Centre for Internet and Society

IFAT and ITF - Locking Down the Impact of Covid-19

2021-06-29T07:27:09Z

This report, by Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), New Delhi office, explores the responses to the outbreak of Covid-19 by digital platform based companies, trade unions, and governments to help out workers for digital platform based companies hereafter app based workers during the lockdown. The research work in this article is a characterization of the struggles of app based workers during the global pandemic and how it has affected and changed the world of work for them. The surveys were conducted amongst the workforce working for app based companies like Ola, Uber, Swiggy, Zomato etc. This study is partially supported by CIS as part of the Feminist Internet Research Network led by the Association for Progressive Communications.

Report: Download (PDF)

Press Release: Download (PDF)

Press Release, 17 September, 2020

Between March and June 2020, IFAT and ITF conducted 4 surveys with transport and delivery workers to assess (i) their income levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, (ii) the burden of loan repayment during these months, (iii) the relief provided to them by companies, and (iv) the access to welfare schemes offered by state and central governments.

The first survey, on income levels and loans administered in March 2020, had 5964 respondents, across 55 cities, in 16 states. The second and third surveys conducted in April 2020, on financial relief from companies and governments, had 1630 respondents, across 59 cities, in 16 states. The fourth survey was conducted in June 2020 to assess income levels as the economies were slowing opening up. Some of the most startling findings from the 4 surveys are:

The average monthly EMI of the respondents in March 2020 was between Rs. 10,000 - 20,000. 51% of the respondents had taken vehicle loans from 19 national public sector banks.
30.3% of the respondents worked between 40-50 hours a week, in the week prior to the first national lockdown. Despite high hours of work, the average income of the drivers for the week commencing April 15, 2020 was less than Rs. 2500. 57% of respondents earned between 0 to Rs. 2250.
89.8% of workers did not receive any ration or food assistance, and 84.5% did not receive any financial assistance from either companies or governments.
Where companies had announced financial assistance programmes, including through donations collected by customers, there was no transparency in disbursement of funds. Other reasons for exclusion included administrative red tape (such as the requirement to produce bills that are GST compliant), and absence of clear criteria for eligibility, leading to random disbursement, among others.
Ola announced waiving off the rental amount for leased vehicles, and asked drivers to return such vehicles. However, there was no announcement of a plan to repossess vehicles once there was an easing of the lockdown, causing great anxiety among workers.
After the easing of the national lockdown, 69.7% of respondents indicated that they had no earnings, while 20% earned between Rs.500 to 1500.
2716 respondents from 19 states across gig platforms articulated their support for a peaceful demonstration against company practices.
Mandatory installation of Aarogya Setu by workers raised concerns of privacy, as this would allow companies to surveil workers and collect data on their movements after work hours.

IFAT organised several meetings and protests after each survey, to bring attention to the vulnerable conditions of workers. At these gatherings, workers raised the following key demands:

Companies must reduce commission rates to 5%, to allow workers to get back on their feet, and compensate for losses over the past few months;
Adequate protective equipment and health insurance cover to all drivers must be provided;
There must be increased transparency in disbursement process of funds, and in the criteria for selection of beneficiaries;
Compounded interest must be waived on EMIs for the 3 months of moratorium on loan repayment.

Hear our voices and address our demands.

Shaik Salauddin

National General Secretary, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT)

Phone: +91 96424 24799

Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers

Facebook: www.facebook.com/watch/connectifat/

Twitter: www.twitter.com/connect_ifat

YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCA1AxGq0Fb_A_O_Ey44eiPg

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/ifat-itf-locking-down-the-impact-of-covid-19

Gig and platform workers’ perspectives on worker collectives

Shaik Salauddin — 2024-08-13T02:50:05Z

This report highlights findings from a survey conducted by the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union on platform workers’ perspectives around various worker collectives, particularly platform worker unions and cooperative societies. The survey was conducted with workers working for app-based platform companies like Ola, Uber, InDriver, Swiggy, Zomato, and Flipkart.

Survey report: download (PDF)

Press release: download (PDF)

To understand worker perspectives on diverse types of worker collectives, the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union conducted surveys with 79 workers, who had worked in the sector for a median of 5 years. 51% of the workers who were surveyed were members of TGPWU.

The survey findings highlight workers’ perspectives relating to the type and effectiveness of various union structures, priority of union demands, and their interest in joining cooperative societies.

This report highlights key findings from the survey, some of which detailed below:

Workers had a high preference for collective structures that are democratically owned and controlled by workers, with 75% of them expressing interest in joining a cooperative society.
Out of several worker support services that cooperative societies can offer, priority services that workers highlighted were healthcare services, insurance services, and educational support for children of members.
46% of workers each cited independent unions, and unions that were affiliated with another trade union as their preferred forms of union structures.
Around 40% of workers each found that both these forms of union structure were effective in terms of i) presenting worker demands to central and state governments, and ii) promoting worker representation and democratic participation.
66% of workers placed high importance on union demands that focus on both platforms and governments.

Contributors

Design: Annushka Jaliwala
Research conceptualisation: Shaik Salauddin
Research support and writing: Chetna V.M., Nishkala Sekhar, Chiara Furtado, Aayush Rathi

About the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union

The Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union (TGPWU) is an independent, worker-led union founded in 2021 for gig and platform workers in Telangana, India. TGPWU has over 1,000 active members and has had over 10,000 registered members since its inception.

Contact: tgapwu@gmail.com; +91 96424 24799

Connect: Website; Twitter/X; Facebook; Telegram

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/gig-and-platform-workers-perspectives-on-worker-collectives

Getting the (Digital) Indo-Pacific Economic Framework Right

arindrajit — 2022-10-03T14:56:22Z

On the eve of the Tokyo Quad Summit in May 2022, President Biden unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), visualising cooperation across the Indo-Pacific based on four pillars: trade; supply chains; clean energy, decarbonisation and infrastructure; and tax and anti-corruption. Galvanised by the US, the other 13 founding members of the IPEF are Australia, Brunei Darussalam, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The first official in-person Ministerial meeting was held in Los Angeles on 9 September 2022.

The article was originally published in Directions on 16 September 2022.

It is still early days. Given the broad and noncommittal scope of the economic arrangement, it is unlikely that the IPEF will lead to a trade deal among members in the short run. Instead, experts believe that this new arrangement is designed to serve as a ‘framework or starting point’ for members to cooperate on geo-economic issues relevant to the Indo-Pacific, buoyed in no small part by the United States’ desire to make up lost ground and counter Chinese economic influence in the region.

United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai has underscored the relevance of the Indo-Pacific digital economy to the US agenda with the IPEF. She has emphasized the importance of collaboratively addressing key connectivity and technology challenges, including standards on cross-border data flows, data localisation and online privacy, as well as the discriminatory and unethical use of artificial intelligence. This is an ambitious agenda given the divergence among members in terms of technological advancement, domestic policy preferences and international negotiating stances at digital trade forums. There is a significant risk that imposing external standards or values on this evolving and politically-contested digital economy landscape will not work, and may even undermine the core potential of the IPEF in the Indo-Pacific. This post evaluates the domestic policy preferences and strategic interests of the Framework’s member states, and how the IPEF can navigate key points of divergence in order to achieve meaningful outcomes.

State of domestic digital policy among IPEF members

Data localisation is a core point of divergence in global digital policymaking. It continues to dominate discourse and trigger dissent at all international trade forums, including the World Trade Organization. IPEF members have a range of domestic mandates restricting cross-border flows, which vary in scope, format and rigidity (see table below). Most countries only have a conditional data localisation requirement, meaning data can only be transferred to countries where it is accorded an equivalent level of protection – unless the individual whose data is being transferred consents to said transfer. Australia and the United States have sectoral localisation requirements for health and defence data respectively. India presently has multiple sectoral data localisation requirements. In particular, a 2018 Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directive imposed strict local storage requirements along with a 24-hour window for foreign processing of payments data generated in India. The RBI imposed a moratorium on the issuance of new cards by several US-based card companies until compliance issues with the data localisation directive were resolved. Furthermore, several iterations of India’s recently withdrawn Personal Data Protection Bill contained localisation requirements for some categories of personal data.

Indonesia and Vietnam have diluted the scopes of their data localisation mandates to apply, respectively, only to companies providing public services and to companies not complying with other local laws. These dilutions may have occurred in response to concerted pushback from foreign technology companies operating in these countries. In addition to sectoral restrictions on the transfer of geospatial data, South Korea retains several procedural checks on cross-border flows, including formalities regarding providing notice to individual users.

Moving onto another issue flagged by USTR Tai, while all IPEF members recognise the right to information privacy at an overarching or constitutional level, the legal and policy contours of data protection are at different stages of evolution in different countries. Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have data protection frameworks in place. Data protection frameworks in India and Brunei are under consultation. Notably, the US does not have a comprehensive federal framework on data privacy, although there are patchworks of data privacy regulations at both the federal and state levels.

