Pathways to Higher Education

That Is Not A Livelihood – That Is Helplessness”: Field notes from the Fraazo Delivery Workers Strike in Noida, Greater Noida, and Ghaziabad

Rikta Krishnaswamy — 2024-04-24T02:05:03Z

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.

We have observed that over time, Indian gig workers across platforms almost certainly face a decrease in overall wages, an increase in working hours, and ever-worsening working conditions. The rhetoric of ‘large-scale employment’ is a false one, as corporates do not consider the gig workers as employees and the workers do not come under the aegis of the country’s labour laws. But the gig workers on these platforms don’t share the corporate and government view at all.

Unlike the capital city of Delhi, the suburbs of Noida, Greater Noida, and Ghaziabad have fewer opportunities even for gig work. Delivery workers across platforms regularly face theft and petty crimes, especially during late-night deliveries. Housing societies prevent them from taking their bikes to customers’ apartments and, in some cases, deny them access to building lifts to carry out deliveries. Despite its dehumanising nature, gig work provides some means of survival in this epoch of rampant unemployment.

On 30 May 2022, striking delivery workers in Noida, Greater Noida, and Ghaziabad—all of whom work for an app-based, fresh produce and grocery delivery platform called Fraazo —approached the All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU). Many of these delivery workers, who are usually referred to as ‘partners’, had lost jobs at banks, data or telecom companies, and call centres during the pandemic, and had joined Fraazo after it started operations in December 2021. They were initially paid a daily wage, called a minimum guarantee (MG) payout, of INR 500 for a 10-hour work shift during which they delivered vegetables, fruits, and groceries to residences near them. Alongwith the MG payout that was disbursed weekly into their accounts, they were also given a petrol surcharge of four rupees for every kilometre they travelled.

The workers told us that on 28 May 2022, the Fraazo head office in Mumbai decided to replace their daily MG payout with a piece-rate payout of INR 45 per delivery. At a time of sky-rocketing fuel prices and inflation, the company decided to remove the petrol surcharge for delivery distances of less than five kilometres (which constitute a bulk of the orders that these delivery workers service). The delivery workers were apprised of these changes the next day by the Fraazo Store Managers, with a promise that the new piece-rate system would bring in more earnings.

The delivery workers rejected this new system outright and demanded that Fraazo restore the earlier payout system with an assurance that in the future, Fraazo will take the consent of the workers before introducing any drastic changes to their service conditions. In addition, they demanded that all delivery riders be provided with accident insurance and paid leaves.

The workers did not view themselves as merely freelance delivery partners. When the store’s operations had just begun, the company faced a lot of challenges in ensuring consistent service. Some delivery partners would help with unloading and sorting produce at the store during or after their work shifts. Even after operations stabilised, many worked overtime (with no pay) at the behest of the store managers to ensure that deliveries were completed to the customer’s satisfaction. A significant portion of deliveries involved carrying 10 kilos of produce to customers’ homes. Delivery workers were entrusted to escalate and resolve complaints as well. Fraazo’s customers complained that the store managers were lackadaisical when it came to providing appropriate support and often called the delivery workers directly to get items replaced.

Anywhere between 25–40 workers were tied to a store, according to the size of the operations, and helped Fraazo set up and smoothly run its services across its various stores in Noida, Greater Noida, and Ghaziabad in the first half of 2022. They usually worked through the week, had no paid sick leaves, and were allowed to take just one unpaid day off during a work week (they often incurred penalties if they took more than one leave). While there were problems with their previous time-wage system, they were dead against the new system of a piece-rate payout. The latter meant that their employer could potentially hire hundreds of workers for a store with no minimum guarantee pay, thereby annihilating the earnings of all the workers.

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Contributors

Author: Rikta Krishnaswamy

Images: All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU)

Design: Annushka Jaliwala

Copy edit: The Clean Copy

About the All India Gig Workers’ Union

The All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU) is a registered trade union for all food delivery, logistics, and service workers that work on any app-based platforms in India.

