BehanVox: A Platform Company’s Quest to Reformat Servitude
This week in BehanVox: a conversation on Dalit History Month, UK's decision to screen 'Adolescence' in schools, and stories of female construction workers struggling to access maternity schemes.
Our weekly newsletter BehanVox brings you our top stories, gender news from the world, and our team’s reading recommendations.
Hello and Welcome to BehanVox, our weekly round-up of stories, news and great recommendations for reading, viewing and listening. This week we bring you a great interview on the controversial Insta Help service and investigate the issues that face women construction workers.
Story So Far
Reformatting Servitude: When Urban Company first announced its domestic-worker-in-15 minutes service three weeks ago, the responses were wildly polar, and confused. The start up smart set hailed its disruptiveness; some thought it would be the answer to the exploitation and irregularities in a field of informal work that is notorious for its lack of standardisation and others saw it as a debilitating blow to the conventional world of domestic work. The company itself saw it as a win-win deal for domestic workers.
We at BehanBox chose not to jump instantly into the pandemonium. We have reported extensively on the gig platform and the workers’ (fancifully called ‘partners’) issues with it, and these stories showed us that the reality was too complex for a quick black and white conclusion. This is a space that offers flexibility and dignity but it could also be tyrannical. It holds the promise of professionalism but built into it is a vast power imbalance.
To bring incisive clarity to the issue, we decided to interview an academic who had been working in the field of platformisation of all kinds of domestic services. Saumya Kalia spoke to Sai Amulya Komarraju, a scholar on gender and digital labour at IIM Ahmedabad, and it turned out to be fascinating interaction that brought out nuances few give any thought to.
Using the example of South Africa, Amulya points to the attraction of gig platforms for domestic workers, given specific cultural and social contexts. ”Young Black women choose on-demand domestic work because they have witnessed their mothers, grandmothers, and relatives slave away in the homes of white madams. The temporality of platform work frees workers from a slave-master, maid-madam relationship. Perhaps, workers in this instance also might find the professionalisation of domestic work elevates them from being a ‘didi’ or a ‘behen/ben’ to a professional.”
But none of this rids the platforms of the problems they can and do create.
Amulya points to what in traditional employment can be called ‘strategic intimacy’ between domestic workers and their employees, something that leaves room for negotiation on loans, leave, or other financial benefits. “Platforms are systematically eroding the social dimension of this employer-domestic worker relationship, leaving no room for negotiation. Customers don’t even have to know the name of the worker, let alone develop a long-term relationship. There is no scope for negotiation, either with the platform or the ‘customer’,” she pointed out.
“Ultimately, platformisation is intensifying the disposability of domestic workers. By eliminating social bonds, and promising a 15-minute turnaround, platforms reinforce and strengthen an extractive labour model,” Amulya said.
Read our interview here.
Schemes Galore, Out Of Reach: Five years ago when the Covid-19 pandemic led to a nationwide lockdown, migrant workers had been among those hardest hit. Stakeholders in the construction sector vowed then to take care of workers and the government had announced a slew of schemes to help them too.
But walk into a massive construction site at the urban village of Thaltej in Ahmedabad and you can see that the earnest intention has yet to translate to on-ground reality. Swagata Yadavar speaks to the women at the site, most of them migrants from neighbouring tribal villages, and the hardships they face in making use of the many maternity benefit schemes launched by the government and interventions by non-profits.
Simu Rakesh Garwa, 24, a migrant worker from Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh, worked till the seventh month of her two pregnancies, going home to deliver, only to return to work in two months. It was the in-laws who dealt with her newborns. Now there is a creche run by the non-profit Ajeevika Bureau at the site but problems remain. But these are not advantages she had with her older daughter or advantages that women across the construction sector have.
There are many state and central government policies that are designed to improve maternal and child health. The Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, the Building and other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996, and Gujarat’s own Maternity Assistance Scheme. But availing the benefits of these schemes is challenging. For instance, the Maternity Assistance Scheme requires the beneficiary to be registered with it and also requires them to apply within six months of pregnancy. But these are seasonal migrants whose documents are not necessarily complete or rooted in one place. And taking time off from work to visit health centres is not an option for daily wage workers.
What is the solution to these issues?
Read the story here.
Talking Point
‘How do you prove intent?’: The Supreme Court late last week put on hold a Allahabad high court court ruling from a few days before which stated that “grabbing [the] breasts” of an 11-year-old girl and breaking the drawstrings of her lower garment could not be considered an attempt to rape and maintained that it only be classified as “aggravated sexual assault”. The apex court criticised the order for its “total lack of sensitivity”. The high court’s argument, believe it or not, was this: “The prosecution must establish that it had gone beyond the stage of preparation. The difference between preparation and actual attempt to commit an offence consists chiefly in the greater degree of determination.” As senior lawyer Indira Jaisingh pointed out, echoing what common sense tells us all: “How do you prove intent? It is proved by actions that precede the actual act of rape.”
Tackling Incel: Should Adolescence be streamed in schools to encourage open conversations on misogyny, especially the sort driven by the hate-spewing manosphere, while opening up avenues for more healthy relationships between young people? Anyone who has been startled by the incel drivel about ‘red pill/blue pill’ and ‘80%-20%’ in the series and how it influences young minds should think it is not a bad idea. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer certainly believes so, backing an initiative to stream the drama series for free to secondary schools.
No To Motherhood: Latin America and the Caribbean are seeing a decline in birth rates, the most dramatic seen in any region globally since 1950, says data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In a radical departure from the old traditions, women from the area are choosing not to have children mostly because of a lack of state support and also because they are prioritising their own careers and livelihoods.
BehanVox Recommends
Dalit History Month: Christina Dhanuja, in conversation with artist Shrujana Niranjani Shridhar, discusses anti-caste consciousness, her encounters with Babasaheb, the creation of Dalit History Month in April a decade ago, and recalibrating the internet as an anti-caste space through her work.
Power of female friendships: Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, award-winning writer Han Kang’s novel ‘We Do Not Part’ is a powerful hymn to enduring friendship, and spotlights a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades. A story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence, this novel is a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
Load and labour: French comic artist Emma introduces the concept of the ‘mental load’, the gender wars that ensue when dividing household chores.
Manosphere: This long read explores the world of the incels and anti-feminists of Asia.
Gaga for Golappa: This article in Gastronomica journal documents the joyous bond between women and pani puri/puchka/gol gappa, and how these stalls open up spaces for socialisation, in Purnea, Bihar.
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