant childcare responsibilities, and in many cases are sole earners in female-headed households.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Suman, a single mother working as a prime service partner asked us, “When my child has an accident, will I care about the ratings or penalties? I have to stay at home and take care of him. How will I take orders then if they keep giving me leads?” Workers often face penalties such as non-negotiable deductions from wages and permanent account blockages upon low response and high cancellation rates.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As Suman’s account illustrates, these penalties make it very difficult for women to take leaves for even short intervals. The list of demands put forth by workers also includes the ability to log out from the platform for longer periods on account of maternity or other personal obligations, without rejoining fees being deducted.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another way in which Urban Company manages workforce flexibility is through the use of artificial and arbitrarily determined service categories. During the pandemic, amidst intense fluctuations in consumer demands and spending habits, the firm introduced five sub-categories under their beauty service vertical – classic, prime, silver plus, gold plus and lux. Classification of workers into these categories was primarily based on ratings, without taking into consideration prior experience or quality of work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For workers in the classic category, such arbitrary classifications without considering prior experience in the beauty sector or quality of work could amount to deskilling and undervaluation of their work. Workers who have been promoted to higher categories have shared several negative implications including higher costs for uniforms and equipment, increased distance between customer locations and reduced leads with higher commission rates. In effect, these categorisations further obfuscate the rationale for lead generation and upskilling for workers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The authors asked Urban Company about these and other matters. This article will be updated if the firm responds.</p>
<h3 class="cms-block-heading cms-block">Absence of support</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A key concern highlighted by workers is regarding the complete absence of infrastructural support necessary for dignified work. Women spend long hours commuting between their homes and multiple service locations where they receive orders. Many find it difficult to access critical amenities such as drinking water and toilets while on the commute and are denied these even within customers’ homes due to entrenched caste prejudices and discriminatory practices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Companies also fail to support workers in case of emergencies, which has emerged as a key cause for concern among women who often work in private spaces such as customers’ homes. Workers emphasise the need for a human to respond to their calls in case of an emergency, rejecting technological solutions such as automated helplines and SOS buttons that leave workers to fend for themselves in case they are harassed by customers or in transit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_F.png" alt="Abhiraj" class="image-inline" title="Abhiraj" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Beyond considerations of platform design and infrastructure, workers highlight the structural precarity that stems from the business model of platform companies. The “entrepreneurship” model put forth by companies does not allow workers to access the income security that comes with regular-wage employment, nor the control and agency that is necessary for self-employment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Media reports after the protests have lauded Urban Company for being nimble and transforming work relations in ways that are responsive to workers’ demands. What is missed in public discourse are the efforts taken by hitherto unorganised workers to bring the firm to the negotiating table with little external support, while also balancing paid work and care responsibilities.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These movements are gaining ground across sectors to hold bigger companies accountable for extracting labour from workers while claiming to empower them. Exploitative practices across lesser-known platforms remain invisible and unchecked, with most continuing with business as usual. If workers’ collective voices are to transform industry-wide conditions, it becomes imperative to listen, amplify and act on their recommendations.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><em>Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan are researchers at the Centre for Internet and Society, where they study the impact of digital platforms on labour cultures in India. </em><em>Read the original published in Scroll <a class="external-link" href="https://scroll.in/article/1010724/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers">here</a></em></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/are-indias-much-lauded-startups-failing-their-women-workers</a>
</p>
No publisherAbhishek Sekharan and Ambika TandonCISRAWResearchers at WorkRAW BlogFuture of Work2021-12-06T16:24:36ZBlog EntryBetween Platform and Pandemic: Migrants in India's Gig Economy
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/caught-between-the-platform-and-the-pandemic-locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy
<b>In response to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in India, the central government announced a nationwide lockdown in March 2020. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Initially this was organised for three weeks, but it stretched on for over three months. With a mere four hours’ notice before banning all non-‘essential’ economic activities overnight, the Indian government imposed what has been described as <a href="https://scroll.in/article/957564/not-china-not-italy-indias-coronavirus-lockdown-is-the-harshest-in-the-world">one of the most stringent lockdowns worldwide</a>. It shut down the railways, inter-state bus services, and all industrial, commercial, cultural and religious activities, bringing the economy to a standstill. In the weeks that followed this announcement, hundreds of poor migrant workers <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-coronavirus-lockdown-migrant-workers/2020/03/27/a62df166-6f7d-11ea-a156-0048b62cdb51_story.html">walked</a> thousands of kilometers from major cities back to their villages, as the lockdown gutted their livelihood without providing any safety nets. Images of migrant workers traveling by foot for days forced the Indian public to acknowledge the existence and struggles of migrant workers. The pandemic has exposed the frailty of their livelihoods and brought their vulnerability into sharp focus.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The ‘gig’ economy in particular shapes the lives and livelihoods of a large migrant workforce. Gig workers working for on-demand platform services have been adversely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Cab-hailing services </span><a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/coronavirus-india-lockdown-wheels-stuck-but-worries-are-many-for-ola-uber-drivers-6346527/">came to a standstill</a><span> in several Indian cities as the central government imposed a nationwide lockdown for over two months, restricting people’s movements. Food delivery and home-based services were </span><a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/covid19-lockdown-online-delivery-of-food-items-is-essential-service-but-don-t-rely-on-it-for-your-dinner-1659490-2020-03-25">deemed ‘essential’ services</a><span> and continued to operate during the lockdown. However, migrant workers received </span><a href="https://scroll.in/article/959766/by-crowdfunding-benefits-for-embattled-workers-app-based-services-are-evading-their-own-obligations">little support</a><span> from the platform companies as well as the government. Despite the overwhelming presence of migrants in the workforce, discussions of the so-called ‘platform economy’ have rarely focused on their vulnerabilities.