Contact: contactaigwu@gmail.com

Connect: Twitter; Facebook

The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of their individual authors. Unless the opposite is explicitly stated, or unless the opposite may be reasonably inferred, CIS does not subscribe to these views and opinions which belong to their individual authors. CIS does not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the views and opinions of these individual authors. For an official statement from CIS on a particular issue, please contact us directly.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/that-is-not-a-livelihood-2013-that-is-helplessness201d-field-notes-from-the-fraazo-delivery-workers-strike-in-noida-greater-noida-and-ghaziabad

The Platform Economy’s Gatekeeping of Class and Caste Dominance in Urban India

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2024-04-19T03:11:44Z

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.

Ashrit is an experienced platform worker. He has been a delivery worker for three years, job-hopping frequently. Ashrit has worked as a package delivery worker for three platforms: two courier services and a hyperlocal grocery delivery company, which promises compressed ten-minute deliveries over short distances. While navigating the city, he often deals with omnipresent surveillance tools deployed in apartment complexes owned by upper-class and dominant-caste homeowners. Ashrit is used to being screened at every apartment complex he enters, including having his picture taken and verifying details such as his name, mobile number, and the platform he is delivering for. The everydayness of constant identity verification means that Ashrit is not bothered much by it — he said he doesn’t mind the process so much as the delay it causes when customers forget to approve his entry.

MyGate is one such company offering “gated community management,” claiming to service over 25,000 gated societies in India. A competing application, NoBrokerHood, services over 18,000 societies. Apps of this nature have sprung up across urban India in the past five years, offering “society management” services to a niche market of gated societies. Their bouquet of services includes everything from property listings with a commission rate for the platform, security services, accounting services for maintenance and related expenses, and in-app discussion forums for residents. These apps market digital security, which allows residents to regulate entries and exits and make a database of all non-resident visitors in the society. The objective of these apps is to legitimize surveillance as a way of ensuring safety in gated societies. Through a preliminary search online, we found over 20 different companies specializing in digital solutions for gated societies. The industry even had a business exposition in Mumbai on “Housing Society Management,” focused on technology solutions for gated societies.

This study uses the framework of platform urbanism to understand surveillance platforms. Platform urbanism analyzes the growing power of digital platforms in cities. Urban geographers have argued that platforms are a symptom of current models of capitalism, which exploit “idle resources” to produce new forms of urban spaces and value where they might not have existed earlier. Airbnb and Uber are often used as examples of this new form of extraction and value creation from existing assets by monetizing empty rooms and car seats. We argue that platforms offering surveillance services are another instance of this wider landscape of platform urbanism, manufacturing the need for surveillance systems in elite urban enclaves. We use this case study to show that platforms monetize not just idle resources but social inequality and stratification to generate value and capital.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/the-platform-economys-gatekeeping-of-class-and-caste-dominance-in-urban-india

Online Gender Based Violence on Short Form Video Platforms

Divyansha Sehgal and Lakshmi T. Nambiar — 2024-04-11T03:24:55Z

An inquiry into platform policies and safeguards. This report explores how short-form video platforms in India address online gender based violence (oGBV) by analysing their terms of service, community guidelines (CG), and reporting workflows.

Executive Summary

Being a woman or from a gender minority online is a harrowing experience. From early instances of sexual harassment in text-based internet communities in the 1990s, to apps such as Bulli Bai, and harassment in the Metaverse more recently, online gender-based violence (oGBV) is a pervasive problem, affecting 23 per cent of women globally. In India, nearly half of the women surveyed reported facing online harassment, leading to reduced online participation. Other consequences of oGBV include mental health issues, withdrawal from online spaces, and, offline violence.

In 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women & girls, and its causes and consequences recognised online violence against women and the need to counter it, defining it as "any act of gender-based violence against women that is committed, assisted or aggravated in part or fully by the use of ICT, such as mobile phones and smartphones, the Internet, social media platforms or email, against a woman because she is a woman, or affects women disproportionately."

This report explores how short-form video platforms in India address oGBV by analysing their terms of service, community guidelines (CG), and reporting workflows. Recognising the role of intermediaries is crucial in understanding challenges and developing effective strategies to combat oGBV. We selected three Indian video-sharing platforms based on their download numbers, as well as Instagram reels (given their popularity in India).

