The Centre for Internet and Society
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Understanding Feminist Infrastructures: An Exploratory Study of Online Feminist Content Creation Spaces in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/understanding-feminist-structures
<b>This report explores the growth of feminist infrastructures (including the various interpretations of the term), through research on feminist publishing, content creation and curation spaces and how they have informed the contemporary discourse on feminism, gender, and sexuality in India. The rise of online feminist publications, and related digital media content creation and curation spaces, has engendered new forums for debate, networking, and community-building. This report looks at some of the challenges of developing such publications and platforms, and the role of digital infrastructures in mediating contemporary feminist work and politics.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/Feminist_Infrastructures_Report" class="external-link">Click here</a> to download the full report.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;">The internet and digital media technologies have played an important role in contemporary feminist practice – in addition to social media activism, their growing prevalence in academia, advocacy, and creative expression illustrate how digital media contributes to efforts to question asymmetries of power and knowledge. In the last few years, the concept of a feminist internet and forms of feminist infrastructures have emerged as crucial entry points to understand the affordances of the digital and its many challenges, especially for women and other structurally disadvantaged communities.Feminist content creation has been integral to contemporary feminist work in India, and is an entry-point into discussions on what could be a feminist internet. The growth of online feminist publications, and related digital media content creation and curation spaces, has engendered new forums for debate, networking, and community-building. This study looks at the development of feminist infrastructures (including various interpretations of the term) through an exploration of online feminist publishing, content creation and curation spaces, and their impact on the contemporary discourse on feminism, gender, and sexuality in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Through conversations with select online feminist publishing, content creation, and curation spaces, this study outlines motivations for choosing certain media, nature of content, languages and design, and how such choices inform practice and politics. In addition to the above, we also conducted two workshops on feminist infrastructure wishlists, and feminist principles of design and infrastructure. These conversations have offered several insights on the landscape of feminist content creation in India, and the affordances and challenges of digital technologies in facilitating contemporary feminist work. An overarching aim of the project is to unpack the term ‘feminist infrastructure’ and its interpretations in the context of the transition to digital content creation and publication. We aim to continue these conversations with a focus on the larger, often invisible role of digital infrastructures in the development of discourse on human rights, free speech and safety, to understand what are challenges to, and efforts being undertaken to create an inclusive, accessible and feminist internet.</p>
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<h3>Contributors</h3>
<div><strong>Research and Writing </strong>Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu
<strong><br /></strong></div>
<div><strong>Review </strong>Dr. Padmini Ray Murray, Design Beku</div>
<div><strong>Design </strong>Saumyaa Naidu and Yatharth</div>
<div><strong>Copy</strong> <strong>Editing </strong>The Clean Copy</div>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/understanding-feminist-structures'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/understanding-feminist-structures</a>
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No publisherPuthiya Purayil Sneha and Saumyaa NaiduResearchers at WorkRAW BlogResearch2024-03-25T13:02:28ZBlog EntryUnpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures: Mapping the Data Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-algorithmic-infrastructures
<b>The Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures project, supported by a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, aims to study the Al data supply chain infrastructure in healthcare in India, and aims to critically analyse auditing frameworks that are utilised to develop and deploy AI systems in healthcare. It will map the prevalence of Al auditing practices within the sector to arrive at an understanding of frameworks that may be developed to check for ethical considerations - such as algorithmic bias and harm within healthcare systems, especially against marginalised and vulnerable populations. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There has been an increased interest in health data in India over the recent years, where health data policies encourage sharing of data with different entities, at the same time, there has been a growing interest in deployment of Al in healthcare from startups, hospitals, as well as multinational technology companies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Given the invisibility of algorithmic infrastructures that underlie the digital economy and the important decisions these technologies can make about patients' health, it's important to look at how these systems are developed, how data flows within them, how these systems are tested and verified and what ethical considerations inform their deployment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ResearchersWork.png/@@images/00a848c7-b7f7-41b4-8bd9-45f2928fd44e.png" alt="Researchers at Work" class="image-inline" title="Researchers at Work" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>The </strong><strong>Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures</strong> project, supported by a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, aims to study the Al data supply chain infrastructure in healthcare in India, and aims to critically analyse auditing frameworks that are utilised to develop and deploy AI systems in healthcare. It will map the prevalence of Al auditing practices within the sector to arrive at an understanding of frameworks that may be developed to check for ethical considerations - such as algorithmic bias and harm within healthcare systems, especially against marginalised and vulnerable populations.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Research Questions</h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">To what extent organisations take ethical principles into account when developing AI , managing the training and testing dataset, and while deploying the AI in the healthcare sector.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">What best practices for auditing can be put in place based on our critical understanding of AI data supply chains and auditing frameworks being employed in the healthcare sector.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">What is a possible auditing framework that is best suited to organisations in the majority world.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Research Design and Methods</h3>
<p>For this study, we will use a comprehensive mixed methods approach. We will survey professionals working towards designing, developing and deploying AI systems for healthcare in India, across technology and healthcare organizations. We will also undertake in-depth interviews with experts who are part of key stakeholder groups.</p>
<p>We hereby invite researchers, technologists, healthcare professionals, and others working at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare to speak to us and help us inform the study. You may contact Shweta Monhandas at <a href="mailto:shweta@cis-india.org">shweta@cis-india.org</a></p>
<ol> </ol>
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<p>Research Team: Amrita Sengupta, Chetna V. M., Pallavi Bedi, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Shweta Mohandas and Yatharth.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-algorithmic-infrastructures'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-algorithmic-infrastructures</a>
</p>
No publisherAmrita Sengupta, Chetna V. M., Pallavi Bedi, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Shweta Mohandas and YatharthHealth TechRAW BlogResearchData ProtectionHealthcareResearchers at WorkArtificial Intelligence2024-01-05T02:38:22ZBlog EntryUser Experiences of Digital Financial Risks and Harms
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms
<b>The reach and use of digital financial services has risen in recent years without a commensurate increase in digital literacy and access. Through this project, supported by a grant from Google(.)org, we will examine the landscape of potential risks and harms posed by digital financial services, and the disproportionate risk that information asymmetry and barriers to access pose for users, especially certain marginalised communities. </b>
