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Gig Subcontinent #6: Oppression

Yes, admits Vandana Vasudevan in OTP Please , the gig economy has its ugly side of oppression too. And it’s a lot more complicated that you might imagine.   For starters, those ratings affect gig workers opaquely : “Every action is judged by people they can’t see, according to rules they don’t know.”   There is also a systemic bias against older workers. No, not due to their age. Rather, based on how long they’ve been with the company. Why? Shouldn’t longer term employees be valued more as they know the setup and expectations? Yes, but that gets countervailed by the fact that they become eligible for additional incentives as they stay longer. So the company’s algorithms reduce the amount of work assigned to them as they approach those milestones. As a result, their income reduces (since it was tied to number of orders fulfilled), and they end up leaving before they hit the milestone. Sneaky, right? “While capitalism hid exploitation behind a labour contract, digi...
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Travels to South East Asia

Anurag Minus Verma. Yes, that’s his name on Internet posts and his books! He’s a Dalit, and it was his joke-cum-commentary-on-society to “drop” the surname, a dead giveaway on caste (Kind of like how Tamilians dropped surnames long ago).   I could relate 100% with his post on travelling to South East Asia. “A few years ago, when you said “Thailand” to an Indian man, his face would undergo a minor muscular transformation. A smirk would appear on face that can be interpreted as half-guilt for the sins he’s committed or half-anticipation for the sins he desires to commit.” In recent years though, things changed. “Flights got cheaper. Visas on arrival made it incredibly easy for Indians to travel.”   Suddenly, Indians were travelling all around. And they began to realize their preconceived notions of South East Asia were all wrong, they landed “expecting moral chaos but finding civic order”. “The driver doesn’t honk. He doesn’t curse. He simply drives in his lane...
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Gig Subcontinent #5: Freedom

One of the chapters in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is about an obvious benefit to all those online services, namely freedom. “Online food delivery gives urban working women a breather from the non-stop treadmill of meal preparation…” Or when unannounced guests popup. Or for that older era scenario when they even came “from other towns and staying on for days to watch a temple festival”.   Bachelors (male and female) working in a city, coming home late, find the convenience of being to get food by clicking a few buttons a lifesaver. I could relate to this line: “Young migrants to the city have rarely cooked because they are too busy studying or working. Technology has replaced the old support systems that offered comfort to those away from home.”   Home delivery liberates Muslim women in the subcontinent from the nuisance of putting on a burqa every time they step out. Such use cases are endless and endlessly South Asia specific.   Only when one goes...
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2026 and 1914 Parallels

The Southern Punk article’s heading was an obvious click-bait because it read “Are We on the Verge of World War III?”. Set aside the provocative headline, the article itself is quite well-written.   The article’s focus is on the eternal starting point for big wars – Europe. Yes, the Ukraine War. Many NATO countries support and supply arms to Ukraine. North Korea sends weapons and troops to fight along with the Russian. This war already has many countries involved, far more than the Iran War.   The trigger for this article was an explosive drone that was was found at Leipzig airport in Germany, near Ukrainian cargo planes that support NATO. The obvious suspect is Russia. But here’s the crazy part – the drone is Ukrainian! It is possible (not proven) that it is a Ukrainian drone captured by the Russians who then sent it to Germany. What happens if German investigation concludes that it was sent by the Russians? Would that activate NATO’s “attack on one is an attack on a...
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Gig Subcontinent #4: Gratitude and Anger

The next emotional theme in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please was on gratitude.   How many gig workers are there in India? It’s impossible to know the numbers, simply because people will enrol but for how long are they actually working? COVID-19 forced millions who lost their jobs to sign up as drivers and delivery boys. But it’s not all bad. No more lining up outside employment agencies. No discrimination based on caste or region or religion. No interviews or job applications. “You upload a driver’s license on to the app on your smartphone and you’re on.”   For others, gig work is actually halka kaam (light work) compared to other alternatives like backbreaking labour. Finding a rider doesn’t involve driving around hoping to find someone. Others appreciate the opportunity for stop-gap employment until they find something better.   PickMe in Sri Lanka even offered insurance coverage for drivers. During COVID-19, such instances weren’t all that uncommon. Com...
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Spot Checks at School

A while back, they found several kids were bringing alcohol to a particular school in Bangalore. A kid from that school joined my 15 yo daughter’s school this year. Like so many kids, this new kid started with a cocky attitude extolling all the virtues of his old school and mocking things in the new one. After a point, the teacher got irritated and snapped at him, “This isn’t your old school. If you bring alcohol here, you’ll get rusticated”.   When I narrated this to a colleague (with no kids) at work, he was shocked. “And to think”, he said, “We took pride in thinking that we were the worst batch ever!”. ~~   Inevitably, alcohol at one school puts pressure on other schools to check if they had this problem too. In parallel, the teachers tried to instil some fear by threatening to issue TC’s (Transfer Certificate) to the kids. It might have had some effect had they used the threat occasionally and also based on the severity of the offense. Instead, they used the thr...
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Gig Subcontinent #3: Guilt

The next chapter in Vandana Vasudevan’s OTP Please is the yang to the yin of the previous blog . Pleasure was the emotion in that blog, so this one is about guilt.   If everyone is ordering in, what happened to maa ka khana ? When kids want to order in, the mother wonders whether her cooking is bland? Is the food somehow lacking in something? Sometimes, she’ll try to hard-sell the nutritional value of home cooked meals – so many grams of protein in paruppu usli or arhar dal . To no avail. The argument of price doesn’t make any dent, since one can find food delivery at all price points.   It is a fact that a “nutrition transition” is underway. The thalis of India, the equivalent Thakali of Nepal are being replaced. Low-fat, high-fibre foods are replaced by ultra-processed foods high in saturated fats, sodium and sugar. Weight gain, gastric trouble, bacterial infection, diabetes, high BP and heart disease lurk in the future thanks to this dietary change as well as the...
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