The CG and terms of use of these platforms were measures against a typology of oGBV we put together based on a literature review.

The guidelines of the platforms included in the study demonstrated minimal recognition of the gendered effects of potential behaviours related to oGBV. None of the platforms had a separate policy or section dedicated to oGBV, and the policies were found to be ambiguous at several points, leaving them open to interpretation by moderators. Josh was particularly noted to have extremely poor coverage overall. Certain forms of oGBV, such as harassment, non-consensual information sharing, and extortion, were addressed to a slightly higher degree in the guidelines of Instagram, Moj, and Roposo. Some exemplary aspects are highlighted in our findings section. However, other forms, such as attacks on communication channels, omissions by regulatory actors, surveillance and stalking, and online domestic violence found little to no mention across policies, despite the likelihood of these issues manifesting offline as well. Further, policy provisions failed to address the needs of gender minorities. Reporting mechanisms were found to be lacking or inconsistent, and failed to consider the networked nature of harassment.

The harms of gendered violence are well-known and documented. The lack of clarity on implementation and policy is no longer an oversight but an active choice to disregard users.

Attributions

Co-authors: Divyansha Sehgal and Lakshmi T. Nambiar
Conceptualisation: Ambika Tandon, Torsha Sarkar
Review: Amrita Sengupta and Divyank Katira
Research Assistance: Cheshta Arora
Design: Anagha Musalgaonkar

The report can be downloaded here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/online-gender-based-violence-on-short-form-video-platforms

Digital Markets and India: Demystifying the Draft DCB

Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri (in alphabetical order) — 2024-04-15T06:15:21Z

This document summarises the proceedings of the Roundtable on the draft Digital Competition Bill (DCB) [hereinafter referred to as ‘the Roundtable’]. The Roundtable was conducted online on April 1, 2024, and included representation from academia, law, civil society, and policy organisations. The primary objective of the Roundtable was to discuss the recent report published by the Committee on Digital Competition Law (CDCL) in March 2024 along with the draft of the DCB.

The event was organized by Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri.

The Roundtable began with a brief presentation by Abhineet Nayyar (Centre for Internet and Society - CIS) providing an overview of the various important themes identified by CIS during the course of their research. This introduction was followed by Roundtable discussions moderated by Isha Suri (CIS), focusing on important areas identified by CIS for the course of this discussion.

This summary seeks to crystallise the learnings that emanated from this Roundtable to inform the discourse and contribute to the ongoing public consultation for the draft DCB, due by April 15, 2024.

I. Ex-ante or ex-post

The initial parts of the discussion focused on the shift from a largely ex-post model to an ex-ante model to competition regulation in India. It was briefly summarised during the discussion that while the extant Competition Act of 2002 relied on ex-post methods to recognise anti-competitive practices, the proposed DCB adopts an ex-ante approach similar to what has been adopted or is being deliberated in other jurisdictions. Few participants highlighted the benefits and costs of switching from the former to the latter and highlighted specific learnings for digital markets in India, while some were sceptical of this shift towards an ex-ante model, given its potentially detrimental impact on MSMEs and lack of enforcement capacity in India.

The discussion began with the participants highlighting the gaps in the extant ex-post regulatory framework, including delayed enforcement and disposal of appeals, and its under-reliance on private enforcement techniques that increase the ecosystem’s dependence on CCI as a central node. Simultaneously, however, several participants also warned against potential issues in the ex-ante approach proposed under the draft DCB. While some of these concerns related to the general ineffectiveness of ex-ante regulations – as highlighted, for example, in data protection and broadcasting – many participants deliberated on specific sections of the draft DCB. It was also pointed out that telecom regulation does have ex-ante provisions to address competition concerns within the sector. One participant, for instance, highlighted the proposed bill’s wide scope and the risk it poses for an under-resourced regulatory regime.