<h3>Project Background</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong> </strong>There is a big evidence gap in the understanding of the financial risks and harms experienced by users of digital financial services. Consequently, adequate consumer protection frameworks and processes to address these harms have been lagging. A survey of 32,000 Indian consumers found <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/42-indians-experienced-financial-fraud-in-last-3-years-report/articleshow/93341725.cms">only 17%</a> who lost money through banking frauds were able to recoup their funds. Filling this gap is crucial to inform responsive policy making, platform design and data governance.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">While a lot more attention is paid to financial frauds and scams, through this study, we aim to situate these alongside experiences of harms that are understudied and sometimes overlooked. Users may also experience financial harm, when negatively impacted by:</p>
<ol>
<li>Financial misinformation</li>
<li>Loss of control over their assets</li>
<li>Loss of potential income</li>
<li>Difficulty accessing social protection</li>
<li>Financial abuse perpetrated alongside other forms of domestic and family abuse </li>
<li>Unsustainable levels of debt, i.e. over-indebtedness, and </li>
<li>Exclusion from financial services</li></ol>
<ol dir="ltr"></ol>
<p dir="ltr">The Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking a mixed methods study to better understand user awareness, perceptions and experiences of digital financial risks and harms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">For this study, we will survey nearly 4000 users, with differing levels of access to digital devices, digital services and the internet, and undertake semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with specific target groups and stakeholders. We aim to highlight the experiences of persons with disabilities, gender and sexual minorities, the elderly, women, and regional language first users; to better understand how discrimination and exclusion may increase their burden of risk when using digital financial services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Key research questions guiding our project are:</strong></p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">How are digital financial risks understood and experienced by users of digital financial services? Which socioeconomic factors amplify risks for different user groups?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">What concerns have emerged relating to data privacy, misinformation, identity theft and other forms of social engineering and mobile app based fraud?</li>
<li>How accessible are providers’ and government’s platform based reporting and grievance redressal systems?</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">What role can fintech platforms, social media platforms, banking institutions, and regulatory bodies play in reducing digital financial risks across the ecosystem?</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Project Aims</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Through this study, we aim to:</p>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Assess the financial risks and harms users are exposed to when using social media, digital banking, and fintech platforms. While looking at general users, we will also specifically explore this experience for the elderly, gender and sexual minorities, regional language users and persons with visual disabilities.</li>
<li>Develop a framework to categorise the nature of vulnerabilities, risks and harms faced by the concerned user groups</li>
<li>Create a credible evidence base for key stakeholders with regards to experiences of digital financial risks and harm.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Provide recommendations for better policy and platform design to address harms, specifically those arising from lack of accessibility and information asymmetry.</li>
<li>Identify best practices to respond to digital risks and foster safety and equity in digital financial services</li></ol>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">Come Talk to Us:</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">If you have experiences or insights to share, or if you're interested in learning more about our study, please reach out.<br /><br />We also invite researchers, financial service providers, developers and designers of fintech platforms, and civil society organisations working on digital safety, to speak to us and help inform the study. You may contact <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:garima@cis-india.org">garima@cis-india.org</a></p>
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<p><strong>Research Team</strong>: Amrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering Paul</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms</a>
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No publisherAmrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering PaulFinancial TechnologyFinancial PlatformsDigital Financial HarmsResearchers at WorkFeaturedRAW BlogAccessibilityDigital LendingRAW ResearchResearchHomepage2023-12-22T16:05:26ZBlog EntryMetaphors of Work, from ‘Below’
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/springer-platformization-and-informality-chapter-metaphors-of-work-from-below
<b>Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon authored a chapter that describes platforms as more than technological interfaces. The chapter invokes some of the metaphors that gig workers use to make sense of platforms. This chapter was part of an edited volume published by Springer. This chapter forms part of the ‘Labour Futures’ research project, hosted at the Centre for Internet and Society, India, and supported by the Internet Society Foundation. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Various disciplines have produced literature on digital platforms—broadly categorised as technological interfaces enabling the exchange of goods and services — with little consensus on what platforms are and how they impact economic and labour systems. Features that are commonly associated with platforms include their role in increasing efficiency in supply chains, their deployment of cutting-edge technology, and their ability to ‘disrupt’ existing modes of provision of services and goods (Jarrahi & Sutherland, 2019). The use of metaphors and carefully curated taxonomy has been crucial in cementing this idea of the digital platform as a technological layer objectively matching supply and demand (Gillespie, 2017). This chapter seeks to document and understand how workers experience different types of digital platforms, and how workers’ imaginaries of platforms differ from popular and academic conceptions.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-11462-5_8">Click to read more</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/springer-platformization-and-informality-chapter-metaphors-of-work-from-below'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/springer-platformization-and-informality-chapter-metaphors-of-work-from-below</a>
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No publisherAayush Rathi and Ambika TandonLabour FuturesRAW BlogResearchRAW PublicationsRAW ResearchResearchers at Work2023-07-03T12:29:29ZBlog EntryDesigning Domestic Work Platforms
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/apc-cis-divyansha-sehgal-yathrath-designing-domestic-work-platforms
<b>This research was conducted by The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) with funding from Association for Progressive Communication (APC) through the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN), supported by International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The authors are deeply grateful to the platform workers who talked to us and shared their experiences of finding work through Urban Company. Their responses shaped our research and their insights guided the creation of this final report.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are between 20 million and 80 million workers engaged in domestic work in India. Domestic work has traditionally been an informal sector with customers and workers depending on local and community networks to be connected with each other. Over the last few years, digital platforms have gained ground in connecting domestic workers with tech-savvy urban dwellers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These platforms promise customers the ease and convenience of moving yet another aspect of their lives online, while they promise to give workers more flexibility, control over their time and increased earnings.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, we show that this introduction of technology brings with itself the same problems that haunt other sectors of platform-mediated gig work. On-demand platforms seek to exert control over most points of the service delivery process, including job distributions, client selection, worker pay and performance evaluation, all the while relegating workers to an independent contractor status.</p>
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<p>Click to download the <b><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/designing-domestic-work-platforms/at_download/file" class="external-link">full report</a></b></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/apc-cis-divyansha-sehgal-yathrath-designing-domestic-work-platforms'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/apc-cis-divyansha-sehgal-yathrath-designing-domestic-work-platforms</a>
