Postscript: Reporting On the Inescapable Future of Work
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In 2023, Sayantani Upadhaya, a Kolkata based freelance journalist, had reported for us on how hard Anganwadi workers were struggling with the digital transition of their work process. The Poshan Tracker app had been introduced in the Anganwadi system by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in March 2021 as the pandemic peaked. It was meant to reduce their workload, end manual data entry work along with making welfare delivery more efficient. It has, in fact, done the exact opposite of it.
“My fingers have gone numb. The boxes don’t click in one go,” Rina Goswami, an AWW from south Dinajpur had said in frustration. The app had turned her, a primary caretaker of pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children, to being the government’s data collection agent.
The digitisation process has only expanded in the interceding years. It is now throwing up an issue that was not obvious when we were focussed on the rising burden of work it brought – the rise of the surveillance state, in which community frontline workers are both agents of surveillance as well as the surveilled.
The digital surveillance state is well documented with the introduction and near mandatory imposition of Aadhaar and biometrics systems in modern India. But the idea of a community frontline worker as the agent as well as the subject of the surveillance infrastructure needs to be explored further. This has important gendered implications for women’s work in an expanding neoliberal state, which as academic Ian Buff argues ‘has always been about the reconceptualization not the amputation of the state’. We had intense yet informed discussions on this.
Our reporter Shreya Raman reported from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar city (formerly Aurangabad) on the introduction of a private attendance application, Hajeri, by the municipal commissioner. It mandated that all employees in the corporation mark their attendance thrice a day using photographic evidence. Under the guise of bringing accountability and efficiency, the process was disrupting the lives of ASHA workers like Vaishali Borade, who are designated as ‘volunteers’ not employees, who took on multiple jobs to make ends meet. More recently, Anaganwadi workers in Tamil Nadu and Bihar told our reporters about the multiplicity of apps along with another disturbing trend – the use of facial recognition technology on the minor beneficiaries of the ICDS nutrition kits. This throws up dangerous implications that are scarcely reported or understood.
So, in our report, we expanded our investigation to ask deeper questions on privacy, workers’ agency, data stewardship and governance in the light of reduced protection for sensitive data under the recently passed Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act. “Privacy is dignity. Not having to prove your existence through data is a part and parcel of the right to privacy,” says technology and rights researcher Disha Verma, referring to the 2017 Puttaswamy judgement which held privacy as a fundamental right.
We also looked at the skewed power dynamics between the employer and the employed, and how they highlight worsening inequalities instead of erasing them.
Are the women workers’ aware of their role in furthering the surveillance state? What is the state’s obligation of transparency in making community workers aware of their role for the communities they serve? What happens when care work meets technology?
We don’t have all the answers yet. But as we go forward in our reportage on technology and its implications on women’s community work, these questions will inform the reportage of our newsroom. Because this is an essential and inescapable ‘future of work’.
But there are other questions on ‘efficiency’ we must consider too. On April 8, two days after we reported on the Hajeri attendance app, the municipal commissioner of Chattrapati Sambhajinagar, G Srikanth rang Shreya Raman. Asserting the government’s absolute authority, he reasoned that ASHA workers are paid a fixed honorarium and hence they must be monitored. “They are under my payroll, the government payroll. This does not mean they do not come under the definition of employees. What definition do they come under [if not employees]? Daily wage labourers? Honorary employees? Why should we not monitor honorary employees?” he thundered over the phone.
The commissioner said that he has, since then, issued a notice mandating ASHA workers to mark attendance for half a day only – once at 9 am at the PHC and another at 3 pm from their field location. In addition, they are now entitled to two off days along with Sundays. ASHA workers are happy with the development as this allows them to take up additional jobs to supplement their income.
Some responses we received over X seem to echo the commissioner’s thought: that the modern day tech-driven attendance systems, from biometrics to facial recognition systems, keep workers in line and accountable, especially if they are government workers who are widely perceived to be slackers. Except these apps are not a one-size-fits-all solution. The story carefully shreds this notion through the voices and lived experiences of ASHA workers, women who spend their entire day on the field that location centered attendance systems have little meaning for efficiency – for the state and for the workers themselves.
ASHA workers have a different problem at hand. There is no proper log or indeed data system that records the quantum of their work and hence much of it goes unrecognised and invisible. “Officers ask us, how much have you worked? They don’t trust us when we tell them the number of hours. We must have a proper system that lets the authorities know the number of hours we put in,” Lakshmi Kaurav, an ASHA supervisor from Bhind in Madhya Pradesh told us in December. A system that recognises this will be useful, they say. But the Aurangabad model isn’t one.
What’s Coming
Heat Series: As heatwave grips almost all parts of India, we are combining our core preoccupation – gender, work and marginalisation – to look at heat and its impact. Our upcoming set of four stories on heat and climate will look at both policy and people. We examine the financial implications of heat and the promise of heat insurance, and scrutinise India’s heat action plans from an intersectional lens. From a people’s point of view, our reportage looks at the much neglected impact on Nomadic and Denotified Tribes and how heat impacts their life and livelihoods. Also in the works, is a series on leather and tannery workers in Tamil Nadu and their undocumented stories coping with rising temperatures, caste and inadequate social security.
Women in Local Climate Action: Women are at the forefront of climate impact as well as adaptation and mitigation. But look at all the climate dialogues and negotiations and their glaring omission is shamefully apparent. What happens when we center them? Obviously better solutions, but who is listening? Well, we are. Our upcoming series on ‘Women in Local Climate Action’ documents 12 stories from across India on women who are marshalling their forces, individually and collectively, to adapt to the climate emergency that we are in the midst of. These are women who are saving their mangroves in Odisha, mapping tidal flooding in Kerala, building early warning systems for chronic drought, preserving indigenous herbs in Meghalaya and many more. You do not want to miss this.
That’s all for this month’s Postscript, Behans. Our eyes, ears, hearts, and inboxes are always open for your thoughts. Write to us or comment below.
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