Overall, the group emphasised the need to carefully consider the particulars of the ex-ante approach proposed under the draft DCB. While there was a broader consensus that this approach may address some issues with digital markets particularly, the discussion brought to the fore many concerns with how this approach is currently being articulated. In addition to the bill’s wide scope, the Roundtable also discussed the necessity for an impact assessment study to understand its effects better. Other concerns regarding the proposed threshold values and the draft DCB’s focus on ‘contestable’ markets were also tabled during the discussion.

II. Building Regulatory Capacity

The participants discussed existing regulatory capacity in light of the proposed ex-ante approach under the draft DCB. Several participants highlighted factors that currently inhibit CCI’s capacity, the foremost of them being the Commission’s reliance on enforcement by bureaucrats with time-bound deputations affecting continuity and sustained capacity. In the absence of professional capacity, particularly in digital markets, the wide scope proposed by the draft DCB is only likely to further test CCI’s ability to deliver on its mandate. Moreover, in discussing how to build CCI’s professional capacity, a participant also highlighted the risk of regulatory capture by the private sector if one were to follow a ‘revolving door’ approach.

Participants then delved into potential solutions for CCI’s constrained capacity. In addition to staffing the Commission with subject matter experts, a participant also stated that given the political economy, it may be prudent to design the regulatory ecosystem to work around the problem of legacy issues of lack of professional capacity and independence. The participants also briefly discussed the role of impact assessment in resolving this problem, specifically by including the effect of the draft DCB on CCI’s already strained capacity.

III. Proposed Threshold Values

Deliberations began with the rationale for the Threshold Values (TVs) proposed by the draft DCB. Several participants shared their reservations about the bill’s reliance on international standards, especially for metrics such as market capitalisation and global turnover. Some also identified certain areas where the proposed bill seeks to identify TVs that are more relevant to the Indian market. For example, a participant highlighted that the draft DCB, in Section 3(4) chooses to identify and calculate business users and end users for each of the core digital services separately.

In addition to discussing the rationale behind TVs, many participants also suggested avenues for potential improvement. For instance, one of the participants recommended the identification of threshold values for each of the core digital services, as opposed to the current service-agnostic thresholds. It was posited that the expedited timeline of three months may have constrained the committee from recommending nuanced thresholds suited for Indian contexts since that would require market studies or commissioned (independent) research for evidence gathering and analysis.

Some participants were optimistic that the currently open consultation process may leave room for further negotiation on the prescribed TVs. This includes, among other things, identifying more representative calculation methods for arriving at appropriate values and incorporating global best practices.

IV. Remedies and Penalties

The participants sought to ascertain the effectiveness of penalties in the form of fines as a tool for deterring abusive conduct by dominant entities in general, and digital behemoths, more specifically. On one hand, some participants highlighted the lack of evidence to support the assumption that currently imposed fines deter such abuse in the market. For instance, one of the participants referred to a recent incident where the Dutch competition regulator imposed a €5 million fine for every week Apple failed to comply with an antitrust decision by the regulator. In the end, Apple had accumulated fines worth €50 million, instead of allowing dating app providers to use alternative modes of payment, ostensibly indicating how companies perceive penalties as yet another operating cost.^{^[1]}

On the other hand, a few participants also underlined the need to look at ‘penalties’ as a part of a larger toolkit and not as a standalone deterrent. In this context, the draft DCB’s focus on settlements and commitments, and criminal penalisation were also highlighted by some attendees; while others pointed out the need for an institutional redesign – for example, by reviewing the current appellate process, or by potentially reintroducing the Competition Appellate Tribunal (COMPAT).

Additionally, the question of penalties led to a discussion on the calculation of the quantum of fines and the process followed therein. Stressing the need for more elaborate penalisation guidelines, one participant questioned CDCL’s choice of capping penalties at 10% of the enterprise’s global turnover, especially for industries that have comparatively higher profit margins. It was also pointed out that there is no empirical evidence suggesting the efficacy of the 10% cap, as a sufficient amount.

The discussion also briefly delved into the issue of structural remedies as a tool for correcting harms in digital markets, given the presence of strong network effects and winner-take-all outcomes. Even though there was not a deep dive into the issue of structural remedies, per se, a participant indicated that certain obligations under the DCB, such as the one on tying and bundling comprise a form of structural reform.