Regulation and strategic thinking on artificial intelligence (AI) are also at varying levels of development among IPEF members. India has produced a slew of policy papers on Responsible Artificial Intelligence. The most recent policy paper published by NITI AAYOG (the Indian government’s think tank) refers to constitutional values and endorses a risk-based approach to AI regulation, much like that adopted by the EU. The US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), chaired by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, expressed concerns about the US ceding AI leadership ground to China. The NSCAI’s final report emphasised the need for US leadership of a ‘coalition of democracies’ as an alternative to China’s autocratic and control-oriented model. Singapore has also made key strides on trusted AI, launching A.I. verify – the world’s first AI Governance Testing Framework for companies that wish to demonstrate their use of responsible AI through a minimum verifiable product.

IPEF and pipe dreams of digital trade

Some members of the IPEF are signatories to other regional trade agreements. With the exception of Fiji, India and the US, all the IPEF countries are members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which also includes China. Five IPEF member countries are also members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) that President Trump backed out of in 2017. Several IPEF members also have bilateral or trilateral trading agreements among themselves, an example being the Digital Economic Partnership Agreement (DEPA) between Singapore, New Zealand and Chile.

All these ‘mega-regional’ trading agreements contain provisions on data flows, including prohibitions on domestic legal provisions that mandate local computing facilities or restrict cross-border data transfers. Notably, these agreements also incorporate exceptions to these rules. The CPTPP includes within its ambit an exception on the grounds of ‘legitimate public policy objectives’ of the member, while the RCEP incorporates an additional exception for ‘essential security interests’.

IPEF members are also spearheading multilateral efforts related to the digital economy: Australia, Japan and Singapore are working as convenors of the plurilateral Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) at the World Trade Organization (WTO), which counts 86 WTO members as parties. India (along with South Africa) vehemently opposes this plurilateral push on the grounds that the WTO is a multilateral forum functioning on consensus and a plurilateral trade agreement should not be negotiated within the aegis of the WTO. They fear, rightly, that such gambits close out the domestic policy space, especially for evolving digital economy regimes where keen debate and contestation exist among domestic stakeholders. While wary of the implications of the JSI, other IPEF members, such as Indonesia, have cautiously joined the initiative to ensure that they have a voice at the table.

It is unlikely that the IPEF will lead to a digital trade arrangement in the short run. Policymaking on issues as complex as the digital economy that must respond to specific social, economic and (geo)political realities cannot be steamrolled through external trade agreements. For instance, after the Los Angeles Ministerial India opted out of the IPEF trade pillar citing both India’s evolving domestic legislative framework on data and privacy as well as a broader lack of consensus among IPEF members on several issues, including digital trade. Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal explained that India would wait for the “final contours” of the digital trade track to emerge before making any commitments.

Besides, brokering a trade agreement through the IPEF runs a risk of redundancy. Already, there exists a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of regional trading agreements that IPEF members can choose from, in addition to forming bilateral trade ties with each other.

This is why Washington has been clear about calling the IPEF an ‘economic arrangement’ and not a trade agreement. Membership does not imply any legal obligations. Rather than duplicating ongoing efforts or setting unrealistic targets, the IPEF is an opportunity for all players to shape conversations, share best practices and reach compromises, which could feed back into ongoing efforts to negotiate trade deals. For example, several members of RCEP have domestic data localisation mandates that do not violate trade deals because the agreement carves out exceptions that legitimise domestic policy decisions. Exchanges on how these exceptions work in future trade agreements could be a part of the IPEF arrangement and nudge states towards framing digital trade negotiations through other channels, including at the WTO. Furthermore, states like Singapore that have launched AI self-governance mechanisms could share best practices on how these mechanisms were developed as well as evaluations of how they have helped policy goals be met. And these exchanges shouldn’t be limited to existing IPEF members. If the forum works well, countries that share strategic interests in the region with IPEF members, including, most notably, the European Union, may also want to get involved and further develop partnerships in the region.

Countering China

Talking shop on digital trade should certainly not be the only objective of the IPEF. The US has made it clear that they want the message emanating from the IPEF ‘to be heard in Beijing’. Indeed, the IPEF offers an opportunity for the reassertion of US economic interests in a region where President Trump’s withdrawal from the CPTPP has left a vacuum for China to fill. Accordingly, it is no surprise that the IPEF has representation from several regions of the Indo-Pacific: South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

This should be an urgent policy priority for all IPEF members. Since its initial announcement in 2015, the Digital Silk Road (DSR), the digital arm of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, has spearheaded massive investments by the Chinese private sector (allegedly under close control of the Chinese state) in e-commerce, fintech, smart cities, data centres, fibre optic cables and telecom networks. This expansion has also happened in the Indo-Pacific, unhampered by China’s aggressive geopolitical posturing in the region through maritime land grabs in the South China Sea. With the exception of Vietnam, which remains wary of China’s economic expansionism, countries in Southeast Asia welcome Chinese investments, extolling their developmental benefits. Several IPEF members – including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore – have associations with Chinese private sector companies, predominantly Huawei and ZTE. A study evaluating Indonesia’s response to such investments indicates that while they are aware of the risks posed by Chinese infrastructure, their calculus remains unaltered: development and capacity building remain their primary focuses. Furthermore, on the specific question of surveillance, given evidence of other countries such as the US and Australia also using digital infrastructure for surveillance, the threat from China is not perceived as a unique risk.

Setting expectations and approaches

Still, the risks of excessive dependence on one country for the development of digital infrastructure are well known. While the IPEF cannot realistically expect to displace the DSR, it can be utilised to provide countries with alternatives. This can only be done by issuing carrots rather than sticks. A US narrative extolling ‘digital democracy’ is unlikely to gain traction in a region characterised by a diversity of political systems that is focused on economic and development needs. At the same time, an excessive focus on thorny domestic policy issues – such as data localisation and the pipe dream of yet another mega-regional trade deal – could risk derailing the geo-economic benefits of the IPEF.

Instead, the IPEF must focus on capacity building, training and private sector investment in infrastructure across the Indo-Pacific. The US must position itself as a geopolitically reliable ally, interested in the overall stability of the digital Indo-Pacific, beyond its own economic or policy preferences. This applies equally to other external actors, like the EU, who may be interested in engaging with or shaping the digital economic landscape in the Indo-Pacific.

Countering Chinese economic influence and complementing security agendas set through other fora – such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – should be the primary objective of the IPEF. It is crucial that unrealistic ambitions seeking convergence on values or domestic policy do not undermine strategic interests and dilute the immense potential of the IPEF in catalysing a more competitive and secure digital Indo-Pacific.

Table: Domestic policy positions on data localisation and data protection

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/directions-cyber-digital-europe-arindrajit-basu-september-16-2022-getting-the-digital-indo-pacific-economic-framework-right

Domestic Work in the ‘Gig Economy’

aayush — 2019-12-06T04:52:11Z

The CIS and Domestic Workers’ Rights Union (DWRU) are hosting a discussion on the ‘gig economy’ and domestic work on Saturday, November 16 at Student Christian Movement of India, Mission Road, Bangalore. This event is a part of a project supported by the Feminist Internet Research Network led by Association for Progressive Communication (APC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.

Presentation: Download (PDF)

Concept Note: Download (PDF)

Venue: Student Christian Movement of India (29, 2nd Cross, CSI Compound, Mission Road, Sampangi Rama Nagara)

Date and Time: Saturday, November 16, 3:00-5:30 pm

Location: URL (Google Maps)

Feminist Internet Research Network: URL

Over the last few months, the Centre for Internet and Society, India (CIS) and the Domestic Workers’ Rights Union (DWRU) have been doing research on the platformisation of domestic work in India. In the first phase of the research, we gathered data through interviews with several stakeholders. More information about the project can be found here: https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-domestic-work-india-announcement.

We now find ourselves in the second phase of the research in which we have prepared a preliminary report and are seeking feedback and inputs from experts. For this, we invite you to a roundtable discussion on domestic workers in the ‘gig economy’.

The participants at the roundtable will comprise of representatives from key stakeholder groups including platform workers (i.e. domestic workers sourcing jobs through platforms), platform companies, domestic workers organisations, civil society researchers and the state labour department.

The event will begin with a presentation of the project and our initial findings. The rest of the time is set aside for a semi-moderated discussion between all participants. To ensure a focused discussion, we are also limiting participation to 30, and are hoping to have a good mix across stakeholder groups.