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No publisherDivyansha Sehgal and YathrathResearchers at WorkRAW BlogDomestic Work2022-08-13T06:31:47ZBlog EntryProcurement Through Digital Platforms
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/procurement-through-digital-platforms
<b>Procurement policies, both public and private, can play a significant role in determining inclusive market participation, particularly for informal women workers and their collective enterprises. </b>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Executive Summary</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Various factors, including pricing, compliance and transparency in systems, can determine how and upto what extent women are able to utilise procurement platforms. With the emergence of a new, digital economy, procurement platforms (public and private) too have adopted technology-enabled systems. For informal women workers and their collective enterprises, the ability to engage with these interfaces also determines if and to what extent they can link with the supply chain.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In this report, we map the experiences of women’s collective enterprises (owned by informal women workers), particularly their capacities to use digital procurement platforms and the concurrent challenges that they face. The challenges highlighted in this report present an opportunity for procurement policies to deliberate and adapt, so that women workers can also utilise these platforms.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As a Women’s Enterprise Support System, SEWA Cooperative Federation was able to study eight women’s collective enterprises - owned, managed and used by informal women workers - with respect to procurement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We interviewed board members, managers, and members of these collective enterprises, across sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, services, transport, and were able to understand key issues that emerged.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Click to <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/procurement-digital-platforms.pdf" class="internal-link">read the full report</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/procurement-through-digital-platforms'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/procurement-through-digital-platforms</a>
</p>
No publisherSEWA Cooperative Federation and Centre for Internet & SocietyResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-07-26T14:35:47ZBlog EntryDatafication of the Public Distribution System in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/datafication-of-the-public-distribution-system-in-india
<b>In this study, we look into the datafication of social protection schemes with a special focus on the Public Distribution System in India. Proponents of datafication claim that the benefits will reach the right person and curb leakages through the automation and digitisation of all PDS processes. Aadhaar is the most important link in the datafication; supporters claim that it makes technology people-centric. This study looks at the status of PDS datafication and its impact on the delivery of the scheme in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. We also try to understand to what extent the stated objective of portability has been met and how far the challenges faced by the rights holders of the PDS have been resolved. </b>
<p>Read the full report <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/datafication-of-the-public-distribution-system-in-india-pdf" class="internal-link">here</a>.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/datafication-of-the-public-distribution-system-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/datafication-of-the-public-distribution-system-in-india</a>
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No publisherSameet PandaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2024-02-12T12:07:40ZBlog 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>
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No publisherPuthiya Purayil SnehaRAW ResearchFeaturedResearchers at WorkRAW Blog2022-03-07T15:01:11ZBlog 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 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>
<hr />
<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>
<p>
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 EntryEssays on #List — Selected Abstracts
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-list-selected-abstracts
<b>In response to a recent call for essays that social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the #List, we received 11 abstracts. Out of these, we have selected 4 pieces to be published as part of a series titled #List on the r@w blog. Please find below the details of the selected abstracts. The call for essays on #List remains open, and we are accepting and assessing the incoming abstracts on a rolling basis.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>1. <a href="#manisha">Manisha Chachra</a></h4>
<h4>2. <a href="#meghna">Meghna Yadav</a></h4>
<h4>3. <a href="#sarita">Sarita Bose</a></h4>
<h4>4. <a href="#shambhavi">Shambhavi Madan</a></h4>
<hr />
<h3 id="manisha"><strong>Manisha Chachra</strong></h3>
<h4><em>MeToo in Indian journalism: Questioning access to internet among intersectional women and idea of rehabilitative justice in digital spaces</em></h4>
<p>The advent of LoSHA and MeToo era witnessed an intriguing intersection of technology, politics and gender. The list and name-shame culture of social media has not only displayed changing power dynamics in digital space but an increasing movement towards engendering of internet spaces. The social, political and economic matrix defined by power relationships -- a patriarchy reflected in internet spaces, percolating in our interactions confronted a major challenge when women rose up to claim the same space. Internet space cannot be called a virtual reality as it is a sharp mirror into what is going in the power dynamics of society and politics. My paper broadly seeks to examine this engendering of spatial reality of digital space by looking at various conversations that took place on Twitter around MeToo in Indian journalism. MeToo has been widely understood as narration of one’s tale and how that experiential reality is connected with other women. However, a universalisation of such an experience often neglects intersectional reality attached to women’s experiences -- belonging to different caste, class, ethnicity and other
kinds of differences. My paper attempts to question how far MeToo in digital space accommodated the differential aspects of woman as a heterogeneous category. The spatial realities of technological spaces function like a double edged sword-- liberating as well as mobility paralysing. I use the term mobility paralysis to denote a contradiction in digital space-- which might be equally available to all sections of women but not fairly accessible. The accessibility is often a reflection of deep rooted patriarchies and kinship relationships that bind women in same
voiceless zone. MeToo in Indian journalism is a case study of how women of different backgrounds access digital spaces in questioning this mobility paralysis and inch towards a certain kind of emancipatory politics. Examining MeToo from the perspective of a social movement emerging on Twitter and Facebook, I aim to scrutinise scope of rehabilitative justice for the accused. The emergence of lists, and claiming of spaces is attached to the question of justice and being guilty or innocent of allegations. Online spaces in the recent times have also emerged as platforms of e-khaps (online khap panchayats with certain gatekeepers of the movement) where screenshot circulation, photoshop technology could be used to garner a public response against a particular person. It is interesting how after MeToo the question was not whether the person is guilty or accused rather how they should abandon their social media accounts and probably go absent virtually. In such a context, it is crucial to question the relationship between justice, one’s digital identity and who owns this identity. If rehabilitative justice is not an option, and apology-seeking is not available, what are we hoping from MeToo? The aim of any name-shame movement must be to reclaim digital space, narrate experiences and also to leave scope for others to respond, and seek justice. The question of justice is also closely linked with how women from intersectional backgrounds access internet, and emancipate
themselves.</p>
<h3 id="meghna"><strong>Meghna Yadav</strong></h3>
<p>For most people, the Internet is now synonymous with social media. Likewise, consumption of content on the Internet has shifted. We’ve moved from an earlier design of explicitly going to content-specific websites, to now, simply “logging in” and being presented with curated content spanning multiple areas. The infrastructure for consuming this content, however, remains predominantly screen based, implying a space constraint. Websites must, hence, decide what content users are to be presented with and in what order. In other words, social media must
generate itself as a ranked list of content.</p>