V. Digital Mergers and Acquisitions

Unlike the Competition Act 2002, the draft DCB explicitly excludes combination review from its scope, instead relying on the 2023 amendment to the Act. It was pointed out during the discussion that recent amendments in the merger review process such as the inclusion of deal value thresholds should check anticompetitive mergers. However, as highlighted by a few participants during the Roundtable – even though the amendment would potentially enable CCI to investigate digital M&As, the Commission would still have to rely on theories of harm established under the extant Act, which largely examines price-based effects of mergers. For instance, one participant highlighted the role of price-based assessments informing CCI’s working in many merger review cases and pointed out the limitations of these assessments in examining combinations in the digital market.

On the other hand, many obligations identified and elaborated under the proposed DCB are, in fact, better suited to support CCI’s regulation of such digital M&As. Another participant pointed out that while sections 3 and 4 of the extant Act can still, theoretically, allow CCI to borrow from the draft bill, the proposed regulatory landscape does not ensure this synergy between the two pieces of legislation.

VI. Gaps in the Consultation Process

Finally, the discussion highlighted the consultation process adopted by the CDCL during the drafting of this bill. While there was a general agreement that the process was not very representative, different participants brought up diverse perspectives. One participant, for instance, underlined the importance of including MSMEs in the drafting process, given their deep reliance on digital tools and technologies. Other attendees also echoed this viewpoint, highlighting that although the CDCL incorporated inputs from BigTech companies and industry associations, the perspectives of consumers, technology experts, and platform workers were missing from the list of stakeholders consulted during the process.

There was cautious optimism in the room that subsequent drafts of the Bill might address some of these concerns by including a diverse set of stakeholders and incorporating a bottom-up consultative process.

^{^[1]} https://www.reuters.com/technology/dutch-regulator-rejects-apples-objections-against-fines-2023-10-02/

To download the PDF, click here and the Presentation here

This report has been authored by (Abhineet Nayyar and Isha Suri)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-markets-and-india-demystifying-the-draft-dcb

Understanding Feminist Infrastructures: An Exploratory Study of Online Feminist Content Creation Spaces in India

Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu — 2024-03-25T13:02:28Z

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.

Click here to download the full report.

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.

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.

Contributors

Research and Writing Puthiya Purayil Sneha and Saumyaa Naidu

Review Dr. Padmini Ray Murray, Design Beku

Design Saumyaa Naidu and Yatharth

Copy Editing The Clean Copy

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/understanding-feminist-structures

Workers’ experiences in app-based taxi and delivery sectors: Key initial findings from multi-city quantitative surveys

2024-02-16T01:27:07Z

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.

It has been over a decade since app-based delivery and taxi sectors began operations in India, and have since expanded to several metropolitan and smaller cities. These sectors together account for the largest proportion of the platform workforce in India. Workers’ collective action and demands have revealed extractive labour practices in the platform economy. However, there has been a dearth of reliable quantitative data on essential labour and economic wellbeing indicators for workers. In 2021-22, we conducted surveys with workers in the taxi and delivery sectors aiming to build an evidence base for worker-first policy-making in the platform economy. 1,048 workers were surveyed across four tier 1 and tier 2 cities—Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Lucknow, and Guwahati.

Research questions

What is the nature and scale of platform operations in the delivery and taxi sectors within various tier 1 and tier 2 cities in India?
What are the socio-economic contexts shaping workers’ decisions around transitioning in and out of the platform workforce in the delivery and taxi sectors?
What are the tangible and intangible costs, and conditions of work that workers navigate to sustain their employment on delivery and taxi platforms?
How does the assemblage of informal and formal structures, actors, and systems of work management shape economic outcomes for workers on delivery and taxi platforms?

Key initial findings

Diverse employment arrangements
There is a sizeable presence of heterogeneous work organisation systems on both app-based delivery and taxi sectors, which diverge from an on-demand model. These systems mediate multiple aspects of everyday work allocation and processes, spatio-temporal rhythms of work, platform design and management, modes of labour control, levels of reintermediation, and employment arrangements.