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><strong>Neither here nor there</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>In 2000, Omer (all names are pseudonyms) migrated to Hyderabad from a village in the neighbouring Nagarkurnool district. He worked as a cab driver for a travel agency in the city. After working in the city for five years, he brought his wife and children to live with him. When Uber and Ola launched in Hyderabad in 2014, he became a ‘driver partner’ providing on-demand cab services. The nationwide lockdown since March 2020 gutted his livelihood, as movement was severely restricted. The burden of rent and living expenses in the absence of his regular income forced Omer to return to his village in Nagarkurnool district. He weighed his earning potential as a cab driver against the risk of being infected and chose to leave the city.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, the choice to leave the city did not exist for all. Mani, a cab driver now based in Chennai, had moved to the city 10 years ago from a neighbouring town, Ranipet, to find employment as a driver. Before joining Ola, he worked as a night shift driver for an IT company in the city. In the wake of the pandemic and lockdown, he avoided returning to his hometown fearing the wrath of lenders he owed money to. He had taken out a loan while he could still work over 10 hours a day. Lenders in towns such as Ranipet are known to visit the homes of borrowers and harass them in the presence of family and neighbours. Fearing public humiliation, Mani decided to stay in Chennai. Similarly, Jagan, another driver in Hyderabad, also chose not to return to his village which was just 80kms from the city. He explained that only those who owned land could afford to return to the village. Without any land or house, he had nothing to go back to.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Jagan and Mani were unable to earn their livelihood during the lockdown. Fuel prices were a major concern for workers in cab-hailing services as well as food delivery. Within three months of the lockdown, the price of petrol was increased by about Rs. 14 (approx. $0.19). Far from accounting for this rise in fuel prices, on-demand platforms reduced the per kilometer rates for workers. For instance, Swiggy, a popular on-demand food delivery company, <a href="https://thewire.in/labour/swiggy-delivery-executives-strike-in-chennai-and-hyderabad-over-reduction-in-payment">brought down</a> the per-kilometer rate for its delivery executives from Rs. 35 (approx. $0.48) per delivery to Rs.15 (approx. $0.21). Since the lockdown in March, platform workers have staged <a href="https://inc42.com/infocus/year-end-review-2020/from-swiggy-to-ola-a-year-of-protests-by-indias-gig-workers/">repeated strikes</a>, protesting against the plummeting rates, suspension of incentives and demanding extension of moratorium on loan repayments.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Those who were unable to return to their hometown or village had to find alternate sources of income to continue to sustain their families’ basic needs. Both Jagan and Mani began working as contract labour in nearby construction sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Omer, who returned to his village, things were not great either. A couple of months after his return, he was still on the lookout for a job while occasionally driving a tractor or lorry. Having lived in the city for close to two decades, returning to his village had not been easy. Besides the struggle to find gainful employment, adjusting to rural life had been a challenge:</p>
<p><em>I am 40 years old – the chances of me getting a job is negative… my situation has become like ‘Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghat ka’ [I belong neither here nor there] </em>– Omer</p>
<p><strong>Migrant Workers in a Gig Economy</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even though the above narratives of migrant workers are specific to the challenges presented by COVID-19, the labour and livelihood outcomes are a result of structural conditions long preceding the pandemic’s outbreak.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Reports suggest that a <a href="https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/delhi-and-not-bengaluru-is-the-place-to-be-for-gig-economy-workers-1555013405684.html">significant proportion of platform workers in Indian cities are migrants</a> who moved there in search of employment. While the exact magnitude of migrants engaged in digital platforms is hard to discern, our interviews with trade union leaders and migrant platform workers indicated that intra-state migrants from neighboring peri-urban and rural districts constitute a large part of the platform workforce. Dharmendra, who heads Indian Delivery Lions—a union of food delivery partners in Jaipur – pointed out that as rural India remains starved of adequate livelihood opportunities, people are pushed to the city in search of greener pastures. <a href="http://labourbureau.gov.in/RLE%202K%204-5%20Chapter%202.htm">Even for those engaged in farm activities, seasonal unemployment is a recurrent phenomenon</a>. This is amplified by the deteriorating climatic conditions, which further pushes seasonal agrarian workers into the urban informal sector. Thus, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/39244178/Climate_change_Agrarian_distress_and_the_role_of_digital_labour_markets_evidence_from_Bengaluru_Karnataka">rural agrarian workers facing seasonal unemployment engage in digital labour markets as a short-term adaptive strategy.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In terms of demographic profiles, recent migrants to the city, especially those hailing from a different state, and younger migrants typically opt to work in the food delivery sectorSuch financial constraints also impact migrant workers engaged with ride-hailing apps, as they are less likely to own a car. Owning a bike (for food delivery) is far less expensive than owning a car (for transportation services), which incurs more expenses and leads to a higher debt burden and longer repayment commitments. Instead, they usually <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/files/ifat-itf-protecting-workers-in-digital-platform-economy-ola-uber-occupational-health-safety-report/">drive leased cars</a> from the on-demand service companies, or are employed at a fixed wage by car-owners who have attached themselves to Ola or Uber. In both these arrangements, migrant gig workers are under pressure to pay a fixed daily fee (for the lease) or meet the car-owners’ targets. Hence, they do not enjoy much, if any, agency over their time or work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Migrant workers who are already in cities tend to transition to on-demand gig work. For migrant workers like Mani and Omer, on-demand work with its lucrative incentives and promise of flexibility presented an appealing alternative to their under-paying jobs that hardly met their needs. Migrant workers are economically more vulnerable; most of their earnings go into paying rent and repaying debt while barely managing their living expenses or sending remittances back home. Vinay Sarathy, the President of Food Delivery Partners Struggle Committee, pointed out that <em>“many migrant bachelors live together cramped up in a single room, to save on rent and send more remittance to cope with financial hardship back home.”</em> Such struggles, unique to migrants, often remain invisible.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><em>“Landlords are not accommodative, security is an issue. Everything is so much more expensive. Schooling, for instance, is costly. In the village, Rs. 3000 ($41 approx) is sufficient for school fees, but in the city, it is not less than Rs. 8000 ($109 approx). Rent is a major concern too. 80% of income goes on rent and school fees. Only the remaining can be for daily expenditure</em>”. – Omer, a gig worker in the transportation sector</p>
