14 Minutes Read
Abstract
The relationship between gig work, extreme climatic events, and urban infrastructures is a compelling realm that needs to be studied carefully in the coming time in a country like India, which has an expanding gig workforce and a growing rate of extreme weather events. The survey report published by Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union and HeatWatch on the gig workers’ experience of extreme heat in Hyderabad is one of the introductory works in this direction, which this essay closely reads. The report provides a ground to push our thinking of gig work in connection with urban infrastructures and reveals the vital role of the state in the matter.
Keywords: Gig work, Climate crisis, Infrastructure, Heat waves, Labor precarity, Urban spaces
Introduction
In August 2024, the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union (TGPWU) and HeatWatch published a survey report on the impacts of extreme heat on gig workers in Hyderabad, underscoring several significant issues. The report includes a set of recommendations to the state and platform companies to intervene in the escalating precarity of workers caused by extraordinary temperatures that are projected to rise in the coming years. This essay seeks to highlight the salience of the report, which, in part, emphasizes urban infrastructures against the backdrop of a booming labor sector and climate crisis, among other things. Labor welfare in connection with the gig economy cannot be divorced from comprehending the interrelations it shares with environmental and climate issues that, in general, unevenly affect poor, laboring, and marginalized sections of society, as many have argued by now. The inseparable connections between the climate crisis and gig work also push us to ask the larger question of what the city means as an open workspace in the present and future. In other words, how does gig work appear in the imaginaries of cities we dream of? This article does not intend to provide comprehensive answers to these points but seeks to push thinking about gig work in relation to urban infrastructure, grounding itself on the report by TGPWU and HeatWatch.
The Climate Connections
Lately, there has been a surge of interest in academic, journalistic, and policy circles concerning the intersection of the climate crisis and gig workers worldwide (Madam and Dubey 2024). Several recent articles on the subject are set in the context of this year’s unparalleled heatwave, which broke temperature records since global recording began in the mid-19th century (Torkington 2024). This year has also been challenging for India, with severe weather events taking a heavy toll. A Reuters article from June 2024 reported that India experienced over 40.000 cases of heatstroke this summer, in addition to more than 100 reported deaths across the country during the same period. Exemplifying the chaotic nature of extreme climatic conditions, places in northeast India faced floods due to heavy rains while the rest of the country dealt with the highest temperatures.
As the world witnesses rapid growth in such weather events and other environmental issues, we ought to confront the questions regarding how it intensifies and creates hardships for the laboring population, especially in those sectors who are working outdoors or on the move. The article co-authored by Vu and Nguyen in 2023 on the interconnections of climate change and gig worker precarity provides insights into the Vietnamese case and calls for a multifaceted approach to thinking about the welfare of gig workers who is one among the vulnerable labor population in many countries. Between June and July of 2024, a handful of media organizations covered the horrible plight of delivery workers navigating the scorching heat in the Indian summer (Bandari and Pragya 2023; Barik 2024; Dutta 2024; Mir and Venkatesh 2024; Punit et al. 2024). Given all this, the TGPWU and HeatWatch collaborative report is an important document at our disposal to push our understanding of the situation in the context of one of India’s metro cities. This essay is specifically concerned with revealing the connections of infrastructures to the issues of gig work and the climate crisis. The Next section of the essay is a brief overview of the gig economy in India. It shall give an image of the scale and ‘exciting’ future of the gig market in the country.
The Gig Work
A key government document available on gig work in the country is the 2022 policy brief of NITI Aayog, which positions India as the new frontier of the rapidly growing gig work revolution in the world. The definition of gig workers in the report is that they are people who engage in livelihood outside traditional employer-employee relations, which is majorly divided into platform-based and non-platform-based labor. Famous examples are food and transport services-based works, which have become essential to urban life today. The report estimates that 23.5 million workers will be employed in the Indian gig economy by the end of this decade, and close to three-quarters of the present workers are engaged in low and medium-skilled jobs. Despite the economic opportunities highlighted in many official discourses surrounding gig work and the euphemistic language used to talk about gig work by platform aggregators, such as referring to laborers as delivery partners or portraying gig work as choosing flexibility over traditional work environments, the reality of this labor sector is very harsh.