In the delivery sector, typologies are driven by platform models and work processes. Typologies of work organisation and control in the taxi sector, on the other hand, are centred around diverse employment arrangements and vehicle ownership models.

Socio-economic vulnerabilities impacting work outcomes
Workers in both the delivery and taxi sectors face a number of socioeconomic vulnerabilities that influence their entry and continued employment in platform work. Key motivating factors to enter platform work involved the lack of alternative employment opportunities (over 50 percent in both sectors) and the possibility of better pay than other available jobs (over 40 percent in both sectors).

An overwhelming proportion of workers (over 95 percent in both sectors) were engaged in platform work as their main source of income, as opposed to part-time employment. Workers also faced significant economic burdens in various ways such as being sole earners in their household, having multiple financial dependents, providing remittances back home, and so on. Worsening these burdens was the widespread income insecurity that workers faced in both sectors—for around 50 percent of them, earnings from platform work were insufficient for covering basic household expenses.

Insufficient earnings and rising work-related expenses
Workers' experiences highlight how the majority of workers are forced to deal with low-wage outcomes, worsened by a reduction in bonuses, and high operational work-related expenses. Earnings remain low and uncertain for workers despite the fact that they put in long work hours. At the median level, workers on delivery platforms were working 70 hours a week, and those on taxi platforms were working an even higher 84 hours a week.

In addition to platform charges and commissions, numerous work-related expenses such as fuel and vehicle maintenance costs are important factors that determine take home earnings for workers. The median net earnings, after accounting for all these costs, were INR 3,800 for delivery workers, and INR 5,000 for taxi workers. When adjusted for standard weekly work hours (48 hours/week), these earnings do not meet national minimum wage standards.

Absence of occupational health measures and social protection
Workers in both delivery and taxi sectors are already working immensely long hours in order to try and make adequate earnings on the platform, sometimes working almost double the amount when compared to standard weekly work hours. They also faced additional occupational health and safety risks during their work. Workers in both sectors faced grievous risks during work hours including those relating to road safety (around 80 percent), weather conditions (around 40 percent; 52 percent for delivery workers), theft (around 30 percent), and physical assault (around 25 percent).

To make matters worse, workers were not provided adequate social protections to cope with workplace safety risks. Workers in the taxi sector had very low levels of access to crucial protections such as health insurance (6 percent) and accident insurance (28 percent). Access was relatively higher for workers in the delivery sector—32 percent had access to health insurance, and 62 percent had access to accident insurance. However, workers faced several barriers in receiving these benefits and protections, owing to burdensome and unreliable insurance claims processes.

Upcoming outputs
We hope that findings from these surveys are instrumental in speaking to extant and developing labour policy interventions, as well as adjacent policy areas including social protection, urban and infrastructural development, and sectoral regulation.

In the coming weeks, we will be publishing a series of city briefs for each of the four survey cities. These briefs will be presented as data visualisation narratives, showing how workers’ experiences with platforms vary across tier 1 and tier 2 cities.

Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/workers-experiences-in-app-based-taxi-and-delivery-sectors-key-initial-findings-from-multi-city-quantitative-surveys

Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures: Mapping the Data Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry in India

2024-01-05T02:38:22Z

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.

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.

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.

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.

Research Questions

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.
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.
What is a possible auditing framework that is best suited to organisations in the majority world.

Research Design and Methods

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.

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 shweta@cis-india.org

Research Team: Amrita Sengupta, Chetna V. M., Pallavi Bedi, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Shweta Mohandas and Yatharth.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/unpacking-algorithmic-infrastructures

User Experiences of Digital Financial Risks and Harms

2023-12-22T16:05:26Z

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.

Project Background

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 only 17% 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.

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:

Financial misinformation
Loss of control over their assets
Loss of potential income
Difficulty accessing social protection
Financial abuse perpetrated alongside other forms of domestic and family abuse
Unsustainable levels of debt, i.e. over-indebtedness, and
Exclusion from financial services

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.

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.