<p>In the classical theory of social choice, a set of voters is called to rank a set of alternatives and a social ranking of the alternatives is generated. In this essay, I propose to look at ranking of content as a social choice problem. Ranking rules of different social media platforms can be studied as social welfare functions for how they aggregate the preferences of their voters (i.e. users). Current listings of content could be modelled as the results of previously held rounds of voting. Taking examples, Reddit is built on a structure of outward voting, visceral through ‘upvotes’ and ‘downvotes’, constantly displaying to users the choice they have to alter content ranks on the website. TikTok, on the other hand, relies on taking away most of the voting power of its users.</p>
<p>As the Internet tends towards centralisation, studying how different list ranking rules aggregate our choices and in turn, alter the choices presented to us, becomes important to design a more democratic Internet.</p>
<h3 id="sarita"><strong>Sarita Bose</strong></h3>
<h4><em>Mapping goes local: A study of how Google Maps tracks user’s footprints and creates a ‘For You’ list</em></h4>
<p>The ‘Explore Nearby’ feature in Google Maps has three sections – Explore, Commute and For You. Of this, ‘For You’ section contains ‘Lists based on your local history’ as mentioned by Google itself. The Google Maps auto tracks a user’s movements and creates a digital footprint map and lists up events, programmes, restaurants, shops etc for the user. This research will focus on the ‘For You’ feature of Google Maps and its cultural and social dimensions. The work will focus on how the mapping is done and the logic behind drawing up the list. It will try to find out how the economy of Google Maps works. Why some lists shows up while some doesn’t. What kind of ‘algorithm – economy – user’ matrix is used to make up the list? The work will also try to understand cultural dimensions based on mind mapping techniques of Google. This research will follow three dimensions. The first is the mapping of user’s footprints itself and how the distance covered by a user becomes the user’s own digital existence. The Google Maps automatically asks for reviews of places the user might have visited or passed. The question is what algorithm is Google using to ask for the review? Is it pre-pointed or post-pointed? Thus, we come to the second part. Is Google only listing places that paid it or is it trying to digitally map a user’s area of geographical reach in general. If so, why? This brings us to the third dimension of the research work. What kind of cultural mapping is done of the user? The list the user gets is based on his own history and as more data is added, the more mapping is done. These three dimensions are intricately woven with each other and the work will try to establish this relationship.</p>
<h3 id="shambhavi"><strong>Shambhavi Madan</strong></h3>
<h4><em>List of lists of lists: Technologies of power, infrastructures of memory</em></h4>
<p>Lists make infinities comprehensible, and thus controllable. By virtue of the ubiquity of cyberspace and the digitized information infrastructures curating reality within these infinities, we are increasingly subjected to curatorial efforts of individuals as well as codes – algorithmic and architectural.</p>
<p>Statistical lists are Foucauldian technologies of power in modern societies; tools for the functioning of governmentality – not just in terms of state control over population phenomena but the governmentality of groups or individuals over themselves. The framework of biopolitics identifies a bureaucracy imposed by determining social classifications through listing and categorizing, within which people must situate themselves and their actions (Foucault, 2008). Thus, the authorship of lists is often reflective of power that allows for the perpetuation of hegemonic constructions of social reality, making the lists themselves sites of struggle.</p>
<p>This paper seeks to contextualize (public-oriented) lists as forms of biopolitical curation that often lie at points of intersection between collective consciousness and social order, through an approach that problematizes the socio-technics of agency and the subjective objectivity of authorship. Although list-making acts such as the National Population Register, NRC, #LoSHA, the electoral roll, the census, and Vivek Agnihotri’s call for a list of “Urban Naxals” all differ in terms of content, intent, and impact, and contain different asymmetries of power, the lowest common denominator lies in their role as producers of public knowledge and consequently, infrastructures of public memory. This approach allows for a reinterpretation of the fundamental duality of lists of and within publics: <em>the functionality of enforcing/maintaining social order, and the phenomenological practise of publicly self-presenting with a (semi-material) manifestation of a collective identity</em>. The former sees the use of lists as tools of population management, enacting citizenship and belonging through forms of inclusion and exclusion; the latter is reflective of the workings of self-autonomy – redefining the authorship of justice and punishment – in networked societies. Thus, a secondary theme in this paper would be to question the change and significance in the role of authorship through a phenomenological comparative of lists that are institutionalised practice versus those that are open and collaborative.</p>
<p>Both the act of list-making and the lists themselves are framed as coalescences of material and imaginary, by juxtaposing the idea of infrastructures as primarily relationalities – i.e. they can’t be theorized in terms of the object alone (Larkin, 2013) – with Latour’s relational ontology of human and non-human actors. The list itself is a non-human object/actant that after emerging as a product of co-construction, takes on an agential role of its own (Latour, 2005). Each of these lists can be considered as a quasi-object, a complex convergence of the technological and the social. Both #LoSHA and the NRC are not mere placeholders being ‘acted upon’, but real and meaningful actors acting as cultural mediators and not intermediaries. The integration of a socio-technical, infrastructural approach with one that emphasizes upon the aesthetics of authorship and public memory allows the subject to be seen as constitutive of an embodied, relational experience as opposed to just existing as a dissociative (re)presentation.</p>
<p><strong>References:</strong></p>
<p>Foucault, M. 2008. <em>The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979</em>. Trans. G. Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.</p>
<p>Larkin, B. 2013. "The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructural." <em>Annual Review of Anthropology</em>. 42:327-343.</p>
<p>Latour, B. 2005. <em>Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-list-selected-abstracts'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-list-selected-abstracts</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppResearchers at WorkListRAW BlogFeaturedInternet Studies2019-09-03T13:38:12ZBlog EntryCall for Essays — #List
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-list
<b>The researchers@work programme at CIS invites abstracts for essays that explore social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the ‘list’. We have selected 4 abstracts among those received before August 31, 2019, and are now accepting and evaluating further submissions on a rolling basis.</b>
<p> </p>
<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cis-india/website/master/img/CIS_r%40w_CallForEssays_List_Open.png" alt="Call for essays on #List, abstracts are considered on a rolling basis" />
<p> </p>
<p>For the last several years, #MeToo and #LoSHA have set the course for rousing debates within feminist praxis and contemporary global politics. It also foregrounded the ubiquitous presence of the list in its various forms, not only on the internet but across diverse aspects of media culture. Much debate has emerged about specificities and implications of the list as an information artefact, especially in the case of #LoSHA and NRC - its role in creation and curation of information, in building solidarities and communities of practice, its dependencies on networked media infrastructures, its deployment by hegemonic entities and in turn for countering dominant discourses.</p>
<p>From Mailing Lists to WhatsApp Broadcast Lists, lists have been the very basis of multi-casting capabilities of the early and the recent internets. The list - in terms of list of people receiving a message, list of machines connecting to a router or a tower, list of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ ‘added’ to your social media persona - structures the open-ended multi-directional information flow possibilities of the internet. It simultaneously engenders networks of connected machines and bodies, topographies of media circulation, and social graphs of affective connections and consumptions.</p>
<p>As a media format that is easy to create, circulate, and access (as seen in the number of rescue and relief lists that flood the web during national disasters) or one that is essential in classification and cross-referencing (such as public records and memory institutions), the list becomes an essential trope to understand new media forms today, as the skeletal frame on which much digital content and design is structured and also consumed through.</p>
<ul>
<li>What new subjectivities - indicative of different asymmetries of power/knowledge - do list-making, and being listed, engender? How are they hegemonic or intersectional?</li>
<li>What new modes of questioning and meaning-making have manifested today in various practices of list-making?