If you will be joining us, please RSVP to Aayush Rathi at aayush@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/domestic-work-in-the-gig-economy-20191116

Doing Standpoint Theory

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2019-12-06T04:59:35Z

Cross-posted from GenderIT, September 1, 2019

Image description: Three speech bubbles on different textures. Artist: Catalina Alzate

Feminist research methodology has evolved from different epistemologies, with several different schools of thought. Some of the more popular ones are feminist standpoint theory, feminist empiricism, and feminist relativism. Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power [2]. Feminist empiricism does not eschew traditional modes of knowledge production, but emphasises diversity of research participants for feminist (and therefore also rigorous) knowledge production [3]. Relativists have critiqued standpoint theory for its tendency to essentialise the experience of marginalised groups, and subsume them into one homogenous voice to achieve the goal of ‘emancipatory’ research [4]. Relativists instead focus on multiple standpoints, which could be Dalit women, lesbian women, or women with disabilities [5]. We will be discussing the practical applicability of these epistemologies to research practices in the field of technology and gender.

Standpoint theory holds the experiences of the marginalised as the source of ‘truth’ about structures of oppression, which is silenced by traditional objectivist research methods as they produce knowledge from the standpoint of voices in positions of power.

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, the Centre for Internet and Society is undertaking research on the digital mediation of domestic and care work in India. The project aims to assess shifts in the sector, including conditions of work, brought on by the entry of digital platforms. Our starting point for designing a methodology for the research was standpoint theory, which we thought to be the best fit as the goal of the project was to disrupt dominant narratives of women’s labour in relation to platformisation. In the context of dalit feminis, Rege warns that standpoint research risks producing a narrow frame of identity politics, although it is critical to pay attention to lived experience and the “naming of difference” between dalit women and savarna women [6]. She asserts that neither ‘women’ nor ‘dalit women’ is a homogenous category. While feminist researchers from outside these categories cannot claim to “speak for” those within, they can “reinvent” themselves as dalit feminists and ally themselves with their politics.

In order to address this risk of appropriating the voices of domestic workers (“speaking for”), we chose to directly work with a domestic workers’ union in Bengaluru called Stree Jagruti Smiti. Bengaluru is one of the two cities we are conducting research in (the other being Delhi, with very few registered unions). This is meant to radically destabilise power hierarchies and material relations within the research process, as benefits of participatory research tend to accumulate with the researchers rather than participants [7].

Along with amplifying the voices of workers, a central objective of our project is to question the techno-solutionism that has accompanied the entry of digital platforms into the domestic work sector, which is unorganised and unregulated. To do so, we included companies and state labour departments as participants whose standpoint is to be interrogated. By juxtaposing the standpoints of stakeholders that have differential access to power and resources, the researcher is able to surface various conflicts and intersections in dominant and alternative narratives. This form of research also brings with it unique challenges, as researchers could find themselves mediating between the different stakeholders, while constantly choosing to privilege the standpoint of the least powerful - in this case the workers. Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors. This can also be done by ensuring that workers have agency to shape the agenda of researchers, thereby producing research which is instrumental in supporting grassroots campaigns and movements.

Self-reflexivity then becomes necessary to ensure that the project does not slip into an absolutely relativist position, rather using the narratives of workers to challenge those of governments and private actors.

Feminist participatory research itself, despite its many promises, is not a linear pathway to empowerment for participants [8]. At the very outset of the project, we were constantly asked the question by domestic workers and unions – why should we participate in this project? Researchers, in their experience, acquire information from the community throughout the process of data collection by positioning themselves as allies. However, as all such engagements are bound to limited timelines and budgets, researchers are then often absent at critical junctures where the community may need external support. We were also told that all too often, the output of the research itself does not make its way back to the participants, making it a one-way process of knowledge extraction. Being mindful of these experiences, we have integrated a feedback loop into our research design, which will allow us to design outputs that are accessible and useful to collectives of domestic workers.

Not only domestic workers and their organisations, many corporations operating these online portals and platforms often questioned the benefits of participating in the project. However, the manner of articulation differed. While attempting to reject the hierarchical nature of the researcher/participant relationship, we increasingly became aware that the underlying power equation was not a monolith. Rather, it varied across stakeholder groups and was explicitly contingent on the socially constructed positionalities already existing outside of the space of the interview. Companies, governments and workers all exemplified varying degrees of engagement with, knowledge of, and contributions to research. Interviews with workers and unions, and even some bootstrapped (i.e. without much external funding) , socially-minded companies, were often cathartic with an expectation of some benefits in return for opening themselves up to researchers. This was quite different for governments and larger companies, as conversations typically adhered to the patriarchal and classed notions of professionalism in sanitised, formal spaces [9] and the strict dichotomy between public and personal spaces. Their contribution seemingly required lesser affective engagement from the interviewee, thereby resulting in lesser investment in the outcome of the research itself.

The cathartic nature of interviews also speak to the impossibility of the distanced, Platonic, school of research. We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought. Workers and representatives from platform companies alike would question our motivations with the research and challenge us by inquiring about the benefits accruing to us. Again, both set of stakeholders would often ask differently about how other platforms were; workers already registered on a platform would wonder if another platform would be ‘better’ and representatives of platform companies would be curious about competition. This is perhaps a consequence of attempting to design a study that is of use and of interest to the workers we have been reaching out to [10]. At times, we found ourselves at a place in the conversation where we were compelled to respond to political positions for the conversation to continue. There were interviews where notions of caste hierarchies (within oppressed classes) as a justification/complaint for engaging/having to engage in certain tasks would surface. Despite being beholden to a feminist consciousness that disregards the idea of the interviewer as neutral, we often found ourselves only hesitantly forthcoming. At times, it was to keep the interview broadly focused around the research subject, at others it was due to our own ignorance about the research artefact (in this instance, platforms mediating domestic work services). This underscores the challenges of seeing the interview as a value ridden space, where the contradictions between the interview as a data collection method and as a consciousness raising emerged - how could we share information about the artefact we were in the process of collecting data about?

We were often asked politically charged questions, our advice solicited and information sought.

The fostering of ‘rapport’ [11] has made its may into method, almost unknowingly. Often, respondents across stakeholder groups started from an initial place of hesitation, sometimes even suspicion. Several structural issues could be at work here - our inability in being able to accurately describe research itself, the class differences and at times, ideological ones as well. While with most participants, rapport was eventually established, its establishment was a laboured process. Especially given that we were using one-off, in-depth interviews as our method, securing an interview was contingent on the establishment of rapport. This isn’t to suggest that feminist research mandatorily requires the ‘doing of rapport’ [12], but that when it does, it’s a fortunate outcome and that feminist researchers engage with it more critically.

Building rapport creates an impression of having minimised the exploitation of the participant, however the underlying politics and pressures of building rapport need to be interrogated. Rapport, like research itself, is at times a performance; rapport is often not naturally occuring. Rather, rapport may also be built to conceal the very structural factors preventing it. For instance, during instances of ideological differences during the interview, we were at times complicit through our silence. This may have been to further a certain notion of ‘objectivity’ itself whereby the building and maintenance of rapport is essential to surfacing a participant’s real views. This then raises the questions: What are the ethical questions that the suppression of certain viewpoints and reactions pose? How does the building, maintenance and continuance of rapport inform the research findings? Rapport, then, comes in all shapes and sizes and its manifold forms implicate the research process differently. Another critical question to be addressed is - why does some rapport take less work than others? With platform companies, building rapport came by easier than it did with workers both on and off platforms. If understood as removing degrees of distance between the researcher and participants, several factors could play into the effort required to build rapport. For instance, language was a critical determinant of the ease of relationship-building. Being more fluent in English than in colloquial Hindi enabled clearer articulation of the research. Further, familiarity with the research process was, as expected, mediated along class lines. This influenced the manner in which we articulated research outcomes and objectives to workers with complete unfamiliarity with the meaning of research. Among workers, this unfamiliarity often resulted in distrust, which required the underlying politics of the research to be more critically articulated.

By and large, the feminist engagement with research methods has been quite successful in its resistance and transformation of traditional forms. Since Oakley’s conception of the interview as a deeply subjective space [13] and Harding’s dialectical conception of masculinist science through its history [14], the application of feminist critical theory has increasingly subverted assumptions around the averseness of research to political motivations. At the same time, it has made knowledge-production occur in a more equitable space. It is in this context that standpoint theory has had wide purchase, but challenges persist in its application. As the foregoing discussion outlines, we have been able to achieve some of the goals of feminist standpoint research while missing out on others. We also found the ‘multiple standpoints’ approach of relativists to be useful in a project involving multiple stakeholders - thereby also avoiding the risk of essentialisation of the identities of domestic workers. However, unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses. Through this hybrid theoretical framework, we are seeking to make knowledge production more equitable. At the same time, the discussion around rapport shows that this may nevertheless happen in a limited fashion. Feminist research may never be fully non-extractive. The reflexivity exercised and choices made during the course of the research are key.

Unlike the tendency of relativists to focus on each perspective as ‘equally valid truth’, we are choosing to focus on the conflicts and intersections between emerging discourses.

Endnotes

[1] The names of the authors are in alphabetical order.

[2] Harding, S. (2003) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, Routledge.