Key research questions guiding our project are:

How are digital financial risks understood and experienced by users of digital financial services? Which socioeconomic factors amplify risks for different user groups?
What concerns have emerged relating to data privacy, misinformation, identity theft and other forms of social engineering and mobile app based fraud?
How accessible are providers’ and government’s platform based reporting and grievance redressal systems?
What role can fintech platforms, social media platforms, banking institutions, and regulatory bodies play in reducing digital financial risks across the ecosystem?

Project Aims

Through this study, we aim to:

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.
Develop a framework to categorise the nature of vulnerabilities, risks and harms faced by the concerned user groups
Create a credible evidence base for key stakeholders with regards to experiences of digital financial risks and harm.
Provide recommendations for better policy and platform design to address harms, specifically those arising from lack of accessibility and information asymmetry.
Identify best practices to respond to digital risks and foster safety and equity in digital financial services

Come Talk to Us:

If you have experiences or insights to share, or if you're interested in learning more about our study, please reach out.

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 garima@cis-india.org

Research Team: Amrita Sengupta, Chiara Furtado, Garima Agrawal, Nishkala Sekhar, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, and Yesha Tshering Paul

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/user-experiences-of-digital-financial-risks-and-harms

Strategies to Organise Platform Workers

furtado — 2023-10-22T09:54:52Z

In 2022, the Centre for Internet and Society hosted a panel with Akkanut Wantanasombut, Ayoade Ibrahim, Rikta Krishnaswamy, and Sofía Scasserra at RightsCon, an annual summit on technology and human rights.

Click to download the full report

Event Report

This event report is based on proceedings from a panel hosted at the 2022 edition of RightsCon. Hosted by the labour and digitalisation team at CIS, the panel brought together seasoned labour organisers, activists, and researchers working across Thailand, Nigeria, India, and Argentina. The panellists represented a diverse group of worker organisations, including transnational federations, national unions, and informally organised movements.

Their experiences of organising in research and practice infused our discussion with insight into collective action struggles across varied sectors and platform economies in the global south. Collective resistance among platform workers has witnessed a sustained rise in these economies over the past three years, with demands for transparency and accountability from platforms, and for a guarantee of rights and protections from governments.

Through this panel, we sought to answer:

How have workers’ organisations overcome challenges in sustained collective action?
What have been unique aspects of organising in the global south?
Which strategies have been gaining traction for organising workers and mobilising other stakeholders?

Placing workers’ participation front and centre, the panellists incorporated common threads around campaigning, education, and mobilisation for increasing worker participation, as well as bargaining with the government for legal and social protections. The panellists highlighted that it’s the resilience and resistance led by workers that drive the way for sustained organising. This panel hoped to spotlight steps taken in that direction, where organising efforts strive to form, sustain, and champion worker-led movements.

Contributors

Panellists:
Akkanut Wantanasombut
Ayoade Ibrahim
Rikta Krishnawamy
Sofía Scasserra

Worker organisations in focus:
Tamsang-Tamsong
National Union of Professional App-based Transport Workers
International Alliance of App-based Transport Workers
All India Gig Workers’ Union
Federación Argentina de Empleados de Comercio y Servicios
Asociación de Personal de Plataformas

Conceptualisation and planning: Ambika Tandon, Chiara Furtado, Aayush Rathi, and Abhishek Sekharan

Author: Chiara Furtado
Reviewers: Ambika Tandon and Nishkala Sekhar
Designer: Annushka Jaliwala

This event report is part of research supported by the Internet Society Foundation under the ‘Labour futures’ grant.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/strategies-to-organise-platform-workers-rightscon

Strategies to Organise Platform Workers

furtado — 2023-10-20T17:04:03Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/strategies-to-organise-platform-workers

PDC 2022

Admin — 2023-07-04T07:05:09Z

Divyansha Sehgal and Yatharth presented their work - Designing Domestic Work Platforms - on critical design assessments of gig work platforms at the Participatory Design Conference.

For more detail on the conference held from 19 August to 1 September 2022, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/pdc-2022

As Equals: Frequently Asked Questions

Admin — 2023-07-04T06:54:59Z

Chiara Furtado was a panellist on the ‘As Equals’ series hosted by CNN since 2018 which aims to reveal what systemic gender inequality looks like. Chiara participated in a roundtable on digital harms and gender equality.