What modalities of creation and circulation of lists affords their authority; what makes them legitimate information artefacts, or contentious forms of knowledge?</li>
<li>How and when do lists became digital, where are lists on paper? How do we understand their ephemerality or robustness; are they medium or message?</li>
<li>Are there cultural economies of lists, list-making, and getting listed? Who decides, and who gets invisibilized on lists?</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<h2>Call for Essays</h2>
<p>We invite abstracts for essays that explore social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the ‘list’.</p>
<p>Please submit the abstracts by <strong>Friday, August 23, 2019</strong>.</p>
<p>We will select 10 abstracts and announce them on Friday, August 30. The selected authors are expected to submit a full draft of the essay (of 2000-3000 words) by Monday, September 30. We will share editorial suggestions with the authors, and the final versions of the essays will be published on the <a href="https://medium.com/rawblog" target="_blank">researchers@work blog</a> from November onwards. We will offer Rs. 5,000 as honorarium to all selected authors.</p>
<p>Please submit the abstract (300-500 words), and a short biographic note, in a single text file with the title of the essay and your name via email sent to <a href="mailto:raw@cis-india.org">raw@cis-india.org</a>, with the subject line of ‘List’.</p>
<p>Authors are very much welcome to work with text, images, sounds, videos, code, and other mediatic forms that the internet offers.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-list'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-list</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppResearchers at WorkListRAW BlogResearchFeaturedCall for EssaysInternet Studies2019-10-11T17:07:26ZBlog EntryWelcome to r@w blog!
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog
<b>We from the researchers@work programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are delighted to announce the launch of our new blog, hosted on Medium. It will feature works by researchers and practitioners working in India and elsewhere at the intersections of internet, digital media, and society; and highlights and materials from ongoing research and events at the researchers@work programme.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>r@w blog: <a href="https://medium.com/rawblog" target="_blank">Visit</a> (Medium)</h4>
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<h3>A space for reflections on internet and society, r@w blog is also an attempt to facilitate conversations around contemporary debates and foster creative engagement with research and practice through text, images, sounds, videos, code, and other media forms offered by the internet.<br /><br /></h3>
<h3>r@w blog opens with an essay on ‘<a href="https://medium.com/rawblog/information-offline-labour-surveillance-and-activism-in-the-indian-it-ites-industry-903c71567d1a" target="_blank">Information Offline: Labour, Surveillance, and Activism in the Indian IT & ITES Industry</a>’ by Rianka Roy - as part of an <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/call-for-essays-offline" target="_blank">essay series</a> exploring social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, and aesthetic dimensions of the "offline" - and audio recording from a session titled <a href="https://medium.com/rawblog/iloveyou-167665a5145a" target="_blank">#ILoveYou</a> by Dhiren Borisa and Dhrubo Jyoti, which was part of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/irc18" target="_blank">Internet Researchers’ Conference 2018 - #Offline</a>.<br /><br /></h3>
<h3>We will publish our (including commissioned/supported) writings and works on this blog, as well as submitted and compiled materials. Please write to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org to submit your works to be considered for publication. Copyright to all material published on this blog are owned by CIS and author(s) concerned, and they are shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/welcome-to-raw-blog</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppHomepageRAW BlogResearchers at WorkFeaturedInternet Studies2019-01-02T11:48:04ZBlog EntryEssays on 'Offline' - Selected Abstracts
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-offline-selected-abstracts
<b>In response to a recent call for essays that explore various dimensions of offline lives, we received 22 abstracts. Out of these, we have selected 10 pieces to be published as part of a series titled 'Offline' on the upcoming r@w blog. Please find below the details of the selected abstracts.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>1. <a href="#chinar">Chinar Mehta</a></h4>
<h4>2. <a href="#cole">Cole Flor</a></h4>
<h4>3. <a href="#elishia">Elishia Vaz</a></h4>
<h4>4. <a href="#karandeep">Karandeep Mehra</a></h4>
<h4>5. <a href="#preeti">Preeti Mudliar</a></h4>
<h4>6. <a href="#rianka">Rianka Roy</a></h4>
<h4>7. <a href="#simiran">Simiran Lalvani</a></h4>
<h4>8. <a href="#srikanth">Srikanth Lakshmanan</a></h4>
<h4>9. <a href="#titiksha">Titiksha Vashist</a></h4>
<h4>10. <a href="#yenn">Dr. Yenn Lee</a></h4>
<hr />
<h3 id="chinar"><strong>Chinar Mehta</strong></h3>
<p>In September 2017, a student of Banaras Hindu University was allegedly sexually harassed by two persons on a motorcycle while she was walking back to her hostel. Taking the discourse around this event as the starting point, the essay argues that the solutions offered for the safety of women align with the patriarchal notions of surveillance of women. The victim is twice violated; once during the act of sexual harassment, and twice when bodily privacy is exchanged for safety (exemplified by security cameras across the BHU campus). In fact, the ubiquitous presence of security cameras in order to control crime rates makes the safety of the woman’s body contingent to her adherence to social rules.</p>
<p>The moral panic around the safety of women encourages ways to offer a technological solution to a sociological problem. The body is granted safety insofar as the body is not ‘deviant’. There is a fusion of a ‘synoptic-panoptic’ vision, where not only a few watch the many, but the many also watch the few. Additionally, the essay then engages with the politics of mobile applications like Harassmap or Safetipin, and how offline spaces become online entities with crowdsourced data about how safe it is. Mapping events like sexual harassment on an online map is inscribed with perceptions about class and caste. The caste-patriarchal ideas of the protection of upper-caste women is maintained within these applications. The location and the people who visit or reside in them often collapse as the same; as being perpetrators of sexual crimes, while decontextualising incidents. Instead of a focus on how to make areas safer for all women, the discourse becomes about the avoidance of certain spaces, which may not be an option for the majority of women, especially those belonging to certain castes and classes. Features in mobile applications, specifically to do with location mapping, like Google Maps or Uber, become vehicles for the narratives about gendered security.</p>
<p>In defining the ‘offline’, the ‘online’ already exists, and the dichotomy is strangely maintained by the use of interactive maps on personal devices. The essay argues for a more nuanced understanding of internalised constructions of safety, and proposes the idea that institutional surveillance has been a way to discipline gendered bodies historically, and that it is continued with the use of technologies. This may be due to state machinery, or even cultural consent, which would then show up the way that features of mobile applications are marketed.</p>
<h3 id="cole"><strong>Cole Flor</strong></h3>
<h4><em>Deactivating: An Escape From the Realities of the Online World</em></h4>