The 2024 International Labour Organisation’s report on the gig and platform economy in India spotlights the fact that the growth of the gig economy has strong links to the absence of stable and salaried jobs in the country and the platforms do not provide adequate support to the workers on top of large working hours workers put in to make decent earnings. Research and documentation of precarity in gig work in the Indian context is expanding, which is essential to get a grip on what this sector holds for people engaging in this kind of work. Much of the current deliberations are about ensuring social security for the gig workers, interrogation of platforms, collectivization and the governance systems that need to be forged concerning the sector. An area largely absent in most discussions is how climate crisis and environmental issues are connected to everyday gig work, especially in the platform-based delivery and transport sectors. Not much literature we come across explores these intersections, which also tells us about the need to conduct more studies on this intersectionality. The urgency of this task cannot be overstated, given the catastrophic climate predictions for the coming years and decades, whose first casualties will be the most marginalized populations in regions. Projections coming from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Fourth Paradigm Institute note that the days of heatwaves will increase in upcoming years in India, and by the last quarter of the century, heatwave days will escalate to 10-17 days with higher intensity (Neethu and Ramesh 2023). Given this background, the collaborative report of TGPWU and HeatWatch should be taken as a productive start, but more research is needed in this crucial area to understand and address the issues fully.
The Report and Some Food for Thoughts (and Action)
The report is based on survey feedback from 166 gig and platform workers in Hyderabad, which provides insights into the workers’ experience with heat waves and their implications, particularly for health. Out of the nine recommendations made in the report in light of the data collected, more than half involve state interventions that ought to be made for better working conditions and labor welfare in cases of heatwave events. Along with more general recommendations like declaring heatwaves as notified disasters, the report also touches upon infrastructural issues that must be recognized and acted upon. For instance, 40 percent of the workers in the survey reported having no access to clean and cold drinking water while working. More than 60 percent lack access to clean washrooms, while more than 80 percent do not find room for resting or shade or access to cooling facilities like fans. The report gives additional glimpses of the situation in parts where it refers to the TGPWU president’s remarks on the union’s long-standing demand for shade at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad that remains unmet and how delivery workers are denied restroom access in hotels and restaurants on top of them having to wait outside to collect food.
Further, several toilets installed by Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation are reported to be closed or improperly maintained in the survey. Thus, the second and third recommendations of the report elucidate the critical aspect of improving urban infrastructures and making them accessible, considering the extreme climatic conditions gig and platform workers have to navigate to do their jobs. It asks the state to ensure drinking water facilities and toilets in each two-kilometer radius and resting places for the workers with proper amenities attached to existing public infrastructures to cope with the heat. The report also spells out recommendations on medical care accessibility, climate warning systems, protective gear for the workers, and health insurance, which would improve the welfare of workers in heat wave cases. In addition, the report rightfully signals the disproportionate impacts of events such as heatwaves on women workers that can be exacerbated by the infrastructural and social security absence underlined in the report.
Regarding infrastructure, the report compels us to look in two important directions. The first concerns the total lack of infrastructure in the urban spaces that deprives gig workers of basic amenities such as resting spaces and drinking water, worsening working conditions in events like heatwaves. The intriguing part here is to realize that even if there are no extreme climatic events, these are fundamental needs of workers that must be taken care of to provide a decent work environment. Since virtually the whole city is the workspace of most gig- and platform-based work, it shall reflect on the conditions it extends to such a workforce. At the same time, the rise of gig work might be a recent phenomenon in urban areas; people who work outdoors, such as street vendors, have always been part of the city ecosystem in India. We are yet to see substantial studies on such workers’ experience of urban spaces viz-a-viz essential infrastructures, mainly focussing on the rising extreme weather events that catasrophically affect their health, livelihood, and welfare. The onus of conducting research, both quantitative and qualitative, on the connections of gig work and urban infrastructure, is mainly on the state as providers of public infrastructure and policymakers so that it could reorient its cities as spaces conducive to the expanding gig workforce. The state has a vital role in directing and overseeing platform aggregators to do their part in addressing these issues as well. Perez’s (2019) work, which, in part, deals with women’s experience of infrastructure and the data gap on the inequalities, shows that the transformation of infrastructures to better respond to the experiences of historically marginalized sections needs research-driven decision-making. In these cases, the research and data generation must investigate fundamental assumptions and imaginations that lead to establishing city infrastructures.
Further, it must develop an understanding of what it means, here in this case, for workers to be in the urban spaces to do jobs on the move. As Perez (2019) shows, acknowledging care work, which mainly falls on women as important labor, changed how cities took care of their infrastructures in Western contexts. The deliberate intentionality to understand how marginalized people experience urban spaces must be vital to reconfiguring urban infrastructures. Therefore, what it takes to do gig work in context-specific terms should be examined and included in improving urban conditions.