For more information, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/as-equals-frequently-asked-questions

Online cab booking | Why finding a cab is a nightmare now

Haripriya Suresh — 2023-07-04T06:34:22Z

Many drivers said the rise in commissions payable to ride-hailing platforms and higher fuel costs, among other expenses, have made it impossible for them to survive in the once-lucrative profession.

Aayush Rathi was quoted in this news article on how corporate policy is leading to difficulties in hailing cabs online:

“Grassroots organisers have indicated a sizeable reduction in fleet sizes of Ola and Uber compared to pre-March 2020. There are numerous possible reasons for this,” said Aayush Rathi, a senior researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society. “One is the cost-of-living crisis in urban India that has solidified the reverse migration of the early Covid days. Then, the so-called moratoriums on loan repayments ended up increasing the total liability on drivers. Many drivers may have sold their cars or defaulted on loan payments.”

Click to read the full article published by Money Control on July 14, 2022

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/money-control-july-14-2022-why-finding-a-cab-is-now-a-nightmare

Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy

Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan — 2023-07-04T06:28:57Z

Ambika Tandon and Abhishek Sekharan published an academic paper highlighting the importance of women’s networks of information sharing and care in navigating opaque platform design. The paper is part of an issue of Gender and Development on ‘Women, Work and the Digital Economy’. Gender and Development is one of the few academic journals that priorities practitioners' experiences over theoretical contributions.

Abstract

Women have a long history of organising in the informal economy, despite facing several challenges around geographical dispersion, time poverty, and lack of recognition. These challenges persist in the platform economy which pose similar concerns around precarious irregular work. Recent literature has documented the adoption of traditional and novel strategies to resist platform exploitation, through algorithmic manipulation, public demonstrations and logout strikes, and legal action. This paper explores the gendered realities that shape workers’ organising strategies and demands.

Using protests organised by women beauty workers in India as a case study, we discuss the factors underlying and leading to collectivisation. We find that women’s networks of information sharing and care are instrumental in navigating opaque and inefficient algorithms that fail to determine fully the organisation of work. We further examine the role of informal networks of information sharing in building workers’ identities which are instrumental in collective organising. Finally, we discuss the strategies and forms of organising adopted by women workers in this sector, which resonate with the rich history of organising in the informal economy.

Click to access Ambika Tandon & Abhishek Sekharan 2022 Labouring (on) the app: agency and organisation of work in the platform economy, Gender & Development, 30:3, 687-706, DOI: 10.1080/13552074.2022.2130515. Full article here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/taylor-and-francis-gender-and-development-volume-30-2022-ambika-tandon-and-abhishek-sekharan-labouring-on-the-app-agency-and-organisation-of-work-in-the-platform-economy

Women at (gig) work: When financial freedom comes at a cost

Aiswarya Raj — 2023-07-04T06:12:05Z

Chiara Furtado was quoted in a news article on women’s experiences working on ride-hailing and delivery platforms.

Chiara Furtado, researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society, says since women make up only 0.5 and 1% of the workforce in these two sectors – food delivery and cab-hailing industry – the standardised policies for workers end up being gendered. “Algorithm incentivises longer hours of work, late shifts, peak hours and consecutive rides, which prove to be discriminating against women,” she adds.

Furtado says that findings have revealed that in times of crisis, most safety mechanisms tend to be more restrictive and end up curtailing the freedom and agency of women. Khatoon elucidates Furtado’s point with her own example. “I ride an e-scooter and don’t get orders to spots above a distance of 5 km. This decreases my area and income. Those who can travel 20 km get Rs 100 per ride,” she says.

“Companies claim to offer insurance, but the way they externalize fuel costs, they externalize risk and safety costs too. Apart from general safety, they have other grievances, such as toilets, which have gender underpinnings to it,” says Furtado.

Click to read the full article published in the Indian Express here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-may-14-2023-aiswarya-raj-women-at-gig-work-unruly-customers-job-insecurity-prejudice-against-women-financial-freedom-comes-at-a-cost-for-women-working-as-delivery-executives-cab-drivers