BehanVox: Unionising In The Age of Digital Work
This week in BehanVox: the Adivasi women in Odisha reviving natural dyeing, the promise of a woman superhero franchise with 'Lokah', and more
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Hello and welcome to BehanVox! This week we bring you an indepth report on why unions and collectives are facing an uphill battle to forge solidarity in platform companies. A story from Koraput in Odisha details the efforts of Adivasi women to revive sustainable weaving and dyeing crafts. And, of course, a roundup of the week’s gender stories and reading recommendations.
Story So Far
It is not that informal, contractual work is new to India. We have reported repeatedly on it and how it disproportionately affects women across sectors (here, here and here.) What has changed over the last few years, and certainly since the pandemic, is that factory floors have found a digital avatar – app networks.
Aggregator companies present themselves as digital market places where workers are “independent” agents, says union activists and labour rights scholars, but they function more like a single, centralised employer, a modern-day mill. Workers rely on these platforms for livelihoods, follow strict controls and supervisions, and spend most of their day performing tasks assigned by the app – four conditions Indian courts have previously used to establish an employer-employee relationship in informal work.
In an insightful and exhaustively researched analysis this week, Saumya Kalia explains why it is hard for unions to forge solidarity in platform companies that employ millions of scattered workers whose paths criss-cross in an increasingly fragmented and alienating digital economy. Despite this, dozens of emerging unions and informal collectives are working hard at bringing awareness of the exploitative practices that are rife in these spaces. We have reported extensively on how this economy, beneath its veneer of being faceless, flexible and worker friendly, can actually be intimidating and coercive.
But indefatigable collectives and unions are still working at making a difference. Nisha Pawar’s phone is a hive of activity. Her practised fingers dart across the screen, flipping between multiple WhatsApp groups bringing messages from women working as beauticians and spa therapists on platforms like Urban Company and Yes Madam. There are also missed calls, voice notes, SOS messages, and meeting schedules.
On quieter days, Nisha, a leader at the Gig and Platform Service Workers’ Union (GIPSWU) in Maharashtra, acts as an administrator, accompanying complainants to the police station or labour commissioner’s office to file their grievance. At other times she’s a leader, explaining to women how commission slabs erode earnings and the strength of a collective or listening to their challenges. Graver days bring news of a suicide or death, and then she plays investigator, digging up medical records, tracking down family members, gathering evidence to establish that when a worker dies on the job, the platform must be held accountable.
There’s always fear. In the last three years, alleges Nisha, Urban Company’s management has infiltrated these WhatsApp groups and blocked accounts of ‘partners’ found to be a part of unions. “The company wants to surveil every decision we make, every conversation we have, so that they can retaliate and dismantle efforts to build our union,” Nisha says. “We keep motivating the workers, easing their fears. We have to show them they are not alone.”
This is the first of a two-part series on efforts to unionise platform workers. The next will reflect on why gender is an even bigger barrier to solidarity in this sector.
Read the story here.
In Koraput’s forested belts, young Adivasi women are working on a unique initiative – reviving traditional natural dyeing and weaving techniques using the barks, leaves, flowers and seeds of the trees and plants that grow in abundance around their homes. They set out early in the morning with their tangia (a scraping tool) slung over their shoulders, scanning the forest for organic material that will make for sustainable and affordable dyes.
The degradation of local forests and the arrival of chemical dyes and mechanised weaving had almost killed this craft. Young women like Lachmi Kantari and Gangei Chalan had only heard about these techniques from their grandmothers. And then, two years ago, Folkweave Koraput, a social enterprise, collected knowledge and expertise from the elders to revive the traditional weaving and dyeing skills.
“I dropped out of school after class 10. Most young women around me migrated for work. I also took up some odd daily wage work and also did some basic stitching work,” Gangei says of her early life. “The idea of learning about natural dyeing intrigued me. It felt as if childhood stories were coming to life as we entered a new world that was also deeply rooted.”
In the next report in our series on Women in Local Climate Action, Aishwarya Mohanty tells us why this revival – that obviates the need for hazardous and highly polluting chemicals and makes maximal use of local and organic inputs – is an act of climate resilience.
Read the story here.
Talking Point
Not In Our Name: “We reject the far right’s racist lies about ‘protecting’ women and girls. They are not defenders of women – they exploit violence against women to fuel hate and division,” says a letter signed by prominent women from the UK, including musicians Anoushka Shankar and Charlotte Church as well as Labour, Green and independent MPS. There has been a rightwing campaign to link sexual violence in Britain to asylum seekers and surge of protests outside accommodations for asylum seekers.
Digital Misogyny: An Italian website that posted doctored and explicit images of well-known women, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, accompanied by obscene commentary, has announced its closure. This follows widespread furore over the site’s contents. This comes in the wake of anger over an Italian Facebook group, Mia Moglie (My Wife), where thousands of men had reportedly been swapping intimate images of their partners apparently without their knowledge, reports the BBC.
Cancer Report: A new study from the JAMA network reports that in India, 51.1% of cancer cases occurred among women during 2015-2019. But the share of deaths due to cancer was higher among men (55%). However, cancer-related deaths rose faster among women than men in the last 10 years and the trend likely will grow, as per an earlier Lancet document.
Superwoman: We finally have what promises to be a woman superhero franchise. The Malayalam film Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra stars Kalyani Priyadarshan as a character with exceptional combat skills. The film, released last week across India and the rest of the world, is already on its way to breaking box-office records though it has drawn the ire of some for allegedly “demeaning” Bengaluru.
BehanVox Recommends
AI and Mental Health: In this personal narrative cum reportage, Rest of World reporter Viola Zhu, documents her mother, who lives on her own and in China, and her growing dependence on Deepseek. In China and elsewhere, the story documents how in the absence of medical resources, AIs vast knowledge base and reassuring tone of bots can make them feel like comforting partners and an alternative to doctors.
Algorithms and Accountability: How can journalists track the growing scope creep of algorithms, especially in welfare tracking and its growing grip on governance and public policy? Boomlive’s Karen Rebelo has this useful guide.
Kalburgi’s Life and Legacy: On the 10th anniversary of the rationalist and Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi’s assasination by Hindu fanatics, Srikar Raghavan’s essay in Himal locates his intellectual and political ideas, much of which has remained beyond the grasp of the English speaking sphere.
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