<p>A friend posts travels, unboxing the latest gadget, trying out makeup products even before theyÕre out in the market, and the audience hit ÔlikeÕ but deep inside suddenly feel inadequate about their own lives and ask,
"What am I doing wrong? Why am I not happy like them?"</p>
<p>The year was 2012 when the earliest of studies on how Social Media contributes to Anxiety went viral.</p>
<p>Even with the complicated nature of mental illnesses the taboo of it all that kept people tiptoeing around the topic - the news was able to crack the glossy facade of online spaces. Back then, it was ridiculous to think that online content the very representation of freedom of expression, information-sharing, open communities caused users some level of distress that affects their mental state. However, with every story that comes out these days of or relating to mental illnesses and social media, people are no longer in denial that being online has become the worldÕs default state. With that primary connection comes a full spectrum of emotions and perspectives that shifted how society views the self, their community, and their roles in being a ÔnetizenÕ. The blurring of lines of whatÕs considered appropriate content, the multiple performances of everyday life, and the imagery that constitutes "happiness", "satisfaction", "significance", "purpose", and "validation" can be described as overwhelming, disconcerting, and stressful to an extent. For borderline Millennials like myself the generation Digital Natives being offline is now an escape from the harsh realities of the online society.</p>
<p>These studies shed light on new narratives that recognized how curating the perfect and seamless life online not only affects the users viewing the content but even the content producers themselves, cracking under pressure and giving into the expectation of "Keeping the Image Alive", whatever it takes. Online life gave "peer pressure" a new meaning.</p>
<p>But users can only deal with so much pressure without sacrificing a part of themselves. During the emergence of social media in early 2000s, users felt the need to go online to escape their personal problems and live in another world where everything seemed easy and possible; where anonymity was powerful and so was virtually traveling in a borderless space where a link opens doors for personal, professional, political, and socio-economic transformation. A quick turn of events, users now wish to escape from the clamor of Twitter threads, Instagram stories, Snaps, and political rants and fake news on Facebook. More and more users deactivate and hibernate, get on board a "social media detox" to rid of the "poison" online content and their [e]nvironments has caused them, all in search for a new something to be called "real".</p>
<p>This narrative essay explores several dimensions why users choose to deactivate, and how that very choice is more of a symptom of a societal anomaly rather than a simple "break" from the chaotic world of social media. It is written in the perspective of a Digital Native - a person who has an inextricable affinity to digital devices but at the same time, is in touch with the analog way of life. The choice of going offline is not only to focus on what used to be real (a life away from the Internet), but it is to gather wits together, stay away from perfectly curated lives to keep sane, and ultimately, to chase life's curiosities and ambitions without having the need to validate achievements with a Like.</p>
<h3 id="elishia"><strong>Elishia Vaz</strong></h3>
<h4><em>Dynamics of the ‘offline’ self-diagnosis, exploration of the corporeal and the politics of information</em></h4>
<p>The corpus of information on health and related topics in the online sphere has caused much concern in relation to self-diagnosis. Concepts like cyberchondria have emerged with the medicalisation of behaviour that uses online health information to explore the corporeal disabilities of the body. While literature has largely concentrated on individual susceptibilities to Cyberchondria and corresponding negative and positive results of the behaviour, there is little that explores the politics of information that characterises this trope. The behaviours of self-diagnosis and exploration of the corporeal often challenge the symptomatology of the offline allopathic physician. The physician often deals with an informed patient. Yet, the questions remain. If online information drives such offline corporeal exploration, who is left out? Are behaviours analogous to cyberchondria a privilege when viewed from a lens of digital marginalization? Are only those who have access to and can make sense of the online health discourse afforded simultaneous access to their offline corporeal bodies in ways that the digitally marginalized are not? This article uses semi-structured qualitative in-depth interviews with doctors to explore the dynamics of exploring the offline corporeal in the presence of online health information.</p>
<h3 id="karandeep"><strong>Karandeep Mehra</strong></h3>
<h4><em>The Shadow that Social Media Casts: The Doubled Offlines of Online Sociality</em></h4>
<p>In William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, the protagonist ‘Case’ ‘jacks in’ and ‘jacks out’ of ‘cyberspace’. Yet when ostracized from cyberspace, when there is no more a possibility of jacking in, Case suffers a withdrawal from the ‘SimStim’ – simulated stimulations of cyberspace – and he crumbles in the hollow ache of this
isolation “as the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there.”</p>
<p>Neuromancer has already been deemed prophetic by critics and theorists, yet in beginning with Gibson, this paper seeks to throw into relief a problem that has now begun to receive scholarly and academic attention. Namely, the legitimacy of drawing a line between the online and offline, or the virtual and the real. With Case, the real or
the offline only becomes possible within the capacity to access or enter the virtual or online. To think of an offline without this capacity, but after it has become possible, is to confront a detritus, a second offline – a hapless clawing dexterity, with dreams that overrun an articulated, identificatory imagination. Anthropologists like Boellstorff, and media theorists like Yuk Hui, have resolved this problem though they have left unexplained this detritus. Instead they resolve the problem through a tight coupling of the online and offline, and rightly so, dismiss any attempts to think of the real in any way unaffected by the virtual.</p>
<p>The purpose of this paper, though in agreement with the work of Hui and Boellstorff, and drawing from them, is to restage the problem to incorporate the unexplained detritus. That to understand how our conceptions of the subject must be recast to apprehend the transformations that the internet has wrought, must not resolve the opposition between offline and online. We must, instead, attend to the way the two offlines emerge, and the conceptualization of the threshold that oscillates to constitute them.</p>
<p>The paper understands these two offlines as emerging in what are called “shitstorms”, or moments of frenzy across social media that incite a whorl of discourse, where the speaking body becomes a medium for the propagation for viral forms. The threshold that constitutes them is the relation of the technical extension that makes this propagation possible. This relation leaves the body in a perpetual state of information entropy – that is as a disordered source of data - which must be ordered to be communicated successfully. This threshold that marks out the phase shift between disorder to order to make possible propagation, makes possible also the shadow of an incommunicable that it casts behind – an incommunicable that when understood through Walter Benjamin’s idea of “the torso of a symbol” can help us recast the subject of a network society, as a subject grounded on this shadow.</p>
<h3 id="preeti"><strong>Preeti Mudliar</strong></h3>
<h4><em>In WiFi Exile: The Offline Subjectivities of Online Women</em></h4>