[3] M. Wickramasinghe, Feminist Research Methodology: Making meaning out of meaning-making, Zubaan, 2014

[4] Pease, D. (2000) Researching profeminist men's narratives: participatory methodologies in a postmodern frame. In B. Fawcett, D. Featherstone, J. Fook ll)'ld A. Rossiter (eds) Restarching and Practising in Social Work: Postmodern Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge).

[5] Stanley, L. and Wise, S. (1983) Breaking Out: Feminist Consciousness and Feminist Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul).

[6] Rege, S. 1998. ” Dalit Women Talk Differently: A critique of ‘Difference’ and Towards a Dalit Feminist Standpoint.” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 33, No.44, pp 39-48.

[7] Heeks, R. and Shekhar, S. (2018) An Applied Data Justice Framework: Analysing Datafication and Marginalised Communities in Cities of the Global South. Working Paper Series, Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester.

[8] Stone, E. and Priestley, M. (1996) Parasites, pawn and partners: disability research and the role of nondisabled researchers. British Journal of Sociology, 47(4), 699-716.

[9] Evans, L. (2010). Professionalism, professionality and the development of education professionals. Br. J. Educ. Stud. 56, 20–38. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00392.x

[10] Webb C. Feminist methodology in nursing research. J Adv Nurs. 1984 May;9(3):249-56.

[11] Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qual. Res. 15, 219–234. doi:10.1177/1468794112468475; Pitts, M. J., and Miller-Day, M. (2007). Upward turning points and positive rapport development across time in researcher-participant relationships. Qual. Res. 7, 177–201. doi:10.1177/1468794107071409

[12] Dunscombe, J., and Jessop, J. (2002). “Doing rapport, and the ethics of ’faking friendship’,” in Ethics in Qualitative Research, eds T. Miller, M. Birch, M. Mauthner, and J. Jessop (London: SAGE), 108–121.

[13] Oakley, A. (1981). “Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms?” in Doing Feminist Research, ed. H. Roberts (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 30–61.

[14] Harding, S. (1986). The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/doing-standpoint-theory

Digital mediation of domestic and care work in India: Project Announcement

Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi — 2019-10-10T08:09:34Z

It is our great pleasure to announce that we are undertaking a study on digital mediation of domestic and care work in India, as part of and supported by the Feminist Internet Research Network led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The study is exploring the ways in which structural inequalities, such as those of gender and class, are being reproduced or challenged by digital platforms. The project sites are Delhi and Bangalore, where we are conducting interviews with workers, companies, and unions. In Bangalore, we are collaborating with Stree Jagruti Samiti to collect qualitative data from different stakeholders. The outputs of the research will include a report, policy brief, and other communication materials in English, Hindi, and Kannada. This study is being led by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, along with Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Feminist Internet Research Network: apc.org/en/project/firn-feminist-internet-research-network

Introduction to the Project

This project seeks to investigate the mediation of domestic and care work through digital platforms in India. These forms of labour fall within the informal economy, which employs the largest share of non-agricultural workers in the global South [1]. Workers and economic units in the informal economy differ widely in terms of all metrics, including income levels, size and type of enterprise, and status of worker. According to the International Labour Organisation’s Resolution on decent work and the informal economy, it refers to “all economic activities by workers and economic units that are - in law of practice - not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements” [2]. What this implies in practice for workers in the informal economy is greater vulnerability to poor work conditions, poverty, and violation of labour rights [3].

Women, particularly those with intersectional marginalities, including that of caste and class, are overrepresented in the informal economy globally and in India. Domestic work in particular has been stratified along the lines of caste and gender historically. Further, class has become more salient in producing stratifications in labour relations following urbanisation and gentrification. These intersections have shaped employment relations in the sector in different ways, which range from feudal to contractual models. Digital platforms are increasingly becoming intermediaries in this space, mediating between so called ‘semi-skilled’ or ‘low-skilled’ workers from lower classes, and millions of middle and upper class employers in tier I cities. This is expected to shift the stratification of workers and employment relations in key ways.

Through a feminist approach to digital labour, our project aims to examine platforms offering domestic or reproductive care work. This will be situated within larger feminist critiques around the devaluation and invisibilisation of women’s labour within patriarchal-capitalist economic discourse. The project further seeks to unpack technocratic imaginaries of the platform economy by looking at access and meaningful use of technology and qualifying narratives around labour market optimisation, empowerment, and agency. We will include within this scope two kinds of platforms: marketplaces for workers to post their profiles; and on-demand platforms with algorithmic matching of workers and employers.

Research Questions

Our hypothesis is that platforms are reconfiguring labour conditions, which would empower and/or exploit workers in ways qualitatively different than non-standard work off the platform. In order to interrogate this further, we will study wages, conditions of work, social security, skill levels, and worker surveillance off platforms. This will be used to develop contextual knowledge around the conditions of work among (a) domestic workers on and off platforms in particular, and (b) informal sector workers joining the web-based gig economy in general.

The overarching question that the research will address is, what are the ways in which structural inequalities are challenged or reproduced through the growth of digital platforms in reproductive and care work?

How are relations of social inequality, including along the axes of caste and gender, reworked through digital platforms, especially in a context where domestic and care work remains historically undervalued and dominated by women workers with intersectional marginalities?
How do workers on platforms envision the role of the state, market, and informal networks of kinship in intervening in employment relations?
How is inequality and exploitation in informal labour reconfigured through platforms, with specific reference to work conditions (including hours of work, and physical and mental demands of the workplace), wages, social security, and surveillance?
What strategies of negotiation are being and have been adopted by care workers on and off platforms?
Is collectivisation an aspiration for care workers across different models of employment?
How can negotiation and collectivisation strategies inform the ongoing challenges faced by both care workers and platform workers?

Endnotes

[1] International Labour Office, (2018). Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture. Third Edition. International labour Organisation. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/docu- ments/publication/wcms_626831.pdf

[2] International Labour Organisation, (2002). 2002 ILC Resolution and Conclusions on Decent Work and the Informal Economy. https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/employment-promotion/informal-economy/lang--en/index.htm

[3] Ibid.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-domestic-work-india-announcement

Contestations of Data, ECJ Safe Harbor Ruling and Lessons for India

jyoti — 2015-10-14T14:40:08Z

The European Court of Justice has invalidated a European Commission decision, which had previously concluded that the 'Safe Harbour Privacy Principles' provide adequate protections for European citizens’ privacy rights for the transfer of personal data between European Union and United States. The inadequacies of the framework is not news for the European Commission and action by ECJ has been a long time coming. The ruling raises important questions about how the claims of citizenship are being negotiated in the context of the internet, and how increasingly the contestations of personal data are being employed in the discourse.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has invalidated a European Commission (EC) decision¹ which had previously concluded that the 'Safe Harbor Privacy Principles'² provide adequate protections for European citizens’ privacy rights³ for the transfer of personal data between European Union and United States. This challenge stems from the claim that public law enforcement authorities in America obtain personal data from organisations in safe harbour for incompatible and disproportionate purposes in violation of the Safe Harbour Privacy Principles. The court's judgment follows the advice of the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) who recently opined⁴ that US practices allow for large-scale collection and transfer of personal data belonging to EU citizens without them benefiting from or having access to judicial protection under US privacy laws. The inadequacies of the framework is not news for the Commission and action by ECJ has been a long time coming. The ruling raises important questions about how increasingly the contestations of personal data are being employed in asserting claims of citizenship in context of the internet.

As the highest court in Europe, the ECJ's decisions are binding on all member states. With this ruling the ECJ has effectively restrained US firms from indiscriminate collection and sharing of European citizens’ data on American soil. The implications of the decision are significant, because it shifts the onus of evaluating protections of personal data for EU citizens from the 4,400 companies⁵ subscribing to the system onto EU privacy watchdogs. Most significantly, in addressing the rights of a citizen against an established global brand, the judgement goes beyond political and legal opinion to challenge the power imbalance that exists with reference to US based firms.

Today, the free movement of data across borders is a critical factor in facilitating trade, financial services, governance, manufacturing, health and development. However, to consider the ruling as merely a clarification of transatlantic mechanisms for data flows misstates the real issue. At the heart of the judgment is the assessment whether US firms apply the tests of ‘necessity and proportionality’ in the collection and surveillance of data for national security purposes. Application of necessity and proportionality test to national security exceptions under safe harbor has been a sticking point that has stalled the renegotiation of the agreement that has been underway between the Commission and the American data protection authorities.⁶

For EU citizens the stake in the case are even higher, as while their right to privacy is enshrined under EU law, they have no administrative or judicial means of redress, if their data is used for reasons they did not intend. In the EU, citizens accessing and agreeing to use of US based firms are presented with a false choice between accessing benefits and giving up on their fundamental right to privacy. In other words, by seeking that governments and private companies provide better data protection for the EU citizens and in restricting collection of personal data on a generalised basis without objective criteria, the ruling is effectively an assertion of ‘data sovereignty’. The term ‘data sovereignty’, while lacking a firm definition, refers to a spectrum of approaches adopted by different states to control data generated in or passing through national internet infrastructure.⁷ Underlying the ruling is the growing policy divide between the US and EU privacy and data protection standards, which may lead to what is referred to as the balkanization⁸ of the internet in the future.

