India is a country of many festivals. We just had the festival for Ganesh Puja, the god who removes all obstacles, a festival huge in cities like Mumbai
GANESH FESTIVAL
Already the countdown to Kolkata’s biggest festival, Durga Puja has begun. When that ends it will soon be time for Diwali and cities like Delhi will be rocked by the bang of fireworks.
But the one festival that unites a culturally diverse country like India might well be Amazon’s Great India Festival. The last few years, especially after covid have seen an explosion in the world of online retail where we expect everything to be delivered to our doorstep from books and clothes to meals to electricians and plumbers and of course taxis.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
The gig economy is re-shaping South Asia says Vandana Vasudevan but is it a gig economy at all? Vasudevan is the author of OTP Please: Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia. Gig economy originally meant a temporary job, a term used by American jazz musicians in the 1920s carrying their instruments with them and performing at bars and cafes wherever they could find a gig. Or like the real estate broker I met in San Francisco who would moonlight occasionally as an Uber driver for some extra cash, But in India they can be the main earners in the family says Vasudevan
VV1: For a large part, there are people who work for 10 to 14 hours a day, and they are earning for, you know, to feed a family of 4 or 5 people and they're hustling, but they are hustling in the, you know, for like 14, 16 hours sometimes.
This is no side hustle.
VV2: So it's like having a permanent gig, which is really an oxymoron.
The gig economy promised we would all become our own bosses. But there is a boss, a faceless one called the algorithm.
VV3: there's control by through the algorithm, by the tech platform. And there's very little say that the gig worker has and who is going to meet or how much he is going to charge. Everything is pre decided like formal employment. But it is in fact informal.
Nobody is sure how many people are involved in the gig economy. But many are trapped
VV4: they started it as some sort of stopgap arrangement, but they are forced to continue because they're not able to find an alternative which can pay as much. And, you know, the sad thing is that a lot of them are reasonably qualified.
But there are also ways the gig economy is changing lives for the better, in ways that are very different from a place like the US. For example with women.
VV5: They're able to go wherever they want because they know that they have the safety of being tracked. And it's an app.
We could worry about more tracking in a surveillance state but sometimes says Vasudevan that’s better than having to depend on a male member of the family to chaperone you everywhere.
VV6: There is a sense of safety that women definitely feel knowing that they are, you know, using an app. And the cab can be called to their home and they can be left to the doorstep of wherever they want to go.
As a gig worker a woman can make money from home even if she can’t take on a 9-5 job. And as a consumer of the gig economy she is suddenly freer in ways most Americans would never imagine.
VV7: I was really surprised by this anecdote that I heard from this lady in Lahore, when she said that I would normally have had to don my burqa and go out every time I want to buy any small thing from the local grocery shop. But ever since I found Panda mart, I just had to tap a few keys and I can stay at home and the thing gets delivered to me. Who would have thought?
And yet the gig economy is still heavily gender skewed in South Asia. You almost never see a woman Uber driver for instance.
VV8: There is physical security. And then there's this point, which is my favorite in the sphere of urban development women's toilets. You are on the road driving for ages. So where do you go to, like, you know, take a break.
But one thing is for sure says Vasudevan. The gig economy, booming as it might seem, cannot be the roadmap to the future for countries like India.
VV9: . And it's really, I think, a sad way to use the talent of India, the youthful talent of India, on whom we are depending so much for as our demographic dividend.
VV10: these guys can really do better jobs, and we have to think of what those better jobs are.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW