BehanVox: The View Beyond The AI Summit
This week in BehanVox: the Kerala Story 2 controversy, gig workers' childcare needs, and more. Plus: we're hiring!
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This week, we have the last of our AI summit pieces. The summit may be over but the necessary conversations need to continue–ones that centre labour, regulations and the human and environmental costs.
But before that, help us Behans out! We are looking for a platforms editor and community coordinator—basically someone who will take our reportage and stories to the world in myriad forms. A detailed job description is here.
Story So Far
The dust has finally settled on the AI Summit, the buyers and sellers, officials and nerds have all departed and it seemed to us like a good time to step back and look at what it achieved and what it missed. Saumya Kalia sought out the expertise of Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami, researchers at IT For Change, a non-profit working on technology and society, to put into context the emerging debates around AI, to raise some critical questions. How is India trying to govern AI technologies? What economic and political thinking influenced this? Where are gender and caste in these conversations?
It is important, the researchers said, at this point of AI’s rise to bust the myth of its ungovernability and put public interest firmly in the middle of the conversation. And to question its approach so far on the issue – market first and light on regulation – which has allowed AI enterprises to neglect safeguards.
Albeit the rhetoric of Summit themes like Indic language models and open cloud infrastructure and declarations on data sovereignty and development-oriented visions at BRICs, India is on the backfoot in protecting its nascent data and AI industry from the onslaught of UK, US and EU markets, say the scholars. And most importantly the business of AI should not overshadow the questions of ethics and inclusion and structural justice, they emphasise.
“We have to think about orchestrating a governance environment that aligns our concerns around inclusion, transformation, and more with resource allocation, public interest, ethics, citizen participation, public-private boundary management etc. It is about building a pathway to industrialisation all over again in the AI moment,” say Anita and Nandini.
Read the interview here. Saumya Kalia also puts together her thoughts on the AI summit and some of the conversations she was a part of that were lost in the humdrum. Watch the video here.
Talking Point
Kerala – Left, Right and Centre: With Kerala elections looming large and much excitement building over which way its restless electorate will swing, the state is suddenly the focus of much attention, real and celluloid. To begin with the Union cabinet headed by the PM gave its consent for the formal re-christening of Kerala to Keralam. And, a huge debate has erupted over the second instalment of director Vipul Shah’s love jihad-obsessed Kerala Story that itself was riddled with gaping errors. Opening in theatres on February 27 after the Kerala High Court cleared its release, the trailer of the new film that shows a woman being force-fed beef and parotta has elicited fury and derision in equal parts from the state. A storm of memes followed. To make matters worse, the film’s team landed up for a press conference in Delhi with 30 women who were the alleged victims of the so-called love jihad. None of them, it turns out, was a Malayali.
Ask The Parents: The Gujarat government has sought changes to the Gujarat Registration of Marriages Act to mandate that couples be required to declare if they have parental consent for the marriage. Deputy chief minister and home minister Harsh Sanghavi says the move is needed because “innocent girls are being trapped”. This is despite the fact that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right of consenting adults to marry as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. Since 2019, a range of states have passed stringent and completely vague anti-conversion laws (the so-called ‘love jihad’ laws), as feminist legal researcher Surbhi Karwa said in an interview to BehanBox. As feminists have pointed out, apart from interfering with an individual’s right of choice it also infantilises adult women as figures in lifelong need of state and family protection.
Unemployed But Not Idle: An unemployed wife whose carework plays a critical role in helping her spouse work and earn cannot be considered “idle” when questions of maintenance have to be decided in the case of a divorce, Delhi High Court has ruled. Her work holds an “economic value” as she manages a household, cares for children and adjusts her life around her spouse’s career, the court pointed out: “These responsibilities do not appear in bank statements or generate taxable income, yet they form the invisible structure on which many families function.” In an interview with BehanBox, economist Neetha N had argued that contrary to popular perception, though carework is emotional labour, it requires skills and must thus be valued the way formal employment is.
‘Fighting, Not Leaving’: The Unnao rape survivor, who lives under police protection in Delhi, is now pursuing a degree at Delhi University, and wants to study law, “to follow her own case through its final appeals—and to fight other rape cases that fade when the TV cameras move on” says a profile of the survivor in The Print. Her life is a constant round of court visits, some of them intimidating as she faces up to a battery of defence lawyers. “Now, it just feels like routine. I’m not there to be scared. I’m here to fight. I am not leaving,” she says.
A Prayer For Peace: Boong, a Manipuri film directed by Lakshmipriya Devi, won the Best Children’s & Family Film award at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards held last Sunday. The story of a boy who goes searching for his missing father against the backdrop of conflict, the film is a plea for peace, said Lakshmipriya in her acceptance speech. She added that her film is an homage to Manipur “which is very troubled, very much ignored and very unrepresented in India”.
Data Drop
“If you want to hire someone to care for your child, they need money, and I can’t afford that. The arrangement is fragile, if I fall sick or the caretaker leaves, my child is left without support.” – Priya, 30, a single mother with, an Urban Company worker
“I am working to meet my financial needs. If I am working, there should be some facility of childcare within the company.” – Ritika, 26, an Amazon warehouse worker in Manesar
These are two accounts of women — employed in platform companies and warehouse — as they struggle to balance quality childcare with the rigid demands of informal work.
A new study by Mobile Crèches spotlights childcare challenges of women engaged in platform and warehouse work—different forms of gig work. It is also the first of its kind to articulate the “care-work conflict” in platform-mediated work. This work appealed to women for its perceived flexibility, but constant monitoring, algorithmic control, and task allocation present a conflict with the demands of childcare.
Since women manage both paid work and caregiving responsibilities, they currently have informal arrangements. The elder daughter would stay at home; husbands and wives alternate day and night schedules; some like Neha rely on community-based caregiving. The studied warehouse workers in Manesar have a greater need for physical crèches near their workspace. Currently there is only one operational Anganwadi centre, which refused to enrol migrant children. When they do, women worry about the environment and level of supervision.
The anxieties and emotional burden are more for single mothers. For children, the long parental absences, irregular work schedules and informal arrangements compromise their safety, nutrition, and learning.
“The intersection of gendered care responsibilities, labour process control, and precarious employment thus reproduces gender inequalities and exposes women and children to cumulative risks,” the study says.
Are you an academic, research, or union worker engaging with these questions? We would love to know your experiences and learning. Write to us.
BehanVox Recommends
Trial of Giselle Pelicot: After France convicted 51 men, including her husband, of drugging and raping her while unconscious, Gisèle Pelicot became a feminist figure and catalyst for debate on consent. Yet the public trial’s revelations fractured her family, especially as her daughter accused her father of abusing her too, complicating Pelicot’s personal narrative of justice and resilience.
Secret Marriages and Serial Divorce in Mauritania: In post independence Mauritania, women are negotiating intimacy, faith and money. Serial divorce and secret marriages are part of the rapidly evolving social landscape in a nation that has had one of the world’s most profound transformations over the last half-century, write Josef Skrdlik and Oliver Dunn in New Lines Magazine.
The Boy’s Club: Jesscia Kutz of the 19th News scours through Epsteins’ emails and pieces together this story on how the disgraced financier’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM.
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