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The street sweeper and her missing gloves
[By Usha Raman] The two women walk down my street at around 7 a.m. every morning, noticeable in the navy-blue knee-length coats they wear over their sarees, and the colourful bandannas that cover their heads. Bhagya (name changed to maintain anonymity) has large kaajal-rimmed eyes and she flashes a bright smile if she happens to…
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Platformizing women’s labour: Towards algorithms of empowerment
[By Pallavi Bansal] As the fifth-born daughter to a poverty-stricken couple in a small village of Karnataka, Rinky would consider herself fortunate on days she wouldn’t have to sleep on an empty stomach. Her parents pressurised her to take care of her younger brother while they struggled to make ends meet. As the siblings grew…
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Domestic work in Africa: Essential but precarious
[By Sharmi Surianarain & Julia Taylor] “I was working three days a week as a house cleaner. When the first person was infected with COVID-19 in Kenya, my boss told me not to report to work anymore. I have tried calling and they don’t answer my calls. l stay in the slums of Kawangware and…
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Landless labourers? Busting the myth of the migrant in the construction economy
[By Shweta Mahendra Chandrashekhar] I was born in Lonavala and brought up in Pune, both places located in the western region of India. Some of the vivid memories I have of my childhood include visits to numerous tunnel construction sites in India (Pune-Mumbai Expressway, Konkan Railway, Delhi Metro). My father’s infrastructure firm has been in…
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Making the law speak: Empowering workers through legal engagement
[By Siddharth de Souza] One of the most telling images of the past few months since the Government of India announced a lockdown has been the exodus of people on the move, from cities where they had made a home, through work, through children’s schools, and through social relationships, back to the home that they…
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Research that hurts – On the practice of care in fieldwork
[By Rawshon Akhter] Many ethical concerns connected to fieldwork are already a matter of established and routinized practice. For example, the privacy of respondents is protected by anonymizing their identity. In recent decades, we have further pushed these methodological norms. Ethnographers grapple with their legacy of an extractive culture, making a compelling case for ethical…
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