US-EU Data Protection Regime

The safe harbor pact between the EU and US was negotiated in the late 1990s as an attempt to bridge the different approaches to online privacy. Privacy is addressed in the EU as a fundamental human right while in the US it is defined under terms of consumer protection, which allow trade-offs and exceptions when national security seems to be under threat. In order to address the lower standards of data protection prevalent in the US, the pact facilitates data transfers from EU to US by establishing certain safeguards equivalent to the requirements of the EU data protection directive. The safe harbor provisions include firms undertaking not to pass personal information to third parties if the EU data protection standards are not met and giving users right to opt out of data collection.⁹

The agreement was due to be renewed by May 2015¹⁰ and while negotiations have been ongoing for two years, EU discontent on safe harbour came to the fore following the Edward Snowden revelations of collection and monitoring facilitated by large private companies for the PRISM program and after the announcement of the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).¹¹ EU member states have mostly stayed silent as they run their own surveillance programs often times, in cooperation with the NSA. EU institutions cannot intervene in matters of national security however, they do have authority on data protection matters. European Union officials and Members of Parliament have expressed shock and outrage at the surveillance programs unveiled by Snowden's 2013 revelations. Most recently, following the CJEU Advocate General’s opinion, 50 Members of European Parliament (MEP) sent a strongly worded letter the US Congress hitting back on claims of ‘digital protectionism’ emanating from the US¹². In no uncertain terms the letter clarified that the EU has different ideas on privacy, platforms, net neutrality, encryption, Bitcoin, zero-days, or copyright and will seek to improve and change any proposal from the EC in the interest of our citizens and of all people.

Towards Harmonization

In November 2013, as an attempt to minimize the loss of trust following the Snowden revelations, the European Commission (EC) published recommendations in its report on 'Rebuilding Trust is EU-US Data Flows'.¹³ The recommendations revealed two critical initiatives at the EU level—first was the revision of the EU-US safe harbor agreement¹⁴ and second the adoption of the 'EU-US Umbrella Agreement¹⁵'—a framework for data transfer for the purpose of investigating, detecting, or prosecuting a crime, including terrorism. The Umbrella Agreement was recently initialed by EU and US negotiators and it only addresses the exchange of personal data between law enforcement agencies.¹⁶ The Agreement has gained momentum in the wake of recent cases around issues of territorial duties of providers, enforcement jurisdictions and data localisation.¹⁷ However, the adoption of the Umbrella Act depends on US Congress adoption of the Judicial Redress Act (JRA) as law.¹⁸

Judicial Redress Act

The JRA is a key reform that the EC is pushing for in an attempt to address the gap between privacy rights and remedies available to US citizens and those extended to EU citizens, including allowing EU citizens to sue in American courts. The JRA seeks to extend certain protections under the Privacy Act to records shared by EU and other designated countries with US law enforcement agencies for the purpose of investigating, detecting, or prosecuting criminal offenses. The JRA protections would extend to records shared under the Umbrella Agreement and while it does include civil remedies for violation of data protection, as noted by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the present framework does not provide citizens of EU countries with redress that is at par with that which US persons enjoy under the Privacy Act.¹⁹

For example, the measures outlined under the JRA would only be applicable to countries that have outlined appropriate privacy protections agreements for data sharing for investigations and ‘efficiently share’ such information with the US. Countries that do not have agreements with US cannot seek these protections leaving the personal data of their citizens open for collection and misuse by US agencies. Further, the arrangement leaves determination of 'efficiently sharing' in the hands of US authorities and countries could lose protection if they do not comply with information sharing requests promptly. Finally, JRA protections do not apply to non-US persons nor to records shared for purposes other than law enforcement such as intelligence gathering. JRA is also weakened by allowing heads of agencies to exercise their discretion to seek exemption from the Act and opt out of compliance.

Taken together the JRA, the Umbrella Act and the renegotiation of the Safe Harbor Agreement need considerable improvements. It is worth noting that EU’s acceptance of the redundancy of existing agreements and in establishing the independence of national data protection authorities in investigating and enforcing national laws as demonstrated in the Schrems and in the Weltimmo²⁰ case point to accelerated developments in the broader EU privacy landscape.

Consequences

The ECJ Safe Harbor ruling will have far-reaching consequences for the online industry. Often, costly government rulings solidify the market dominance of big companies. As high regulatory costs restrict the entrance of small and medium businesses the market, competition is gradually wiped out. Further, complying with high standards of data protection means that US firms handling European data will need to consider alternative legal means of transfer of personal data. This could include evolving 'model contracts' binding them to EU data protection standards. As Schrems points out, “Big companies don’t only rely on safe harbour: they also rely on binding corporate rules and standard contractual clauses.”²¹

The ruling is good news for European consumers, who can now approach a national regulator to investigate suspicions of data mishandling. EU data protection regulators may be be inundated with requests from companies seeking authorization of new contracts and with consumer complaints. Some are concerned that the ruling puts a dent in the globalized flow of data²², effectively requiring data localization in Europe.²³ Others have pointed out that it is unclear how this decision sits with other trade treaties such as the TPP that ban data localisation.²⁴ While the implications of the decision will take some time in playing out, what is certain is that US companies will be have to restructure management, storage and use of data. The ruling has created the impetus for India to push for reforms to protect its citizens from harms by US firms and improve trade relations with EU.

The Opportunity for India

Multiple data flows taking place over the internet simultaneously and that has led to ubiquity of data transfers o ver the Internet, exposing individuals to privacy risks. There has also been an enhanced economic importance of data processing as businesses collect and correlate data using analytic tools to create new demands, establish relationships and generate revenue for their services. The primary concern of the Schrems case may be the protection of the rights of EU citizens but by seeking to extend these rights and ensure compliance in other jurisdictions, the case touches upon many underlying contestations around data and sovereignty.

Last year, Mr Ram Narain, India Head of Delegation to the Working Group Plenary at ITU had stressed, “respecting the principle of sovereignty of information through network functionality and global norms will go a long way in increasing the trust and confidence in use of ICT.”²⁵ In the absence of the recognition of privacy as a right and empowering citizens through measures or avenues to seek redressal against misuse of data, the demand of data sovereignty rings empty. The kind of framework which empowered an ordinary citizen in the EU to approach the highest court seeking redressal based on presumed overreach of a foreign government and from harms abetted by private corporations simply does not exist in India. Securing citizen’s data in other jurisdictions and from other governments begins with establishing protection regimes within the country.

The Indian government has also stepped up efforts to restrict transfer of data from India including pushing for private companies to open data centers in India.²⁶ Negotiating data localisation does not restrict the power of private corporations from using data in a broad ways including tailoring ads and promoting products. Also, data transfers impact any organisation with international operations for example, global multinationals who need to coordinate employee data and information. Companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft transfer and store data belonging to Indian citizens and it is worth remembering that the National Security Agency (NSA) would have access to this data through servers of such private companies. With no existing measures to restrict such indiscriminate access, the ruling purports to the need for India to evolve strong protection mechanisms. Finally, the lack of such measures also have an economic impact, as reported in a recent Nasscom-Data Security Council of India (DSCI) survey²⁷ that pegs revenue losses incurred by the Indian IT-BPO industry at $2-2.5 billion for a sample size of 15 companies. DSCI has further estimated that outsourcing business can further grow by $50 billion per annum once India is granted a “data secure” status by the EU.²⁸ EU’s refusal to grant such a status is understandable given the high standard of privacy as incorporated under the European Union Data Protection Directive a standard to which India does not match up, yet. The lack of this status prevents the flow of data which is vital for Digital India vision and also affects the service industry by restricting the flow of sensitive information to India such as information about patient records.

Data and information structures are controlled and owned by private corporations and networks transcend national borders, therefore the foremost emphasis needs to be on improving national frameworks. While, enforcement mechanisms such as the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process or other methods of international cooperation may seem respectful of international borders and principles of sovereignty,²⁹ for users that live in undemocratic or oppressive regimes such agreements are a considerable risk. Data is also increasingly being stored across multiple jurisdictions and therefore merely applying data location lens to protection measures may be too narrow. Further it should be noted that when companies begin taking data storage decisions based on legal considerations it will impact the speed and reliability of services.³⁰ Any future regime must reflect the challenges of data transfers taking place in legal and economic spaces that are not identical and may be in opposition. Fundamentally, the protection of privacy will always act as a barrier to the free flow of information even so, as the Schrems case ruling points out not having adequate privacy protections could also restrict flow of data, as has been the case for India.

The time is right for India to appoint a data controller and put in place national frameworks, based on nuanced understanding of issues of applying jurisdiction to govern users and their data. Establishing better protection measures will not only establish trust and enhance the ability of users to control data about themselves it is also essential for sustaining economic and social value generated from data generation and collection. Suggestions for such frameworks have been considered previously by the Group of Experts on Privacy constituted by the Planning Commission.³¹ By incorporating transparency in mechanisms for data and access requests and premising requests on established necessity and proportionality Indian government can lead the way in data protection standards. This will give the Indian government more teeth to challenge and address both the dangers of theft of data stored on servers located outside of India and restrain indiscriminate access arising from terms and conditions of businesses that grant such rights to third parties.

1 Commission Decision of 26 July 2000 pursuant to Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the adequacy of the protection provided by the safe harbour privacy principles and related frequently asked questions issued by the US Department of Commerce (notified under document number C(2000) 2441) (Text with EEA relevance.) Official Journal L 215 , 25/08/2000 P. 0007 -0047 2000/520/EC: http ://eur -lex .europa .eu /LexUriServ /LexUriServ .do ?uri =CELEX :32000 D 0520:EN :HTML

2 Safe Harbour Privacy Principles Issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce on July 21, 2000 http ://www .export .gov /safeharbor /eu /eg _main _018475.asp

3 Megan Graham, Adding Some Nuance on the European Court ’s Safe Harbor Decision , Just security

https ://www .justsecurity .org /26651/adding -nuance -ecj -safe -harbor -decision /

4 Advocate General’s Opinion in Case C-362/14 Maximillian Schrems v Data Protection Commissioner Court of Justice of the European Union, Press Release, No 106/15 Luxembourg, 23 September 2015 http ://curia .europa .eu /jcms /upload /docs /application /pdf /2015-09/cp 150106 en .pdf

5 Jennifer Baker, ‘EU desperately pushes just-as-dodgy safe harbour alternatives’, The Register, October 7, 2015 http ://www .theregister .co .uk /2015/10/07/eu _pushes _safe _harbour _alternatives /

6 Draft Report, General Data Protection Regulation, Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, European Parliament, 2009-2014 http ://www .europarl .europa .eu /meetdocs /2009_2014/documents /libe /pr /922/922387/922387 en .pdf

7 Dana Polatin-Reuben, Joss Wright, ‘An Internet with BRICS Characteristics: Data Sovereignty and the Balkanisation of the Internet’, University of Oxford, July 7, 2014 https ://www .usenix .org /system /files /conference /foci 14/foci 14-polatin -reuben .pdf

8 Sasha Meinrath, The Future of the Internet: Balkanization and Borders, Time, October 2013 http ://ideas .time .com /2013/10/11/the -future -of -the -internet -balkanization -and -borders /

9 Safe Harbour Privacy Principles, Issued by the U.S. Department of Commerce, July 2001 http ://www .export .gov /safeharbor /eu /eg _main _018475.asp

10 Facebook case may force European firms to change data storage practices, The Guardian, September 23, 2015 http ://www .theguardian .com /us -news /2015/sep /23/us -intelligence -services -surveillance -privacy

11 Privacy Tracker, US-EU Safe Harbor Under Pressure, August 2, 2013 https ://iapp .org /news /a /us -eu -safe -harbor -under -pressure

12 Kieren McCarthy, Privacy, net neutrality, security, encryption ... Europe tells Obama, US Congress to back off, The Register, 23 September, 2015 http ://www .theregister .co .uk /2015/09/23/european _politicians _to _congress _back _off /

13 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council, Rebuilding Trust in EU-US Data Flows, European Commission, November 2013 http ://ec .europa .eu /justice /data -protection /files /com _2013_846_en .pdf

14 Safe Harbor on trial in the European Union, Access Blog, September 2014 https ://www .accessnow .org /blog /2014/11/13/safe -harbor -on -trial -in -the -european -union

15 European Commission - Fact Sheet Questions and Answers on the EU-US data protection "Umbrella agreement", September 8, 2015 http ://europa .eu /rapid /press -release _MEMO -15-5612_en .htm

16 McGuire Woods, ‘EU and U.S. reach “Umbrella Agreement” on data transfers’, Lexology, September 14, 2015 http ://www .lexology .com /library /detail .aspx ?g =422 bca 41-2 d 54-4648-ae 57-00 d 678515 e 1 f

17 Andrew Woods, Lowering the Temperature on the Microsoft-Ireland Case, Lawfare September, 2015 https ://www .lawfareblog .com /lowering -temperature -microsoft -ireland -case

18 Jens-Henrik Jeppesen, Greg Nojeim, ‘The EU-US Umbrella Agreement and the Judicial Redress Act: Small Steps Forward for EU Citizens’ Privacy Rights’, October 5, 2015 https ://cdt .org /blog /the -eu -us -umbrella -agreement -and -the -judicial -redress -act -small -steps -forward -for -eu -citizens -privacy -rights /

19 Ibid 18.

20 Landmark ECJ data protection ruling could impact Facebook and Google, The Guardian, 2 October, 2015 http ://www .theguardian .com /technology /2015/oct /02/landmark -ecj -data -protection -ruling -facebook -google -weltimmo

21 Julia Powles, Tech companies like Facebook not above the law, says Max Schrems, The Guardian, Octover 9, 2015 http ://www .theguardian .com /technology /2015/oct /09/facebook -data -privacy -max -schrems -european -court -of -justice

22 Adam Thierer, Unintended Consequences of the EU Safe Harbor Ruling, The Technology Liberation Front, October 6, 2015 http ://techliberation .com /2015/10/06/unintended -consequenses -of -the -eu -safe -harbor -ruling /#more -75831

23 Anupam Chander, Tweeted ECJ #schrems ruling may effectively require data localization within Europe, https ://twitter .com /AnupamChander /status /651369730754801665

24 Lokman Tsui, Tweeted, “If the TPP bans data localization, but the ECJ ruling effectively mandates it, what does that mean for the internet?” https ://twitter .com /lokmantsui /status /651393867376275456

25 Statement from Indian Head of Delegation, Mr Ram Narain for WGPL, Indian statement on ITU and Internet at the Working Group Plenary November 4, 2014 https ://ccgnludelhi .wordpress .com /author /asukum 87/page /2/

26 Sounak Mitra, Xiaomi bets big on India despite problems, Business Standard, December 2014 http ://www .business -standard .com /article /companies /xiaomi -bets -big -on -india -despite -problems -114122201023_1.html

27 Neha Alawadi, Ruling on data flow between EU & US may impact India’s IT sector, Economic Times,October 7, 2015 http ://economictimes .indiatimes .com /articleshow /49250738.cms ?utm _source =contentofinterest &utm _medium =text &utm _campaign =cppst

28 Pranav Menon, Data Protection Laws in India and Data Security- Impact on India and Data Security-Impact on India - EU Free Trade Agreement, CIS Access to Knowledge, 2011 http ://cis -india .org /a 2 k /blogs /data -security -laws -india .pdf

29 Surendra Kumar Sinha, India wants Mutual Legal Assistance treaty with Bangladesh, Economic Times, October 7, 2015 http ://economictimes .indiatimes .com /articleshow /49262294.cms ?utm _source =contentofinterest &utm _medium =text &utm _campaign =cppst

30 Pablo Chavez, Director, Public Policy and Government Affairs, Testifying before the U.S. Senate on transparency legislation, November 3, 2013 http ://googlepublicpolicy .blogspot .in /2013/11/testifying -before -us -senate -on .htm

31 Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy (Chaired by Justice A P Shah, Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court), Planning Commission, October 2012 http ://planningcommission .nic .in /reports /genrep /rep _privacy .pdf

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/contestations-of-data-ecj-safe-harbor-ruling-and-lessons-for-india

Comments on the Report of the Committee on Digital Payments (December 2016)

Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Amber Sinha — 2017-01-12T12:32:22Z

The Committee on Digital Payments constituted by the Ministry of Finance and chaired by Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, submitted its report on the "Medium Term Recommendations to Strengthen Digital Payments Ecosystem" on December 09, 2016. The report was made public on December 27, and comments were sought from the general public. Here are the comments submitted by the Centre for Internet and Society.

1. Preliminary

1.1. This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) [1] in response to the report of the Committee on Digital Payments, chaired by Mr. Ratan P. Watal, Principal Advisor, NITI Aayog, and constituted by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India (“the report”) [2].

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

2.1. The Centre for Internet and Society, CIS, is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, and open access), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security.

2.2. CIS is not an expert organisation in the domain of banking in general and payments in particular. Our expertise is in matters of internet and communication governance, data privacy and security, and technology regulation. We deeply appreciate and are most inspired by the Ministry of Finance’s decision to invite entities from both the sectors of finance and information technology. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved, especially the citizens and the users. CIS is thankful to the Ministry of Finance for this opportunity to provide a general response on the report.