<p>In telecom policy imaginations that seek to bridge India’s digital divides, public WiFi hotspots are a particular favourite to ensure last mile Internet connectivity in rural areas. As infrastructures, WiFi networks are thought to privilege democratic notions of freedom and connectivity by rendering space salient as networked areas that only require users to have a WiFi enabled device to get online. However, the kind of spaces that WiFi networks occupy are not always accessible by women even though they are ostensibly public in nature. Social norms that restrict and confine women’s mobilities to certain sanctioned areas do not allow their Internet and digital literacies to be visible in the same way as men who are more easily recognized as active Internet and technology users.</p>
<p>The invisibility of women thus struggles to create a presence as desirable subjects of the Internet that WiFi infrastructures should also address. In a community where WiFi networks was hosted in public spaces, women reported hearing about WiFi and seeing men using WiFi, but had never used it themselves even though they were also active users of the Internet. With its inaccessibility, the WiFi infrastructure was a contradictory presence in the community for the women who found themselves confined to using the Internet with spotty prepaid mobile data plans. Their use and experience of the Internet was thus in many ways diminished and limited and they reported experiencing a state of offlineness in contrast to the men in their community who could frequent the WiFi hotspots and avail of high speed Internet leading to more expansive repertoires of use.</p>
<p>This essay proposes a reflection on how the offline can be relational and constituted by the way infrastructures compose certain user subjectivities even while they exile others from being a part of their networks. It expands on Brian Larkin’s contention that in addition to their technical affordances, infrastructures are also equally semiotic and aesthetic forms that are oriented towards creating and addressing certain subjects. It thus asks, how do public WiFi deployments unwittingly create and constitute, what Bardzell and Bardzell call, as ‘subject positions’ of WiFi Internet users and non-users? How do these subject positions inform subjectivities of felt experience of the WiFi that translate to experiencing the offline even while being online?</p>
<h3 id="rianka"><strong>Rianka Roy</strong></h3>
<h4><em>Information Offline: Labour, Surveillance and Activism in the Indian IT&ITES Industry</em></h4>
<p>In India the public availability of the internet in the nineties coincided with the beginning of liberalisation. Online connectivity brought the aura of globalization to this country. The internet was a privilege of the few. The Information Technology sector (along with the IT-enabled service industry) had an elite status. Its employees visited, and immigrated to western countries. In fact, India still remains one the major suppliers of cheap labour in the global IT sector.</p>
<p>Over the years the aura of the internet waned. In Digital India the State now projects the internet as a necessity. However, IT&ITES companies still identify the labour of their ‘white collar’ employees as a superior vocation. This vague claim to sophistication strips the digitally-connected workforce of various labour rights. Long hours, working from home, and surveillance on personal social media are normative practices in this industry.
I conducted a case study on Indian IT&ITES employees for my doctoral research (2013-2018). It showed that protocols of online conduct influence these employees’ offline behaviour. For example, even without digital intervention, employees engage in manual self-surveillance and peer-surveillance to complement the digital surveillance of their organisations. They defend this naturalised practice as employers’ prerogative. Offline attributes like reflective glass walls in the office interior and exterior, reinforce this organisational culture.</p>
<p>Online connectivity is so deeply entrenched in this industry that even dissent seeks digital representation. Activist groups like the Forum for IT Employees (FITE) and the Union for IT & ITES (UNITES) run online campaigns parallel to their offline activism—adopting a hybrid method of protest. They have not abandoned the networks that ensnare them. Paradoxically they embody the same principle of exclusivity that their employers enforce on them. In their interviews, some activists have condemned militant trade unionism prevalent in other industries. For them, their online access sets them apart, and above their industrial couterparts. The “salaried bourgeoisie” (Zizek, p.12) refuse to align themselves with other labour unions.</p>
<p>My paper examines the impact of the near-absence of offline parameters in this industry. On the basis of company policies and interviews of IT&ITES employees, it examines if employees can stand up to digital dominance and secure their rights without conventional modes of offline protests.</p>
<h3 id="simiran"><strong>Simiran Lalvani</strong></h3>
<h4><em>The Offline as a Place of Work: Examining Food Discovery and Delivery by Digital Platforms</em></h4>
<p>Digital platforms for food discovery and delivery are generally viewed as convenient, efficient, allowing discovery of choices beyond the familiar and as reliable sources of information regarding credibility through ratings, comments and photographs.</p>
<p>The digital divide after demonetisation became more stark as those with access to the online abandoned the offline service providers for their digital counterparts. The adverse impact of this digital divide on offline, informal goods and service providers like local kirana stores, autorickshaw drivers, hawkers has been highlighted and the paradox of formalising the financial system while informalising labour has been pointed out too. In a similar vein, this essay examines continuities and changes in the practices of food discovery and delivery in the context of new digital platforms. How do practices of offline food discovery and delivery respond to the introduction of digital platforms?</p>
<p>Recently, the Food Safety and Standards Association of India (FSSAI) found that nearly 40 percent of listings on 10 digital platforms like Swiggy and Zomato were of unlicensed food operators. The FSSAI directed these digital platforms to delist these unlicensed entities and also commented that some of the platforms themselves did not have required licenses.</p>
<p>This essay therefore turns attention away from the impact of digital platforms on offline, informal food operators and towards the digital platforms themselves and the large swathes of informal labour employed in the offline by such platforms. It focuses on location-based gig work4 like delivery to highlight the role of these workers in running the online. It does so in order to avoid obfuscating the role of such workers in making the online seem formal, efficient and reliable. Finally, it asks how working for the online in the offline allows a denial of their status as employees and invisibilisation of such work and workers.</p>
<h3 id="srikanth"><strong>Srikanth Lakshmanan</strong></h3>
<h4><em>The Cash Merchant</em></h4>
<p>The paper explores the various reasons for merchants remaining offline and using cash over digital payments, both willingly and without a choice, various factors leading to it, the rationale for their choices, policy responses by the state and industry in furthering promotion of digital payments. Demonetisation not only made everyone including merchants seek alternatives to cash in order to continue the business but also provided a policy window for digital payments industry to get a faster regulatory, policy clearances, get the government to invest in incentivising digital payments. Despite these, the cash to digital shift has not taken place and the demonetisation trends in increased digital payments across modes reversed after cash was back in the system.</p>
<p>The paper attempts to document infrastructural, commercial, social issues preventing the adoption and the responses of merchants, industry to various policy prescription/enablement to increase adoption whose outcomes are unclear and have not been evaluated.</p>
<p>Infrastructural issues include technology, policy, regulatory, industry challenges in expanding the existing infrastructure. The lack of physical, regulatory, legal infrastructure prevents growth and merchants from adopting digital payments. Commercial issues include economics of direct and indirect costs to the merchant incurred in owning, accepting digital payments, commercial considerations of various ecosystem players including banks, payment processors that inhibit adoption. Social issues include awareness, literacy including digital, financial literacy, trust, behaviour shift, convenience, exercising choice towards cash.</p>
<p>Ever since the demonetisation, there is a heightened activity from industry and various arms of the government has been active in promoting digital payments. Industry-led by banks and fintech ecosystem has built a range of mobile-enabled digital payment platforms/products such wallets, BHIM-UPI, BHIM-Aadhaar, BharatQR to enable asset light merchant acceptance infrastructure, expanded merchant base in addition to catering to the surge in demand of card-accepting PoS machines. The government had undertaken a massive awareness program Digidhan soon after demonetisation and had also set up National Digital Payments Mission to promote, oversee the sustainable growth of digital payments. Various ministries are also adopting digital payments in their functioning. It also aided behavioural shift through cashback, incentivisation schemes, some specifically targeted at merchants, reimbursement of card processing charges for smaller merchants and even has in principle proposed a 20% discount on the GST. It has remained light touch on the regulation by not setting up the regulator even after 18 months of announcing the same.</p>
<p>The paper will analyse how the efforts of industry and government have been met by the merchant and look at factors which can and cannot be changed with policy interventions and real scope of digital payments in the merchant ecosystem.</p>
<h3 id="titiksha"><strong>Titiksha Vashist</strong></h3>
<p>Byung-Chul Han in his celebrated book “In the Swarm” warns us of the dangers of the mob that is increasingly replacing the ‘crowd’ or collective which constituted the mass of politics. He states that no true politics is possible in the digital era, where online communities lack a sense of spirit, a “we” that is now a swarm of individuals. Despite his theoretical brilliance, Han forgets that he cannot talk of the digital, the online without the offline. Politics has occurred, and continues to exist in the offline space, using the internet to spread its wings. It is not the online as-is, which has become the subject of philosophy, politics, art and aesthetics that characterises itself alone, sealed off as a space where events occur, identities formed and movements created. It is in fact, the offline that brings the online into being and gives it a myriad of meaning. While access, priviledge, commerce and capital are major themes while discussing internet access, we must not forget that the online is not merely a question of choice or access- but one that is often carefully disabled on purpose to control the offline. In India as well as other parts of the world, the internet has been interrupted for long durations to exercise political control and power, often crippling populations. According to a report by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), an organisation that keeps a track on internet shutdowns in the country, India has seen 244 shutdowns in 2012, of which 108 have been enforced on 2018 alone. These have been concentrated in areas such as Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East, and in instances of violence and resistance as well.</p>
<p>An internet shutdown is the digital equivalent of a curfew, and its application raises questions regarding its cause, uses and political intent. The internet as means, as an enabler of political action is seen as threatening, given the shift in the way people today communicate with one another. Internet bans and shutdowns are not only matters of commerce, but also pose the question of politics to understand when and how power is exercised. An offline created out of a shutdown is different- it is curated on purpose and calls for alternative means by which functionalities of daily life, resistance, capital and media occur. This essay aims to explore how the political image of the “sovereign” also enters the digital space to carefully construct, cut- off and marginalized voices, all in the name of state security, and law and order. According to philosopher Carl Schmitt, the sovereign is he who decides on the exception, and the offline is increasingly becoming a space of exception where those who control the digital can influence the political in real time. In this context, how do we understand the relationship of power and digital access? This essay focuses on three broad questions: (a) Is there a community online capable of political action that is facilitated by the internet? (b) How does power function in internet shutdowns and are they threats to democratic freedom of expression? And finally, (c) How do we begin to unpack the ‘online’ and the ‘offline’ in such a context?</p>
<h3 id="yenn"><strong>Dr. Yenn Lee</strong></h3>
<h4><em>Online consequences of being offline: A gendered tale from South Korea </em></h4>
<p>We hear numerous anecdotes of people facing the consequences of their online activity when offline. Some have lost jobs, have been disciplined in school, or have wound up in court for what they have posted online. However, in comparison, there has been somewhat limited discussion of the reverse scenario, where going about one's day-to-day life offline leads to violations of one's online self.</p>
<p>This essay is concerned with a new and unparalleled phenomenon in South Korea, locally termed molka. Literally meaning 'hidden camera', molka refers to the genre of women being filmed in the least expected of situations, including cubicles in public restrooms and in the midst of car accidents, and the footage being traded and consumed as entertainment. This is distinct from revenge porn or cyber-stalking where the perpetrators usually target a known or pre-determined individual with the intention of humiliating them or to exercise control. The subjects of molka are victimised for merely existing offline and are mostly unaware that their privacy has been violated until they are recognised by someone who knows them and informs them (or inflicts further harm). In response to the rising trend of molka, tens of thousands of frustrated and infuriated women have staged monthly protest rallies in central Seoul since May 2018, urging government intervention. Ironically, women gathered offline to protest against molka have been subjected to further molka crimes with unconsented photos of themselves at the rallies surfacing online and many have been the target of misogynous attacks.</p>
<p>Informed by the author's multi-year ethnographic study of technologically mediated and heightened tensions in contemporary South Korean society, this essay provides a succinct yet contextualised account of the molka phenomenon. With particular attention to the ways in which the phenomenon has developed while shifting between offline and online realms, the essay demonstrates the gendered nature of digital privacy and harassment, and the broader implications of this Korean phenomenon for women in other parts of the world.</p>
<p> </p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-offline-selected-abstracts'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/essays-on-offline-selected-abstracts</a>
</p>
No publishersneha-ppResearchers at WorkOfflineInternet StudiesRAW Blog2018-09-06T14:14:47ZBlog Entry