<p>The lack of social institutions to support migrant gig workers in the city and the government’s failure to provide long-due welfare measures frequently leave them on the city’s fringes.</p>
<p>Against such a backdrop, the platforms’ lucrative income stream fulfilled migrant workers’ basic desire to secure a stable livelihood. So much so that even migrant workers like Mani and Jagan, who were previously engaged in salaried driving jobs, switched to platforms, tempted by the prospect of improved earnings. The chance to be a ‘partner’ with the ‘flexibility’ to decide one’s work timings made platforms an appealing alternative to low-waged precarious work in the <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/business/covid-19-impact-informal-economy-workers-excluded-from-most-govt-measures-be-it-cash-transfers-or-tax-benefits-8354051.html">unorganised sector, where migrant workers are generally employed</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While the initial motivation to join platforms resulted from the expectation of better income, improved working conditions, and the perceived social standing of being attached to a company, these <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/ola-uber-workers-platform-gig-economy-earnings">aspirations remain unfulfilled.</a> Inadvertently, migrant workers’ movement towards on-demand work ensured a steady supply of gig workers for on-demand service companies, which consolidated their presence in the service sector. After successfully capturing the market, companies started <a href="https://www.theindiaforum.in/article/confronting-precarious-work">slashing incentives</a> for all workers. Such impunity and indifference wielded by platforms, in large part, can be attributed to the guaranteed supply of migrant workers. The acute vulnerability of being unemployed compels distressed rural migrants from nearby districts and suburbs to take up any job, regardless of how exploitative it may be. This latent supply of migrant workers gives platform companies the leverage to arbitrarily depress incentives, extract larger commissions, and even dismiss workers. Migrant workers thus become the de-facto <a href="https://rupe-india.org/70/reserve.html#note29">“reserve army of labour”</a> for on-demand companies.</p>
<p><strong>Comply or quit?</strong></p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdown, migrant gig worker’s livelihoods have been reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence, foregrounding the fatal overlap between the two axes of vulnerability: migration and gig work.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Historically, migrant workers have been concentrated in occupations characterised by precarity and informal work arrangements without fixed-pay or binding contracts. Workers who transitioned to on-demand platforms were motivated by the promise of better conditions of work and pay. The initial appeal led them to view platforms as a dignified alternative to their profession. Many were also lured by the notion of independence and flexibility afforded by the platform. To be one’s boss and not be answerable to anyone was unheard of and a welcome change to the subservience that most workers had grudgingly internalized as a professional prerequisite. However, contrary to the big claims and initial promises, platforms began to replicate work arrangements in the informal sector. The result is that workers are rarely provided fair wages, social security, or paid leave. There is no meaningful choice for them to exercise, as they are effectively left with two alternatives—comply or quit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Trapped between exploitative working conditions and being unemployed, workers lack any real negotiating power. Even as gig workers across the country continue to protest for better work conditions, platforms remain indifferent, assured of the guaranteed labour supply. As summarized by Dharmendra, <em>“the agenda of the platforms presently is to recruit new workers – they have already begun advertising for jobs even amidst the pandemic, as incidents of protests keep rising! We’re expecting that they’ll fire old workers (engaged in protests) and recruit those who are presently unemployed”</em>.</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Kaarika Das</strong> is Research Scholar at NIEPA and <strong>Srravya C</strong> is researcher in the Humanizing Automation project at IIIT Bangalore. This work was produced as a part of their research with the Centre for Internet and Society, India.</p>
<p><em>We would like to thank Ambika Tandon, Aayush Rathi and Kaveri Medappa for their inputs and feedback at various stages of this research. We are grateful for the support from the Internet Society Foundation to the Centre for Internet and Society, India (CIS), which made this research possible. A full report on migration and the gig economy in India is forthcoming on CIS’s website. </em></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/caught-between-the-platform-and-the-pandemic-locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/caught-between-the-platform-and-the-pandemic-locating-migrants-in-indias-gig-economy</a>
</p>
No publisherKaarika Das and Srravya CFuture of WorkRAW BlogResearchCISRAWRAW ResearchResearchers at Work2021-12-06T16:04:07ZBlog Entry #CultureForAll Conference on Cultural Mapping
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/culture-for-all-conference-on-cultural-mapping
<b>Sahapedia is organising the #CultureForAll Conference on Cultural Mapping, digitally on September 28 and 29, 2021. The conference will take place in collaboration with the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Azim Premji University, the Centre for Internet and Society, and the Re-Centring Afro Asia project at the University of Cape Town.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Cross-posted from <a class="external-link" href="https://www.sahapedia.org/conferences">Sahapedia</a></b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Featuring 15 papers across 4 sessions, the conference will present research primarily from South Asia with some papers discussing experimental mapping techniques in Africa and Europe. Sessions will be chaired by academicians from among our collaborators and promise to interrogate, discuss, and reflect upon the complex questions of who, what, how, and for whom to map culture. Speakers at the conference will present work ranging from literature in Nagaland and food in Goa to music in South Africa and architecture in Delhi. They include researchers in history, literature, and music, as well as architects and educators.</p>
<hr />
<ul>
<li>The conference will be held on Zoom. Register here: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bit.ly/2X4XAap">https://bit.ly/2X4XAap</a></li>
<li>For the schedule and more details, visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sahapedia.org/conferences">https://www.sahapedia.org/conferences</a></li>
<li>The Cultural Mapping Conference is part of the ongoing <a href="https://www.sahapedia.org/culture-for-all">#CultureForAll (CFA) </a><span>festival by Sahapedia.</span></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/culture-for-all-conference-on-cultural-mapping'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/culture-for-all-conference-on-cultural-mapping</a>
</p>
No publishersnehaResearchers at WorkDigital KnowledgeEvent2021-09-20T15:18:02ZBlog EntryJune and July Newsletter
http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-july-2021-newsletter
<b>The newsletter presents the work done in the months of June and July 2021.</b>