3. Comments

3.1. CIS observes that the decision by the Government of India to withdraw the legal tender character of the old high denomination banknotes (that is, Rs. 500 Rs. 1,000 notes), declared on November 08, 2016 [3], have generated unprecedented data about the user base and transaction patterns of digital payments systems in India, when pushed to its extreme use due to the circumstances. The majority of this data is available with the National Payments Corporation of India and the Reserve Bank of India. CIS requests the authorities concerned to consider opening up this data for analysis and discussion by public at large and experts in particular, before any specific policy and regulatory decisions are taken towards advancing digital payments proliferation in India. This is a crucial opportunity for the Ministry of Finance to embrace (open) data-driven regulation and policy-making.

3.2. While the report makes a reference to the European General Data Protection Directive, it does not make a reference to any substantive provisions in the Directive which may be relevant to digital payments. Aside from the recommendation that privacy protections around the purpose limitation principle be relaxed to ensure that payment service providers be allowed to process data to improve fraud monitoring and anti-money laundering services, the report is silent on significant privacy and data protection concerns posed by digital payments services. CIS strongly warns that the existing data protection and security regulations under Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information), Rules are woefully inadequate in their scope and application to effectively deal with potential privacy concerns posed by digital payments applications and services. Some key privacy issues that must be addressed either under a comprehensive data protection legislation or a sector specific financial regulation are listed below. The process of obtaining consent must be specific, informed and unambiguous and through a clear affirmative action by the data subject based upon a genuine choice provided along with an option to opt out at any stage. The data subjects should have clear and easily enforceable right to access and correct their data. Further, data subjects should have the right to restrict the usage of their data in circumstances such as inaccuracy of data, unlawful purpose and data no longer required in order to fulfill the original purpose.

3.3. The initial recommendation of the report is to “[m]ake regulation of payments independent from the function of central banking” (page 22). This involves a fundamental transformation of the payment and settlement system in India and its regulation. We submit that a decision regarding transformation of such scale and implications is taken after a more comprehensive policy discussion, especially involving a wider range of stakeholders. The report itself notes that “[d]igital payments also have the potential of becoming a gateway to other financial services such as credit facilities for small businesses and low-income households” (page 32). Thus, a clear functional, and hence regulatory, separation between the (digital) payments industry and the lending/borrowing industry may be either effective or desirable. Global experience tells us that digital transactions data, along with other alternative data, are fast becoming the basis of provision of financial and other services, by both banking and non-banking (payments) companies. We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to adopt a comprehensive and concerted approach to regulating, enabling competition, and upholding consumers’ rights in the banking sector at large.

3.4. The report recognises “banking as an activity is separate from payments, which is more of a technology business” (page 154). Contemporary banking and payment businesses are both are primarily technology businesses where information technology particularly is deployed intimately to extract, process, and drive asset management decisions using financial transaction data. Further, with payment businesses (such as, pre-paid instruments) offering return on deposited money via other means (such as, cashbacks), and potentially competing and/or collaborating with established banks to use financial transaction data to drive lending decisions, including but not limited to micro-loans, it appears unproductive to create a separation between banking as an activity and payments as an activity merely in terms of the respective technology intensity of these sectors. CIS firmly recommends that regulation of these financial services and activities be undertaken in a technology-agnostic manner, and similar regulatory regimes be deployed on those entities offering similar services irrespective of their technology intensity or choice.

3.5. The report highlights two major shortcomings of the current regulatory regime for payments. Firstly “the law does not impose any obligation on the regulator to promote competition and innovation in the payments market” (page 153). It appears to us that the regulator’s role should not be to promote market expansion and innovation but to ensure and oversee competition. We believe that the current regulator should focus on regulating the existing market, and the work of the expansion of the digital payments market in particular and the digital financial services market in general be carried out by another government agency, as it creates conflict of interest for the regulator otherwise. Secondly, the report mentions that Payment and Settlement Systems Act does not “focus the regulatory attention on the need for consumer protection in digital payments” and then it notes that a “provision was inserted to protect funds collected from customers” in 2015 (page 153). This indicates that the regulator already has the responsibility to ensure consumer protection in digital payments. The purview and modalities of how this function of course needs discussion and changes with the growth in digital payments.

3.6. The report identifies the high cost of cash as a key reason for the government’s policy push towards digital payments. Further, it mentions that a “sample survey conducted in 2014 across urban and rural neighbourhoods in Delhi and Meerut, shows that despite being keenly aware of the costs associated with transacting in cash, most consumers see three main benefits of cash, viz. freedom of negotiations, faster settlements, and ensuring exact payments” (page 30). It further notes that “[d]igital payments have significant dependencies upon power and telecommunications infrastructure. Therefore, the roll out of robust and user friendly digital payments solutions to unelectrified areas/areas without telecommunications network coverage, remains a challenge.” CIS much appreciates the discussion of the barriers to universal adoption and rollout of digital payments in the report, and appeals to the Ministry of Finance to undertake a more comprehensive study of the key investments required by the Government of India to ensure that digital payments become ubiquitously viable as well as satisfy the demands of a vast range of consumers that India has. The estimates about investment required to create a robust digital payment infrastructure, cited in the report, provide a great basis for undertaking studies such as these.

3.7. CIS is very encouraged to see the report highlighting that “[w]ith the rising number of users of digital payment services, it is absolutely necessary to develop consumer confidence on digital payments. Therefore, it is essential to have legislative safeguards to protect such consumers in-built into the primary law.” We second this recommendation and would like to add further that financial transaction data is governed under a common data protection and privacy regime, without making any differences between data collected by banking and non-banking entities.

3.8. We are, however, very discouraged to see the overtly incorrect use of the word “Open Access” in this report in the context of a payment system disallowing service when the client wants to transact money with a specific entity [4]. This is not an uncommon anti-competitive measure adopted by various platform players and services providers so as to disallow users from using competing products (such as, not allowing competing apps in the app store controlled by one software company). The term “Open Access” is not only the appropriate word to describe the negation of such anti-competitive behaviour, its usage in this context undermines its accepted meaning and creates confusion regarding the recommendation being proposed by the report. The closest analogy to the recommendation of the report would perhaps be with the principle of “network neutrality” that stands for the network provider not discriminating between data packets being processed by them, either in terms of price or speed.

3.9. A major recommendation by the report involves creation of “a fund from savings generated from cash-less transactions … by the Central Government,” which will use “the trinity of JAM (Jan Dhan, Adhaar, Mobile) [to] link financial inclusion with social protection, contributing to improved Social and Financial Security and Inclusion of vulnerable groups/ communities” (page 160-161). This amounts to making Aadhaar a mandatory ID for financial inclusion of citizens, especially the marginal and vulnerable ones, and is in direct contradiction to the government’s statements regarding the optional nature of the Aadhaar ID, as well as the orders by the Supreme Court on this topic.

3.10. The report recommends that “Aadhaar should be made the primary identification for KYC with the option of using other IDs for people who have not yet obtained Aadhaar” (page 163) and further that “Aadhaar eKYC and eSign should be a replacement for paper based, costly, and shared central KYC registries” (page 162). Not only these measures would imply making Aadhaar a mandatory ID for undertaking any legal activity in the country, they assume that the UIDAI has verified and audited the personal documents submitted by Aadhaar number holders during enrollment. A mandate for replacement of the paper-based central KYC agencies will only remove a much needed redundancy in the the identity verification infrastructure of the government.

3.11. The report suggests that “[t]ransactions which are permitted in cash without KYC should also be permitted on prepaid wallets without KYC” (page 164-165). This seems to negate the reality that physical verification of a person remains one of the most authoritative identity verification process for a natural person, apart from DNA testing perhaps. Thus, establishing full equivalency of procedure between a presence-less transaction and one involving a physically present person making the payment will only amount to removal of relatively greater security precautions for the former, and will lead to possibilities of fraud.

3.12. In continuation with the previous point, the report recommends promotion of “Aadhaar based KYC where PAN has not been obtained” and making of “quoting Aadhaar compulsory in income tax return for natural persons” (page 163). Both these measures imply a replacement of the PAN by Aadhaar in the long term, and a sharp reduction in growth of new PAN holders in the short term. We appeal for this recommendation to be reconsidered as integration of all functionally separate national critical information infrastructures (such as PAN and Aadhaar) into a single unified and centralised system (such as Aadhaar) engenders massive national and personal security threats.

3.13. The report suggest the establishment of “a ranking and reward framework” to recognise and encourage for the best performing state/district/agency in the proliferation of digital payments. It appears to us that creation of such a framework will only lead to making of an environment of competition among these entities concerned, which apart from its benefits may also have its costs. For example, the incentivisation of quick rollout of digital payment avenues by state government and various government agencies may lead to implementation without sufficient planning, coordination with stakeholders, and precautions regarding data security and privacy. The provision of central support for digital payments should be carried out in an environment of cooperation and not competition.

