Centre for Internet & Society

Gig Workers Are Being Stabbed, Beaten, and Abused in India

by Varsha Bansal

An Uber driver was mugged. An Ola driver was beaten and left in a coma. Platform workers say tech companies are doing little to protect them.

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India’s gig economy drivers face bust in the country’s digital boom

by Jagmeet Singh

Workers on platforms like Uber, Ola and Swiggy deal with blocked accounts, other backlash for speaking out over poor conditions

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Global Perspectives on Women, Work and Digital Labour Platforms

by Admin

Ambika Tandon was a panellist at the launch event for the Global Perspectives on Women, Work and Digital Labour Platforms organized by Digital Future Society on July 13, 2022 on online platform.

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Gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy: Experiences of on-demand beauty workers in India

by Abhishek Sekharan, Chiara Furtado and Ambika Tandon

Abhishek Sekharan, Chiara Furtado, and Ambika Tandon contributed an essay on gender and collective bargaining in the platform economy in India, reflecting on the experiences of women beauty workers who organised India’s first women-led movement of platform workers. The essay has been published as part of an online collection of essays from contributors across the world and has been curated by the Digital Future Society Think Tank (Barcelona, Spain).

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Metaphors of Work, from ‘Below’

by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon

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.

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Designing Domestic Work Platforms

by Divyansha Sehgal and Yathrath

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.

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Procurement Through Digital Platforms

by SEWA Cooperative Federation and Centre for Internet & Society

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.

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Datafication of the Public Distribution System in India

by Sameet Panda

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.

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Internet Researchers' Conference 2022 (IRC22): #Home, May 25-27

by Puthiya Purayil Sneha

We are excited to announce that the fifth edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference will be held online on May 25-27, 2022.This annual conference series was initiated by the researchers@work (r@w) programme at CIS in 2016 to gather researchers and practitioners engaging with the internet in/from India to congregate, share insights and tensions, and chart the ways forward. This year, the conference brings together a set of reflections and conversations on how we imagine and experience the home —as a space of refuge and comfort, but also as one of violence, care, labour and movement-building.

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Studying Platform Work in Mumbai & New Delhi

by Anushree Gupta, Rajendra Jadhav, Sarah Zia, Simiran Lalvani and Noopur Raval

A report by Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) and Azim Premji University (APU) maps platform work in India and notes from four studies of workers driving taxis and delivering food for platform companies.

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