The Resurging Value of Civil Society for Indian Crafts
This is one of the narratives of the communities impacted from data injustice which are published in the research report on data justice by Digital Empowerment Foundation
The injustices that algorithms of platform and gig-economy apps cause has been documented previously. In India, the workers in the gig-economy are counted as “clients,” depriving them of many protections labour laws provide. In such an unorganised sector, Shaik Salauddin of the Indian Federation Of App Based Transport Workers (IFAT) is one of the leaders organising and unionising people working in ride-hailing and delivery apps. We speak to him in detail about the algorithms that cause injustices.
In December 2019, the Indian Parliament passed the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill, along with the government’s commitment to enforce a National Register of Citizenship. As Booker Prize winning author and activist Arundahti Roy put it, “Coupled with the Citizenship Amendment Bill, the National Register of Citizenship is India’s version of Germany’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws, by which German citizenship was restricted to only those who had been granted citizenship papers—legacy papers—by the government of the Third Reich. The amendment against Muslims is the first such amendment.” Noting the use of an automated tool to decide the lineage of people in Assam, we spoke to Abdul Kalam Azad , a researcher from Assam, now at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who had looked into detail the issues and exclusions created by the NRC in Assam. Learning of exclusions of Trans People from the same list, (already facing an undemocratic law like the Trans Act), we spoke to two activists from the Trans Community, Sai Bourothu, who had worked with the Queer Incarcertaion Project and the Automated Decision Research team of The Campagin to Stop Killer Robots, and Karthik Bittu, a professor of Neuroscience at Ashoka University, Delhi and an activist who had 6Kashyap Raibagi, “The Plight of Gig Workers in an Algorithm-Driven World,” Analytics India Magazine, worked with the Telangana Hijra, Intersex and Transgender Samiti.
Another exclusion we noted in our primary research was the homeless in any of the data enumerations. We spoke to Jatin Sharma and Gufran, who is part of the Homeless Shelter in Yamuna Ghat on these exclusions and how it leads to the homeless people being denied basic healthcare and life-saving TB treatment.
Four researchers, activists and civil society leaders who had done considerable work on data related exclusions, surveillance, and identification software such as the Aadhar offered their perspectives on the debates, conversations and potential reimaginings of data injustices. Srinivas Kodali, independent activist and researcher; Nikhil Dey, of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan; Apar Gupta, lawyer and director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, and Rakshita Swamy, an NLU professor who also heads the Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research were the people who provided their insights.
The data injustices underneath India’s Gig-Economy
In the Indian context, who does what work is closely connected to the caste and community history of each group. For example, a paper written by White and Prakash (2010) has pointed out how the SCs, STs and OBCs in India are disproportionately represented in the lower level jobs of the formal sector and predominantly informal sector (Harriss-White, B., & Prakash, A. (2010). Social discrimination in India: A case for economic citizenship). This sets the context of labour relations in India, which have historically remained unregulated or unaccounted. For example, the Gig workers have been considered as ‘contractors’ and not workers as per the Indian labour laws. It is only after a Public Interest litigation filed by the Indian Federation of the App based Transport Workers (IFAT) that the relationship between the aggregator and the driver was acknowledged as a wage worker relationship. It took several advocacy and legal efforts for the app based workers to be included in the Code on Social Security, 2020. 8 The interview with the president of IFAT also revealed how collectivisation and participatory subversion of the anti-worker practices supplemented by Algorithmic systems in the gig economy is challenging given the class background of the workers. “I am not a white collar leader” said Salauddin, indirectly referring to the structure of established trade unions and federation of trade unions in India, which predominantly unionise the formal workers. He also expressed how the union activities are limited by the lack of financial resources and time, since the union leaders themselves are drivers working full time. Consequently, the AI powered systems built around private transportation services are embedded in this historical unequal power relations. The pillars of data justice; power and equity are thus historically embedded in the negotiations the app based transport workers are engaged with both the state and the capital in India.
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