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Blog Entry Simiran Lalvani - Workers’ Fictive Kinship Relations in Mumbai App-based Food Delivery
by Simiran Lalvani published Dec 04, 2019 last modified May 19, 2020 06:25 AM — filed under: , , , , ,
Working in the gig-economy has been associated with economic vulnerabilities. However, there are also moral and affective vulnerabilities as workers find their worth measured everyday by their performance of—and at—work and in every interaction and movement. This essay by Simiran Lalvani is the first among a series of writings by researchers associated with the 'Mapping Digital Labour in India' project at the CIS, supported by the Azim Premji University, that were published on the Platypus blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC). The essay is edited by Noopur Raval, who co-led the project concerned.
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Blog Entry That Is Not A Livelihood – That Is Helplessness”: Field notes from the Fraazo Delivery Workers Strike in Noida, Greater Noida, and Ghaziabad
by Rikta Krishnaswamy published Apr 24, 2024 — filed under: , , , ,
In this essay, Rikta Krishnaswamy of the All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU) narrates her experiences of organising and supporting delivery workers’ collective action against Fraazo (a now-defunct platform for produce and grocery delivery). Her essay sheds light on the challenges workers face in organising for better conditions of work. She describes how platforms hide behind legal smokescreens and threats of police action to shirk their responsibility as employers. To make matters worse, obscure employment terms and work management systems make it harder for workers to seek redress from the government through labour dispute resolution processes. The essay is illustrative of how digital platforms have exploited and violated freedoms of the gig workers they employ, while facing no accountability. For this to change, gig workers have to be guaranteed employment rights along with collective rights to their data.
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Blog Entry The Platform Economy’s Gatekeeping of Class and Caste Dominance in Urban India
by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi published Apr 18, 2024 last modified Apr 19, 2024 03:11 AM — filed under: , , , , ,
Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi contributed an essay on how gated society management apps like MyGate and NoBrokerHood feed on caste and income inequalities in new datafied forms. The essay features in The Formalization of Social Precarities, an anthology edited by Murali Shanmugavelan and Aiha Nguyen and published with Data & Society.
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Blog Entry Workers’ experiences in app-based taxi and delivery sectors: Key initial findings from multi-city quantitative surveys
by Aayush Rathi, Abhishek Sekharan, Ambika Tandon, Chetna V. M., Chiara Furtado, and Nishkala Sekhar published Feb 15, 2024 last modified Feb 16, 2024 01:27 AM — filed under: , , ,
In 2021-22, the labour research vertical at CIS conducted quantitative surveys with over 1,000 taxi and delivery workers employed in the app-based and offline sectors. The surveys covered key employment indicators, including earnings and working hours, initial investments and work-related cost burdens, income and social security, platform policies and management, and employment arrangements. The surveys were part of the ‘Labour Futures’ project supported by the Internet Society Foundation.
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Blog Entry Your economy, our livelihoods: A policy brief by the All India Gig Workers’ Union
by W.C. Shukla, Rikta Krishnaswamy, Rohin Garg, Gunjan Jena, and S.B. Natarajan published Jan 30, 2024 last modified Jan 31, 2024 12:02 AM — filed under: , , , , , ,
In this policy brief, the All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU) presents its critique on NITI Aayog’s report on India’s platform economy. Through experiences from over 3 years of organising gig workers across India, they highlight fallacies in the report that disregard workers’ experiences and realities. They present alternative recommendations that are responsive to these realities, and offer pathways towards rights-affirming futures for workers in the platform economy.
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Blog Entry Zothan Mawii - COVID-19 and Relief Measures for Gig Workers in India
by Zothan Mawii (Tandem Research) published Apr 14, 2020 last modified May 19, 2020 05:41 AM — filed under: , , , , , ,
CIS is cohosted a webinar with Tandem Research on the impact of the COVID-19 response on the gig economy on 9 April 2020. It was a closed door discussion between representatives of workers' unions, labour activists, and researchers working on gig economy and workers' rights to highlight the demands of workers' groups in the transport, food delivery and care work sectors. We saw this as an urgent intervention in light of the disruption to the gig economy caused by the nationwide lockdown to limit proliferation of COVID-19. This is a summary of the discussions that took place in the webinar authored by Zothan Mawii, a Research Fellow at Tandem Research.
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