3.14. CIS welcomes the recommendation by the report to generate greater awareness about cost of cash, including by ensuring that “large merchants including government agencies should account and disclose the cost of cash collection and cash payments incurred by them periodically” (page 164). It, however, is not clear to whom such periodic disclosures should be made. We would like to add here that the awareness building must simultaneously focus on making public how different entities shoulder these costs. Further, for reasons of comparison and evidence-driven policy making, it is necessary that data for equivalent variables are also made open for digital payments - the total and disaggregate cost, and what proportion of these costs are shouldered by which entities.

3.15. The report acknowledges that “[t]oday, most merchants do not accept digital payments” and it goes on to recommend “that the Government should seize the initiative and require all government agencies and merchants where contracts are awarded by the government to provide at-least one suitable digital payment option to its consumers and vendors” (page 165). This requirement for offering digital payment option will only introduce an additional economic barrier for merchants bidding for government contracts. We appeal to the Ministry of Finance to reconsider this approach of raising the costs of non-digital payments to incentivise proliferation of digital payments, and instead lower the existing economic and other barriers to digital payments that keep the merchants away. The adoption of digital payments must not lead to increasing costs for merchants and end-users, but must decrease the same instead.

3.16. As the report was submitted on December 09, 2016, and was made public only on December 27, 2016, it would have been much appreciated if at least a month-long window was provided to study and comment on the report, instead of fifteen days. This is especially crucial as the recently implemented demonetisation and the subsequent banking and fiscal policy decisions taken by the government have rapidly transformed the state and dynamics of the payments system landscape in India in general, and digital payments in particular.

Endnotes

[1] See: http://cis-india.org/.

[2] See: http://finmin.nic.in/reports/Note-watal-report.pdf and http://finmin.nic.in/reports/watal_report271216.pdf.

[3] See: http://finmin.nic.in/cancellation_high_denomination_notes.pdf.

[4] Open Access refers to “free and unrestricted online availability” of scientific and non-scientific literature. See: http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-the-report-of-the-committee-on-digital-payments-dec-2016

CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (Nov 03, 6:30 pm)

sumandro — 2019-03-13T00:30:39Z

We are delighted to have William F. Stafford, PhD candidate in UC Berkeley, present on "Public Measurements, Private Measurements, and the Convergence of Units" at the CIS office in Delhi on Thursday, Nov 03, at 6:30 pm. Please RSVP if you are joining us: .

CISxScholars are informal events organised by CIS for presentation, discussion, and exchange of academic research and policy analysis.

Public Measurements, Private Measurements and the Convergence of Units

In this discussion I will focus on a comparison between the standard government prescribed meters for autorickshaws and taxis and the role of ridesharing apps as instruments which take measurements, as the basis for the calculation of fares, and the more general questions which arise for commerce, technology and their regulation. I will organise the paper around the observations of a paratransit operations engineer on the distinction between public and private instruments, and explore the possible implications of new forms of commercialisation of location and proximity and reactions to such developments for understanding questions of fairness and corruption.

William F. Stafford

William F. Stafford, Jr., is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley. William's research focuses on the auto-rickshaw meter in New Delhi, as a way to engage with classical questions concerning the relationship between measurement, quantification and delimitations of domains of labour. William's general interests concern the analytics of labour and the reconfiguration of what are often taken as its axiomatic aspects. Before joining Berkeley, he studied Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Delhi School of Economics.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/cisxscholars-delhi-william-f-stafford-thursday-nov-03

CIS Seminar Series: Information Disorder

aman — 2021-08-11T11:17:57Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is announcing the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South.

The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. We also seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on research exchange, and foster collaborations among researchers and academics from diverse geographies. Every quarter we will be hosting a remote seminar with presentations, discussions and debate on a thematic area.

Seminar format

We are happy to welcome abstracts for one of two tracks:

Working paper presentation

A working paper presentation would ideally involve a working draft that is presented for about 15 minutes followed by feedback from workshop participants. Abstracts for this track should be 600-800 words in length with clear research questions, methodology, and questions for discussion at the seminar. Ideally, for this track, authors should be able to submit a draft paper two weeks before the conference for circulation to participants.

Coffee-shop conversations

In contrast to the formal paper presentation format, the point of the coffee-shop conversations is to enable an informal space for presentation and discussion of ideas. Simply put, it is an opportunity for researchers to “think out loud” and get feedback on future research agendas. Provocations for this should be 100-150 words containing a short description of the idea you want to discuss.

We will try to accommodate as many abstracts as possible given time constraints. We welcome submissions from students and early career researchers, especially those from under-represented communities.

All discussions will be private and conducted under the Chatham House Rule. Drafts will only be circulated among registered participants.

Please send all abstracts to workshops@cis-india.org.

Theme for the first seminar (to be held on an online platform)

The first seminar will be centered around the theme of ‘Information Disorder: Mis-, Dis- and Malinformation.’ While the issue of information disorder, colloquially termed as ‘fake news’, has been in the political forefront for the last five years, the flawed attempts at countering the ‘infodemic’ brought about by the pandemic proves that there still continues to be substantial gaps in the body-of-knowledge on this issue. This includes research that proposes empirical, replicable methods of understanding the types, forms or nature of information disorder or research that attempts to understand regulatory approaches, the layers of production and the roles played by different agents in the spread of ‘fake news’.

Accordingly, we invite submissions that address these gaps in knowledge, including those that examine the relationship between digital technology and information disorder across a spectrum of fields and disciplines. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Information disorders during COVID-19
Effects of coordinated campaigns on marginalised communities
Journalism, the State, and the trust in media
Platform responsibility in information disorder
Information disorder in international law/constitutional/human rights law
Information disorder as a geopolitical tool
Sociopolitical and cultural factors in user engagement

Timeline

Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25th
Results of Abstract review: September 8th
Full submissions (of draft papers): September 30th
Seminar date: Tentatively October 7th

Contact details

For any queries please contact us at workshops@cis-india.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/cis-seminar-series-information-disorder

‘Future of work’ or 21st–century oppressed labour?: Findings from an AIGWU survey with 50 Urban Company housekeeping workers in Bengaluru

Nihira Ram — 2024-05-16T15:29:58Z

n this essay, Nihira Ram shares findings from a survey done by the All India Gig Workers Union with more than 50 migrant workers living in a slum in Bengaluru. The workers primarily provided cleaning and domestic services on the platform, Urban Company (previously UrbanClap).

Nihira highlights the impact that diluted rights and rising exploitation have had on the workers. The workers’ experiences show how they faced mounting costs merely to access work on the platform. Once they joined, the workers faced oppressive working conditions and stringent control by the platform, where rules and processes are designed in favour of the platform, at the expense of its workers. Not only were the workers from highly marginalised backgrounds and more vulnerable to this exploitation, a paucity of alternative jobs and their tenuous position as migrants meant that they were trapped by the platform’s unfair practices for years.

When workers join Urban Company as housekeeping services ‘partners’, they first pay INR 16,000 as ‘joining fees’. After undergoing an uncompensated training programme, which costs them INR 1,000, workers are rebranded as ‘professionals’ who are now eligible to provide the services for which they have been trained.

However, the provision of services comes at a huge cost to the workers. They have to pay INR 6,000 per month in order to receive a number of guaranteed jobs as part of the Minimum Guarantee plan (MG Plan) – or, as the workers refer to them – leads. Urban Company terms this a ‘subscription’.

In essence, Urban Company does not qualify people from whom they generate profit as workers. They consider them ‘professionals’ who are ‘subscribing’ to the platform in order to ‘market’ their ‘services’ to earn an income. Workers are cunningly portrayed as another set of ‘customers’ who buy guaranteed jobs from the platform on a monthly basis, essentially having to ‘pay to work’.

Apart from this monthly subscription, workers are made to pay GST on each job. They are required to purchase company-branded uniforms and bags costing around INR 2,000. Further, they must also buy all cleaning supplies relevant to their work from Urban Company at higher costs than those sold elsewhere (INR 10,000 per month or above). This is despite the fact that workers find these supplies to be of poor quality and thus hazardous to their safety.

The framing of Urban Company ‘partners’ as non-workers is inaccurate for a number of reasons. A majority of the housekeeping workers with whom we spoke were not previously employed in the services sector. Urban Company targeted their slum as part of its recruitment drives in 2018. Knowing that their cleaning and housekeeping services vertical faced a deficit of labour supply despite a perceived spike in demand in Bengaluru, Urban Company aggressively onboarded men from this slum to undergo their training programme and join the company as cleaning and housekeeping ‘professionals’. How, then, is Urban Company merely a platform from which pre-existing workers gain business, and not an employer hiring labour with particular skills for its supply chain?

Click to download the full essay

Contributors

Author: Nihira Ram
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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/future-of-work-21st-century-oppressed-labour-findings-from-aigwu-survey-with-50-urban-company-housekeeping-workers-in-bengaluru