<h3>Announcements</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are pleased to announce the launch of a <strong>seminar series</strong> to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South. The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. It will also seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on research exchange, and foster collaborations among researchers and academics from diverse geographies. For more details on the first session, <strong>on Information Disorders</strong>, and to register, click here: [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/5rYRQ0U6yOrzlX_5e9iqnD_UB7xRMkmO8EVgecX5S9vDUhOLzn5WpJ0OxgmH2vkh7APoOqCGaRVN7fbP4hfGnUPT63lb2O87rMGdk4RE4xpKcYzABQ2MhfjmOr_3FkIJtbxITjKFXrZRVlI-An9WPxyiN-QtsOJjpxV0baaFxLqDmy_TnlrW_FLKnXYXkTNBbxlIifakqN_m9fPpBaaaMJF_KetoeIUtNQIoHYTtcIQhNoelJ8-I28gyVM1-9w61Ew">link</a>]</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We are also hiring for two full time remote positions:</p>
<ul>
<li>Research Associate: Access to Knowledge Programme: Apply by <strong>August 13</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/tn9z7DynIuxWFSSRGmZ50s_HYg65AwLX75HcYf9qBiEJsrkj6teE0WzDGHWCezRU7S0d4Li9WxClerez9wuhwJFHRpki4ynQYqrFoAh7dKnqJKulAW_7VyZIrgxsBri_sYFlGanbqT0IW-9HdYDbVbqyjvgAUl06_OlaHwOMDzO833kR5cT3BwaLUSDOhZqfFvwVNZav-DBH1q9Kr9bWXdtPe_g_wDm-PW3lMxudyF7SKkCLrGceKAec1QiU">link</a>]</li>
<li>Communication Designer: Apply by <strong>August 20</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/lskNSP_MjDCNYOT2PmiuZiGB29gga3crwxuXyJYEF8rdPYDDerNnNYnnCV-GG8rdnyqkxU4eJofgQXU1-iS2IPRRGRRtBXXEaUSVB3mioQNSRwwIecWmm2TIFkfi2fAL7grkxRKKKAX2PG87TiWk8hdmOUqcqtEX9dqbsudTQ3xgmZOio5BOC4GL6mxMzN_9Q5_YzOzZxSZzpT7SMm1J_HASTKNuUktcaESwbMV7PO5sPic41ymaDT8">link</a>]</li>
</ul>
<h3>Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Emerging Technology</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Following the MCA notification <strong>mandating disclosures of crypto currency</strong> holdings by companies, Aryan Gupta, in an issue brief, discusses the policy landscape in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Japan with particular emphasis upon <strong>definition, accounting practices, and taxation, with respect to crypto currencies.</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/IapPj_hXCzk7v6Hf21yy36-Sz8hRKHv8zkjWHYoTB7Tu5pnKDAw25QMx5zjerDAadU3BAHF2npDH_q9m81nhsGEbEBQqfWIksFuU7FqAIoREOxap2dkrtGy-X49B1okL_K-zz4zOgG1nyg6ct03r-xSZw_C94Cc8MzubQ2tzmsZjEYGRlxHywlK8a7988SepnX7wbWd2aDt6rhgDNxSBU6AJh3DeygvFctc-wWW9F-Q5e81ADlC9Xei9IoYdHlJrbvOMikdM2WlvJLzb0vnVlDJqd_7x4B7_XdshOYFQ4YRljV4O">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">We submitted comments in response to the Supreme Court E-committee’s draft vision document of <strong>phase III of the E-courts project</strong>. Aman Nair, Arinjay Vyas, Pallavi Bedi and Garima Saxena submitted their general comments and recommendations, and comparatively analysed the <strong>integration of digital technology into the judiciary in both South Asia and Africa</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/a-ADiN4WA0-BN9-GzZs_TH-rDZ6m1ii-4HzEzLfXdwVXmGyrIYBcuU7EMPd865oDaqEYSihJoqjxTyuC4usIwryJorATCH47YWEUlUAXce8b2TudJcdAsWryfDvls0WhJFQ9TTw4Bt5ZPfdDmToylNX9ECLuOvO851uSycsDHetWiQhQXaDELUcbQKXBZEbhxtFos2ugg4PHwLXNhwM9iKMb1Q-4OuONy6YcnpFcB3fVUeLvWVp4aBEngQVUnvfLfeVdMvGWNoDk">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Google’s new Privacy Sandbox platform promises to <strong>preserve anonymity when serving tailored advertising</strong>. But does this new framework help users in any way? Maria Jawed’s analysis reveals that Google’s gambit to <strong>reorient the ad-tech ecosystem under the garb of privacy</strong>, ultimately ends up undermining it. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/pwRhJ3bFqQSxSMBZ-qNYKO59aoQ95F8ro9x-8vBy2QDQiBpNFb-qLH4I8Ph-o65OT_bJnNcMoJzFBig6nxqFFcT7qtvR0b6bakvkH4pQRJalgbpLCylKEblBaFkiAudZPamJaz7XIeQ3mMQNQcnk9jxhjGW4yu6YFB8-h_G4nYcZg9lJCj35EZMG-bdl79YR6VEUb9jVxmNFoDXuTiUBCHjeSqP8yqPgHS40nzZgSqD7JMoGiSPT6G7K1xwQUBQLKzlCjKGGoaioxOOWS7qw8BrAQtuKIc4xxRvos-IkyJUA0g1W8wUqjNK7NvYR">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Pandemic technology is taking a toll on data privacy, especially in the absence of any legal framework; these tools are being used for purposes beyond managing the pandemic. In an article published in the <i>Deccan Herald</i>, Aman Nair and Pallavi Bedi argue that <strong>India’s digital response to the pandemic</strong> has stoked concerns that surveillance could pose threats to the privacy of the personal data collected. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/Aye_SwuSiE165Jg5KCM8Xlu9VfO971hqjgMyX4Gv278-mjdbOrJ-pT_WYUbbFG0344IvZPu_ZqcvDp0hcVjfGVaWGAhKvBZDinhfhGSD7VvAE53bWwBah-W8vKt_3F0VP70pUKqESr5WztG-fPEOtB94MghogG528WknuMCtyA29jFZg7JvA2Qy1mR4MHAwQq2tJjvzyA_woJHqaQ2zW9at0DVmsSszAoApTe76XUE-ZoPMUtpNXT464bp-CYx1vY0jeFHyECbR6gHkoBNl-h4pwjkz2i9yOaOntXmNuf1kTX2ARhZpiMNjSmnYMf_5K_vEoGzQK0w1N6CuYG9dHLX2l">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In a piece for <i>The Wire</i>, Aman Nair analyses <strong>Tether, a lesser known crypto currency</strong> that is at the heart of a $3 trillion market. Issued by Tether Limited, Tether forms the foundation for modern day crypto trading and could potentially be one of the <strong>biggest schemes in financial history</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/YKCj-XnMRae1xKW-I5Vc2QZ531_WbOyKyzDAaHwXjqatVsRL9KTiy0LW50cP7Thc5zIV1vTZpRlnJuXzfYGNyOH92MtVSacioSMhehA-8TpG62qt1HMjOndXVcukp5TrJ_Z4jhyr_B0qg7hItuk5fJ9-Kw1Hh-SiRjvYGdVX_ZD2dY8NxTfKn4f7GnqP2bzHT3HWNO9yPzA6KfVPSawYFVLyyIf46leO7oJ5SIKyT4MawaPTtu9FDH5nfhMMgdm9YIFYIkuc12ZF8vargG4gMd608s5mt8kg1hpub4d3pi3o">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">India has 500 million internet users — over a third of its total population — making it the country with the <strong>second largest number of internet users</strong> after China. With this comes several kinds of digital threats that an average digital consumer in India must regularly contend with. Pranav M.B. attempts to identify the <strong>existing state of digital safety in India</strong>, with a report that maps digital threats in the country. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/7DnN6eodtvhnJdNwrTh3BU4_wJCm2_Ct9eG7-nmis2QkS4qgiiX4--Qa0TTqxqJqUNHmn3xnedwSoNGVRd0smQAgaFGQ1PLpfwVhmYPO4vaXGiF0dkcRjZTHk1W5mCRTZ4CpIx2zKt4yn1WKAy3dIBxa-xnoEQMUY4YrZRqeQr1M_JwHV3KmHWG2J1CgmXUdY13h6bQ9QEDL16a5G-eN6zH8ttyLM2kXF30BnXgkAL11Sl_vZs9AdeR_UoDQJKObf3BEoq8">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Since last year, there have been regular questions around the <strong>anti-competitive practices</strong> of digital platforms. After 46 US states filed an antitrust case against Facebook along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December 2020, Kamesh Shekar analyzed these developments in a blog post. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/svyv1CoITzbqrsIl54oOKHsVb5xbZsOjr-IIfJndIFs4FbasMTa8xPr308vsVz_owTEDCl52kc-B-8gqND7dedFPmINs25UkG8kwkeYNcktOKUUty9Zms5UqyAXnyBUFkrbccLYTL8X7DtYXy9UCoLj6i9kGiUgJyNR_ePM-32LsWT2dzMRvY3MLjtyTTeWzqv1kPYcud-kpCxX9zMid4KJZIY7fJSLCsCPiXvrcc5RjQ6wO8SxOlNzRwDLztrG9MlWjBAOom4m32Hc3Az86wUcL5h_dTnpcqiHVCjudMiD2Wz9hKAcXbBF-mMlrTS61GXYC3B9PEMLilqy1XdCSLA">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Recently, the Indian government mandated <strong>online messaging providers to enable identification of originators of messages on their platforms</strong>. In an academic paper for the <i>NUJS Law Review</i>, Gurshabad Grover, Tanaya Rajwade and Divyank Katira conduct a legal and constitutional analysis of this ‘traceability’ requirement, how it can be implemented, and how these methods come with serious costs to usability, security, and privacy. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/7VVDI4qoefdH1M0wYht5ypELl3sgVp1Sbz2TM_DsnX0l0o2wb-2Jq0wob7as43ltZn6ZssVx21Kb6WNIz16SwxuNYxLMwFaVL7Yqu-8eX3FzktAgtzePud71Rw38aDqYPUcb7aIzIkcrEgohiTTqr4KBZglu-g5Vc21w3pwXDKyjSXh_jk_8EIqLlZ2GF5ItEZspJwQGD9VzftHVEmz5AdqcK0Zcar_OOU9nGP8JrckN9xehbcAxzJ9V7lbKaLa6fVq_xbwLO2UqdClq7XIpCoUf9EgkKQ">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The National Digital Health Mission: Health Data Management Policy seeks to establish a digital health ecosystem by creating a <strong>unique health identity</strong> (UHID) for every Indian citizen. Pallavi Bedi points out that hasty implementation of the policy without adequate safeguards not only risks the <strong>privacy and security of medical data</strong>, but also undermines trust in the system leading to low uptake. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/I2XtCVqE0YUtaHHNBuG2SqhPciFDA8vAFssL8OFfrAIIw4IF4i0pC5aKw-bZofPUZI2o59tp6OVhScUGULq-yqLWvlZRi8AvmUhsS6gOvkWJJnC3Jpjyu5u2I2wysy-Q4Kt4TAOMgvcyr49ledwzRKHEo0lsRhQdFZ4VJMq10oyuB5bMF0vIWCJ3VqXUrb41hRJI5OUhxzXiGZmznPSy0p-gua0i5SvyeIn-uZTQjOFvdP5He9mT3HSsaw">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In our comments to the proposed amendments to the <strong>Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020</strong>, our analysis focuses on eight points: Definitions and Registration, Compliance, Data Protection and Surveillance, Flash Sales, Unfair Trade Practices, Jurisdictional Issues with Competition Law, Compliance with International Trade Law and Liabilities of Marketplace E-commerce Entities. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/KsxrVD9CtofFFSJKNnNl4rbZSQJxomJbHYtB6gaF-CJrz6NTc3iLI__BZ3Af7DRwDzklM6bD3o3OU8Z9g2llAOWtrNsQdWfxmaky4BZfyHArp59Ciryun36-inqvCvTtCz4MfM_SxYe7DWZQjbigMwPTuyM1nTjfuZZESbCU0kHL5uxK09aQvMmYUfBPfBjrUuCPSnz1q_SHSOh38kHHRw6JdIuOl-FX_Fu_pSAFCPpBCjmoqiyRpWbgQQw3C8dbSnJ9sMWXbopXwWS99f4vPqMGK6Tn7w6tWJqmQa8hA3wAQsH8wJgl315nOQ">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<h3>Freedom of Expression, Intermediary Liability and Information Disorders</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The recent “Infodemic” clearly shows that <strong>disinformation costs people’s lives</strong>. CIS, and the Global Disinformation Index have published a report that examines <strong>the risk of disinformation on digital news platforms in India</strong>, creating an index that is intended to serve donors and stakeholders with a neutral assessment of news sites that they can utilise to defund disinformation. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/oAbyvMS6qTJApmJnnokcclFKfhiXT90qwxve7vAzjNgoVJE7zL3znp9z-jVBaY_A_UghvzrqrbzPyQ8MWgNOqFX_zmz-LXX_QXxpTHcJCq0iQbudFAskKA4MQbW9ipPMHHkvCZ4sjD9YJ-f76ZHCOVs8aTp09SRza6UxxFqz2Lf-wyXOBkjjnSojLEnIzg_6Xyg-MV80GnR0MyptpLT6Ox44jMpuKSDNkziRqXdVFv2UiHFPUq5_kQFItEunUPazzjbXiO6aT6InqGhlHTpBpFR1ojSmP1YOtTCl7efQ-b_jHIbk-BBXDoDE4JF-TskvA8NvEln98dD-0ADQRopsvLp9XWDGiQ">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Torsha Sarkar, Gurshabad Grover, Raghav Ahooja, Pallavi Bedi and Divyank Katira examine the legality and constitutionality of the <strong>Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021</strong>, highlighting potential benefits and harms that may arise from the rules, and making recommendations to retain the rules within constitutional bounds, and retain consistency with human rights based approaches to content regulation. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/xeCVOWx8opFVXsJsk8tGp7BqtYUkK2zovJDarS6GLbKTR6VL0JLLSA-ap81tloriYQLLg6Cv1HxAws110HUv2UUabdK0aCbOvdeL2AtTWGD4zL7LEsC1gAIHyvP5DCYWo8flbZwKL0UNrMa-Bp8mmAOPTNTaHHyHjt6SyvidPNrc2nvjuwWNDsgPITp_PBAYDBmfwu02GfVr14URroyiEeqExwha0b0RlSPhrunshSDIXND6-AaBkVuGJ8VdnE-bMD7FHdAa559EsTcyhmnPiIYanR9fmV6UQHb7Q65yD7jENV3-lbzRCkAjki09Qvia1nxacxBIWHb-w3_PlbB7GkJXbl8_qVZHEWhyzTnAxVoGA-je-7W-x-eFOetThpo">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The passage of the <strong>Intermediary Liability Rules, 2021</strong>, has also formalized the legal requirement for the utilization of automated tools in content moderation. In a blog-post for the <i>KU Leuven’s Centre for IT and IP (CITIP) Blog</i>, Shweta Mohandas and Torsha Sarkar analyze the requirement in light of concerns of freedom of expression of Internet users. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/kfCCqzfLNuv79Hdeo_EA2wt5o0LRgortN3TKK_wup26r0wlpxdBW0C-m_IDPDssS9Ie8vuBmq3TrK6Bo0jfGRs1qD89TEU2wzVysBv9kAjUiosw2pXQiNir2ylQAnNBxnwyCe_qibQIf9UOGjlvP8d8iB1XZ1QPqQUl_yHKFDrPUme0OS2EUpis_rSoVy1ZOfH-GGHo7iNYRMcqqjbmCKtfZjmLvWY86v2Zk2EjLPXr8OA">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Our comments to the <strong>Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2021</strong>, authored by Tanvi Apte, Anubha Sinha, and Torsha Sarkar, examine the <strong>constitutionality and legality of the Bill</strong> and whether the proposed amendments are compatible with established constitutional principles, precedents, previous policy positions and existing law. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/Ao1Sghs95JSFnpzMq8bTUYQ0z1F6uZOfg6M2Stt2ceVvCf4b0iB_3f-Yx7uywoASrATvOSS6uPYTVbP8x_JLqoD9QfvjD5soYvlNJBd87FuNyxqAb4wQ8cjOuN7B44pRo65xvX9K29eBGFp7fgv-AD_ok80j4SXnAZ6LrYClxPiHC48fiisVOW7McLfsFpLtUsns1u6MIG_7FMAKNY0GHFxa5xs3lM21mrhkEcC6I7sbimtF0jmOkid5nzYbcOrtQ5ZsvrdxSRllmmOy">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Tanvi Apte and Torsha Sarkar, in a submission to the <strong>Facebook Oversight Board</strong> in Case 2021-008-FB-FBR: Brazil, Health Misinformation and Lockdowns, answer questions set out by the Board which concerned a post made by a Brazilian sub-national health official, and raised questions on <strong>health misinformation and enforcement of Facebook's community standards</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/h-QObkDu8td1bmkfzIEHJlAmS10MohQnXiyqHQKNEnQkEpvkdTxLkKV3yJO7CcTJGDcS0kRQVTDEE8KNbb-551uGYLiaV3wFoxJ9tGnvMBaqvtPgYgxZbnAMOowSxN7gQJTqSOZwzMVQtSbr449f6KC0Bb208ApIh2a8OX_HCRwn2BYpoTvqUfeyFZyp2qoyW5LbeAe9P-JTlFrDaB7oFBXvTHvlJfTRrT6ZeLlkQqA_RqMOga71-sxDIxBo0vvn-9r28DcTePg3p659lJ0CWQMCXiz4tY1p3cLrJgKl3K3fjignnvexZpNwk91paBQ_Bia2DDUxc1Vxmvci1p3AASg3FtYqL5l1">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In an essay for the <i>Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT)</i>, Torsha Sarkar analyzes issues rising out of the recent <strong>litigation between Trump and Twitter</strong>. Torsha examines intermediary liability issues under American law, and draws parallel for India, in light of the ongoing litigation around the suspension of advocate Sanjay Hegde’s Twitter account. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/JxA_S2DzStQUHeEVzf9_Df15_QnK0WHgMEjaaCqNjLmfXPAS4teU_fvrDtG9R4OwwOzWYiAXWPE3QFaxOZvJ5VCHuwincnLyGpYpWME0K5x8CJwyW0vUhC-stExhsSV_5pLmEtfaVyzcGRaXsJ4jGnLWnrADSdYzpPjUTPAb6hKDDL5BBjLjzvRt14_y3_9RNos99UKlpOCv9UFR6gC6cmOQmqte1UICPRw54oI7TUMC8TfPow-JZGmeA8lmMtODPi5dPN91euSX0g">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<h3>Copyright & Access to Knowledge</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce’s report weighs on several aspects of the <strong>Indian IPR system and issues of protection and enforcement</strong>. In a blog post, Anubha Sinha summarily notes the observations and recommendations of the Committee on the Copyright Act, 1957 which stand to impact <strong>access to knowledge</strong>. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/20Alo2_Tse_JJBXG7sp9tp3Jf_qIUy2ksAvhoVH4heonMxDYRQK4nweCNF8LP29mpKvznQC8vljEX7TCv-Wb6SQREV5ph4uYOVIgz4wf36MaGTw8T5dkCxjqttA5V1tzNxdpfKi1WqQJKSFJ3o9Eog0uVFhHd3wXaYwiukkD3WHoDeYkOSZR_DYTGlm6nebmtCjaRRhTqwGMPYkZsKxM2td9xO2GBfP-J5R8llhxsrl1MvaUyiRBLIASh1l_KNpvCtlix-3Hot2VozymMTWyPG15W6s">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The 41st edition of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was held from 28 June to 1 July. Anubha Sinha participated in the event as a speaker and delivered statements on the <strong>Protection of Broadcasting Organisations</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/VysBbmMrMfJH2U5C8TeeVWtBq8wqBadivgBYyh26sNYegYdfaR4Tg_G6v1FqMgyVD6KAm3Z1tKWm256qR0VlPwGircBtmecePp2_-24cYoFWCoDH5v_5MuytzvKUIHkSlZ4cXN9CtUZ9t-92oeqAe5qm_CDhT0Xu7G5OZKn1_9s56JlL7E9FiWa0U5l2PYeonXi9H026DNWNaOPHQ8nvvYlmvIcTkwvKWQ">link</a>], and on <strong>Limitations and Exceptions</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/TBrEeBXDldm7nDPpsENoKMft-G03I54LhjmedXzSkg1RPImWfwqhCZ7bwXpwsXbIuVvOLd7G0RtA7PgCDKqHKcYjWzHr1K8Dd8oSUYIasd8N_tlEiMedkl8eTmoz5Cm_cLV8NlYLzIbsrHCxZhhPUApqXJprQ39qHf89pyRS2Zcw1HUYW8d-rVWobmlbW4MVr0EvBz0gbWpz3NLbh9W71pVK1VN9j-ge--ine3yx-uSoyel8qUGs0mPqw0NXp0nEUnIP32r3qHvdjzEbz4Ynagm2ww">link</a>]. Readers can access the notes from Day 1 [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/W_H8QjZ4FUv92dhzAdWKRTS508l6DEy7YOb8mnsf-ZzcQeMZe8TCW3XG5Fs7j1BO678zXMJn5jZiXL2eI4ZVNjrE6Sz8XcQs5fJ4z1EZSQTr-vMsaJsroyckdwmtQnOepz5KMLPZl4OnPm6ERcnJGBCVp6v7PZgpxVBGp5PR9Fo4e_TncX2qm_q_aB_e9s3I2vp8PReJJVYoEl53xIqWKkBqXlWk2RbqOQ">link</a>], Day 2 [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/DRaLcVvuB-VfY7fjrVtjA5hPHTFt2KwIt2hsH4mjuuYlzJLCv5r9O3R5-4Rg72Bhvw3kMYaowZuZorJN8DXJjhf5NABvf519ig4SyCsIUri4mXWjDA1lmCHY_Oe1WfTq_VLVxwOb4XYp8VVnKIIcgAg1kseXVSENaugyRZI3otS_IUn_zNwEkw2PdFEojqryYcf5kiEADKQ5sRuVH8WB9pncRKgCvpOfFA">link</a>], and Days 3 & 4 [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/dTkOebRyoXNDfdFetpwM6-mmRSpH7gwM1RL-SJmGMrbF25H9Y4-lo-nQ8HINcrM1eUmX9nqvpmoL26wsIsbAhOJ3MQygMDJpTQc-RNGk07WOUyH4GFUuejBJzsRBkQn44CEDxkcSQBzyLQHGjKakTPDRFszrjnLqD3e9jXfs77ie7wKRazrFjyssNPscxSg8xmrcfv89klVCo-Ts6ApD6nuRi3t0nndX2DAQ_hw_WlYLCgfmyw">link</a>].