The second point of thought signaled in the report is about fragile infrastructures. In infrastructural studies, fragile infrastructure is a way to read against the durability and stability attributions to infrastructures, which are often prone to failures, breakdowns, and repairs. In other ways, it reveals the need for continuous labor and attention required to maintain functional infrastructures that take more than merely constructing buildings (or infrastructures in general). For instance, the fragility of sanitation infrastructure is demonstrated in many places worldwide (Alda-Vidal et al. 2023). Going back to the report, we see the reference to closed and unfunctional existing toilets that create difficulties for gig workers in relieving themselves while at work. A fragile infrastructural approach then adds a layer to thinking of infrastructures that need a set of material and human capital to sustain them as functional. Therefore, beyond establishing infrastructures as the report demands, it also has to be viewed in terms of spaces requiring labor and financial resources to maintain in the longer run rather than something that achieves completion by the end of building it. Hence, the demand is to imagine functional infrastructures for better working conditions for gig and platform workers, which is especially salient in the light of growing extreme weather events. While the report concerns gig and platform workers in Hyderabad, similar studies must be conducted in all cities. The ostensibly sustainable and inclusive development of Indian cities cannot dodge the questions of gig work, climate precarity, and infrastructural responses.
Conclusion
We need more research studies on the interrelations of gig work, infrastructures, and climate and environmental crises in Indian cities to make informed transformations in urban spaces. It is essential considering the growing scale of both gig work and extreme climatic events such as heatwaves in the country. In this context, the report of TGPWU and HeatWatch on gig and platform workers’ experience of heatwave should be treated as critical introductory work. The state must act immediately, addressing these issues alongside other social security and welfare demands of gig workers.
References
- Alda-Vidal, C., Mary L., Deljana I., and Alison L. B. (2023): “Living with Fragile Infrastructure: The Gendered Labour of Preventing, Responding to and Being Impacted by Sanitation Failures.” Geoforum 141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103724.
- Punit, I. S., Nipun P., and Ishan T. (2024): “In Photos: How Delivery Riders Are Coping with India’s Extreme Heat Wave.” Rest of World. https://restofworld.org/2024/india-heat-wave-delivery-workers/.
- Perez, C. C. (2019): “Can Snow-Cleaning Be Sexist?” In Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, 29–46. Chatto & Windus.
- Neethu, C., and Ramesh K.V. (2023): “Projected Changes in Heat Wave Characteristics over India.” Climatic Change 176, no. 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03618-w.
- Dutta, A. (2024): “Gig Workers Battle Heatwave without Support from Delivery Platforms.” The Hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/gig-workers-battle-heatwave-without-support-from-delivery-platforms/article68286324.ece.
- Mir, S., and Venkatesh P. (2024): “Working in ‘Hellfire’: Gig Workers Bear the Brunt of India’s Heatwave.” Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/6/15/working-in-hellfire-gig-workers-bear-the-brunt-of-indias-heatwave.
- Barik, S. (2024): “Their Skin Burns More: India’s Climate Crisis Is Putting Gig Workers at Greater Risk.” The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/long-reads/india-climate-crisis-gig-workers-at-greater-risk-9407092/.
- Vu, A. N., and Nguyen L. D. (2024): “The Gig Economy: The Precariat in a Climate Precarious World.” World Development Perspectives 34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2024.100596.
- Bhandari, A., and Pragya C. (2023): “Rising Temperatures Pose a Huge Risk for Gig Workers.” Times of India. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/developing-contemporary-india/rising-temperatures-pose-a-huge-risk-for-gig-workers/.
- NITI Aayog (2022): “India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy: Perspectives and Recommendations on the Future of Work.” New Delhi, Government of India
- TGPWU and HeatWatch (2024): “Impact of Extreme Heat on Gig Workers: A Survey Report.” Hyderabad.
- International Labour Organization (2024): “Expansion of the Gig and Platform Economy in India.” India.
- Patel, S., and Tora A. (2024): “India Reports over 40,000 Suspected Heatstroke Cases over Summer” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/unrelenting-heatwave-kills-five-indian-capital-2024-06-19/.
- Madan, A., and Dubey A. (2024): “Heatwave Vulnerability: The Plight of Gig Workers in India.” Observer Research Foundation. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/heatwave-vulnerability-the-plight-of-gig-workers-in-india#:~:text=As%20the%20gig%20economy%20expands,health%20risks%20and%20reduced%20productivity.
*The article has first appeared in EPW. See here. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/gig-work-climate-crisis-and-urban-infrastructures
About the Author