</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The CIS Access to Knowledge team published a comparative analysis of two prominent Wikimedia initiatives, <strong>Wikipedia Asian Month</strong> and <strong>Project Tiger</strong>, to understand prevailing challenges and opportunities, and strategies to address the same. Nitesh Gill in a two-part report outlines the research questions and methods of this study [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/HZI5YNgRhNViR9DS-ewrTbGX-5PkynXGEMDr5kfCauCk2OYuygd2I3Da7Tp1kyhG1Oboc0MxIelbvOqpVQHHq0JVRgbyEVMPZiTWPhQENwnv_pfOR8KYHZzzLKv7Tc-iFk6qBgCCDSbnwjmA7sfiC3FDHFvqzbEGlMMUIg1XvcRNu6fFBWe2S1W5lsdZD00dY0r-w8o3IkzCSbKwHqJMld7CQvl48lpzGHtKFreKT_MiB33iis0Fehz-nrz7DlT-k2GLTpwScqX4DcHrLjWb7A">link</a>], and then presents some of the observations and learnings [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/bdLNf3_CCDaXpSzzhYF_2ThcU-LuTFb6k6HDcZ_4myjIWm-GlwXcDVQweGpaYjKKt4NmMol-HxoPucMx6w3-HC4QUmPULVJ882x8AMHaRehpgFh9t8cYPB6VPyjXNgcbzjSfOQXE6GpUDhrGYYg6KTmuH6t7F1qlOcoc_qlglL4vz5yCBL8Ri03yfZZVcfheY5Ly5lUb3WSZMpsO1u6n6KaRC_YFemwGu0sWsWgjW-XPRSNAyxHKeGLlUS7eN7wNvx-iLCLb2-VhEtN64QZHaxUd724J8Fg5">link</a>].</li>
</ol>
<h3>Labour and Social Justice</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">In a flagship report on <strong>domestic and care workers on digital platforms</strong>, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon argue that digital platforms are complicit in discriminating against workers on the basis of their identities, and that domestic workers continue to remain in precarious positions without any legal recognition or support. This work was jointly authored between the Centre for Internet and Society and the Domestic Workers’ Rights Union. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/sm3NIXtD7ClOE3mjbw6fg2ZvZB0TI3dh6rnb4vb6Hv0Ev_VwikRY-XOESwuw3-Gfglvi7OHT5l-PthXPf2rn3UDbiRRE3jaRzidnzl5uPs6ZqdtktRRVINgR3CCtZ-grN_QKqZN9KefjfMYgB7klWARTLAkZbSsKmoyrLiIZ0XMVXkYWu_F1do2eH73g_cTDDyKJiQiq9wWsbLzwjsEWoZ1uR0H2wqUp1ZOfkEyfkTbU0YojEnLVenrB-X7HDp812pjRMqHbw1qAskYpol6w_Tca">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The ongoing pandemic has raised very valid questions of <strong>access and infrastructure in India</strong>, especially during a time when the Internet and digital technologies are essential, and in many ways the ‘new normal’. P.P. Sneha and Anasuya Sengupta write in <i>Seminar Magazine</i>, outlining some key <strong>challenges in digitalisation and representation of non-dominant/marginalised languages</strong> on the Internet, through reflections on two recent projects related to languages and the Internet. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/iWhSEkwBqINHVVX-zy-cEtFRkWyCSoGeumeW2KNYU8gylOUgjNWiIceMev9vAcoTdrNvCoBtuZKcHSmrG3oEZ5Wypr7VRmrecPMNbuxUDoIF4FJGIlzAPeQ8dpdyeeHeQqANiU3oUN2xKTpRQ5Tin8PUoWRfMm5YXh_iougUbkun-Tq6NSjRkmvbiWXeZyphO9R44QWTrxDm2wWOdlCh2reGxocxbpNMzDPlGmxnA18sMsFi73SksnR9lQh76ylSM2iIYr3ptZk61DznsmUdfr0BK-GQL7HcD4M">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all state governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures. Ankan Barman compiled a report to <strong>qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare</strong> during the first COVID-19 lockdown, in three host-states, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/hU5-1FD3nbo69KurjQmXES36QSFtRZSHr4FuCzsscEMQOUOZD523Cc-iKliMQQWvm7AFZQ2JJtrcPhNeqoAS7ASS2X0_c9D3D_yvS9IuqLpt_xHpSUdVxnh85ZSVlSr07zj4mucQogJy6c2ZHw6zgQAmLQGkcl4xr__txUaycSpVKrqmHcBb3RBw2YkBTvxRfFnll2FcPmmfFYhGf1_SGM1baLyoZscYZ96h-AB1tHzg4Lao2KfFIhJ-RxHtC67r1nytTWNCRy8pY4QWmx2g-kBw0EAD4vl94LmPX10tdqmvBreDz3xxfN4o9h0OHfEzZARXb2dQFnHltqvRjPq5msyzW69oXuZZsDs0pcS6yYA">link</a>]</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Between July to November 2019, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) conducted 2,128 surveys across six major cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow, to determine the occupational health and safety of app-based transport workers. Findings from the survey have been compiled as a report which <strong>reveals the complete absence of social security and protection of workers in a digital platform economy.</strong> [<a href="https://4jok2.r.ag.d.sendibm3.com/mk/cl/f/J4FjrBD647MV8lneM-mPFxr7IWwYeETEgk17OI3lDkqNVRmfoRqhmAs1CqZXDQx-MyEntGeO7vOMUu6lslvGQbMg4Pp6Gvpz7GaUrXiOXti7YGBNPHMzLCP3BsDeYstDOYNs6Rry3eMUvPI-mV1kh6aNGWf_WlBXjwoevFZdwmt660vTJbRaUGuI1Cc45TFmp3ur5qDJNg3vaTXElkuEvo7Dz9rPcEHOTDNy-k2LW3cX9mOB_QNC5yt4sy0CCWvf-2yHAYa_2j6pVmVx2PwbbSrfMfSdK0-WL1PSZpcAHlqcRVU05C5Js__byzmLjmWUKO-kMbw">link</a>]</li>
</ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-july-2021-newsletter'>http://editors.cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-july-2021-newsletter</a>
</p>
No publisherpranavInternet GovernanceResearchers at WorkCopyrightAccess to Knowledge2021-08-10T15:57:16ZPagePlatforms, Power, and Politics: Perspectives from Domestic and Care Work in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india
<b>CIS has been undertaking a two-year project studying the entry of digital platforms in the domestic and care work in India, supported by the Association for Progressive Communications as part of the Feminist Internet Research Network. Implemented through 2019-21, the objective of the project is to use a feminist lens to critique platform modalities and orient platformisation dynamics in radically different, worker-first ways. Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi led the research team at CIS. The Domestic Workers’ Rights Union is a partner in the implementation of the project, as co-researchers. Geeta Menon, head of DWRU, was an advisor on the project, and the research team consisted of Parijatha G.P., Radha Keerthana, Zeenathunnisa, and Sumathi, who are office holders in the union and are responsible for organising workers and addressing their concerns.
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<p><span>The Executive Summary for the project report is below.</span></p>
<p>The full report, ‘Platforms, power, and politics: Perspectives from domestic and care work in India’, can be found <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-pdf" class="external-link">here</a>.</p>
<p>The press release can be found <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-press-release-pdf" class="external-link">here</a>.</p>
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<h3><span>Introduction</span></h3>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Paid domestic and care work is witnessing the entry of digital intermediaries over the past decade. More recently, there has been tremendous growth of digital platforms. This holds the potential to impact millions of workers in the sector, which is characterised by a long history of informality and exclusion from rights-according legal frameworks. Digital intermediation of domestic and care work has been a space of high-growth, but also high-attrition. In India, order books of digital platforms providing domestic and care work services were reported to have been growing by upto 60 percent month-on-month in 2016. This is expected to shift the organisation of workers and employment relations profoundly. <br /><br />Broadly, the discourse on digital platforms providing home-based services can be summarised as follows: proponents argue that digitisation will act as a step towards bringing formalisation to the sector, while critics argue that platforms could replicate the exploitation of workers by further disguising the employer-employee relationship. Similar debates around lack of protections and precarity have also taken place in other occupations in gig work such as transportation and food delivery. In fact, the similarity in precarity and the informal nature of this relationship across gig work and domestic work has led to domestic workers being labelled the original gig workers. Domestic work is a particularly vulnerable and unprotected sector, which makes work in the sector qualitatively different from most other sectors in the gig or sharing economy.<br /><br />Through a feminist approach to digital labour, our project aimed to examine the dynamics of platformisation in, and of domestic or reproductive care work. Our hypothesis was that platforms are reconfiguring labour conditions, which could empower and/or exploit workers in ways qualitatively different from non-standard work off the platform. In order to interrogate this further, we studied several aspects of the work relationship, including wages, conditions of work, social security, skill levels, and worker surveillance off platforms.</p>
<h3>Methodology</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We borrowed from ethnographic methods and feminist principles to co-design and implement the research tools with grassroots workers and organisers. Between June to November 2019, we conducted 65 in-depth semi-structured interviews primarily in New Delhi and Bengaluru. A majority of these were with domestic workers who were seeking or had found work through platforms. We also did interviews with workers who had found work through traditional placement agencies to compare our findings, and with representatives from platforms, government labour departments, and workers collectives. Of the workers we interviewed, a majority were women, but men were included as well. Interviews in New Delhi were undertaken by CIS, while interviews with workers in Bengaluru were undertaken by grassroots activists in Bengaluru, affiliated with the Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRU).</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">In implementing the data collection approach, we employed feminist methodological principles of intersectionality, self-reflexivity, and participation. The methodology draws on standpoint theory, which encourages knowledge production that centres the lived experiences of marginalised groups. We were acutely aware of our own positionality as high income, Savarna researchers studying a sector dominated by Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi women from low income groups. This power differential was softened partially by involving DWRU through the course of the project. Workers across both field sites were also interviewed in spaces familiar to them, most often their homes, in languages that they were comfortable with including Hindi, Kannada, and Tamil.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Feminist principles also instrumental during the data analysis, with focus on intersectionality and self-reflexivity. We highlighted the ways in which inequalities of gender, income, migration status, caste, and religion are replicated and amplified in the platform economy. In particular, we discussed the impact of the digital gender gap in access and skills on workers’ ability to find economic opportunities.</p>
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<h3>Findings</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Our typology of platforms mediating domestic work finds three types of platforms – (i) marketplace, or platforms that list workers’ data on their profile, provide certain filters for automated selection of a pool of workers, and charge a fee from customers for access to workers’ contact details, (ii) digital placement agency, or platforms that provide an end-to-end placement service to customers, identify appropriate workers on the basis of selection criteria, and negotiate conditions of work on behalf of workers, and (iii) on-demand platforms, or companies that provide services or ‘gigs’ such as cleaning on an hourly basis, performed by a roster of workers who are characterised as ‘independent contractors’.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">When it comes to the role played by platforms in determining employment relations, there is a wide variation within and across platform categories. There are both weak and strong models of intervention. On one end of the spectrum are marketplaces, with minimal intervention in the recruitment process, and on the other on-demand platforms, that exact control over each aspect of work. Digital platforms reconfigure the conception of intermediaries in the domestic work sector, functioning as next-generation placement agencies. All three platform types contain aspects that provide workers agency, as well as those that reinforce their positions of low-power. Platform design impacts the role platforms play in setting conditions of work, but does not determine it entirely.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>(Re)shaping the terms of work</strong><br />Across the three types of platforms, wages are slightly higher than or matching those of workers off platforms. Some marketplace platforms have incorporated features to nudge customers towards setting higher wages, such as enforcing minimum wage standards, or informing customers of expected wages in their locality. Conversely, on-demand platforms charge a high rate of commission from workers, despite refusing to recognise them as employees. This indicates that this is a misclassification of an employment relationship, given that workers are unable to set their own conditions or wages for work. Despite the high rates of commission and appropriation of labour by platforms, on-demand workers earn higher wages than workers on other platforms. The relatively high wage is a result of marketing on-demand cleaning as professionalised and more skilled than day-to-day cleaning. Tasks in the sector continue to be distributed along the lines of gender and caste, as has historically been the case. Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi women are more likely to take up work such as cleaning and washing dishes, while men and women across castes are equally distributed in cooking work. Women dominate tasks such as elderly and childcare, as in the traditional economy. Workers in professionalised tasks such as deep cleaning that requires technical equipment and chemicals are almost entirely men.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Digital divides and workers’ agency</strong><br />We find that workers are primarily onboarded onto platforms by learning about it from other workers, through onboarding camps held by platforms, or offline advertising by platforms. Such in-person onboarding techniques allows workers with no digital access or literacy to register themselves on marketplace platforms and digital placement agencies.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, we find that low levels of education and digital literacy continue to impact platformed labour by creating a strong informational asymmetry between workers and platforms. For instance, we find that women workers from low income communities have very little information about how platforms work, causing deep distrust. Workers with digital devices and literacy (and therefore a relatively better understanding of the functionality of the platform), physical mobility and the resources to bear indirect costs that were outsourced to them were at a significant advantage in finding better-paying jobs. Workers who were seeking flexibility and were not necessarily dependent on the platform for their primary income were also better placed than those entirely dependent on platforms. Women workers tended to be disadvantaged on all these counts, limiting their agency and capacity to reap the benefits of the platform economy.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Across the three types of platforms, systems of placement and ratings add to the information asymmetry, as workers are not aware of the impact of ratings on their ability to find work or charge better wages. Ratings and filtering systems also hard-code the impact of workers’ social characteristics on their work. Workers are unable to exercise control over their data, further undermining their agency vis-a-vis platforms and employers. We identify a clear need for collective bargaining structures to protect workers’ rights, although platformed domestic workers remained distant from both domestic work unions and emergent unions of platform workers in other sectors.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Intersectionalities of formalisation</strong><br />We find that inequalities of caste, class, and gender that have historically shaped the sector continue to be replicated or even amplified in the platform economy. What remains clear is that platforms in the domestic work sector adopt the logics of this sector, more than the converse. Platformisation is conflated with formalisation, and it is within this vector, from complete informality to piecemeal formalisation, that platforms operate. Labour benefits do not take the form of labour protections or welfare entitlements that are the central function of formalisation processes. Instead, the so-called benefits are intended to transform domestic workers to participate within the logics and vagaries of the market.</p>
<h3>Policy Recommendations</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Recognise and implement labour protections for domestic workers </strong><br />Domestic workers have historically occupied the most vulnerable positions in the workforce, with limited legal protections. Exposed to the regulatory grey areas that platforms operate in, this doubly exposes domestic workers to precarious conditions of work. Despite an avowed move towards formalisation of domestic work, platform-mediated labour continues to retain characteristics of informal labour, even heightening some.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">If pushed to do so, platform companies can be instrumental in resolving some of the implementation challenges that governments have faced in enforcing legislative protections sought to be made available to domestic workers. Platforms have databases of workers, which can be used to mandatorily register them for social security schemes offered by the government. This data can also be used for better policy making, in the absence of reliable statistics particularly on migrant workers in the informal economy.<em><strong><br /></strong></em></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Reduce the protective gap between employment and self-employment </strong><br />The (mis)classification of “gig” work within labour law frameworks is still a matter that continues to be hotly debated within policy practitioners, legal scholarship, and civil society actors. Three positions, in particular, have been taken—treating gig workers as employees, independent contractors, or occupying a third intermediate category. More recently, there have been some legal victories guaranteeing employment protections and increasing platform companies’ accountability. However, these successes have been more visible in Global North jurisdictions.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Regardless of the resolution of these ongoing debates over employment status, labour frameworks should provide some universal protections to all categories of labour. Such protections must include universal coverage of social security, in addition to rights such as freedom of association, collective bargaining, equal remuneration and anti-discrimination. Policies geared towards achieving this objective would be significant in reducing the protective gaps between different categories of labour, and would particularly help historical and emerging occupational categories of workers such as “gig” workers and domestic workers.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Recognise the specific challenge(s) and potential of platformisation of domestic work </strong><br />Platforms hold the potential of acting as effective facilitators in informal labour markets. Even when they do not replace existing recruitment pathways, they provide alternate ones. Workers were more likely to register on a platform if they were entering the domestic work labour market recently (often distress and migration driven), or had not enjoyed success with informal, word-of-mouth networks. However, platforms also heighten labour market insecurities, and create new ones. These potential risks need to be specifically recognised through appropriate frameworks, such as social security, discrimination law and data protection.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Tailor policy-making to platform models </strong><br />We identify three types of platforms, each of which intervene to varying degrees in the work relationship. We recommend that digital placement agencies and marketplace platforms be registered with governments and enforce basic protections for workers such as provision of minimum wage, preventing abuse (including non-payment of wages) and trafficking. On-demand companies on the other hand, must be treated as employers, and workers be accorded employment protections including social security.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">In addition to rights-based policy actions, legal-regulatory mechanisms geared towards mitigating the precariousness of platform-based work are required. This can take the shape of clarifying and expanding existing legal-regulatory formulations, or preparing new ones. Such policy making should factor in the power and information asymmetry between domestic workers (and gig workers, generally) and platforms.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Further, in the absence of health or retirement benefits, risks and indirect costs of operations are shifted from employers to workers. For instance, workers provide capital in the form of tools or equipment, support the fluctuation of business and income, and can be ‘deactivated’ from an application as a result of poor ratings or periods of inactivity. Any regulation aiming to extend employee status should mandate platforms to support such indirect costs.</p>
<h3>Related Publications</h3>
<p>1. <a class="external-link" href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/digital-mediation-of-reproductive-and-care-work">Research notes</a> with reflections from union members. <br />2. The <a class="external-link" href="https://cis-india.org/raw/platformisation-of-domestic-work-in-india-report-from-a-multistakeholder-consultation">event report</a> from a stakeholder consultation with workers, unions, companies and government representatives. <br />3. A <a class="external-link" href="https://www.genderit.org/articles/doing-standpoint-theory">reflection note</a> on the participatory approach taken by the project. <br />4. A <a class="external-link" href="https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/singapur/17840.pdf">paper</a> with a comparative analysis of the policy landscape on domestic work in the platform economy.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/platforms-power-and-politics-perspectives-from-domestic-and-care-work-in-india</a>
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No publisherAayush Rathi, and Ambika TandonDigital EconomyResearchers at WorkPlatform-WorkFeaturedRAW ResearchHomepageDigital Domestic Work2021-07-07T15:19:37ZBlog Entry