Digital platforms have played a critical role in the maintenance of the ‘images of the glitterati’ not only because of the convenience that they offer, but also because of the sense of belongingness and satisfaction that they invoke among the customers often becoming a part of their idea of citizenship itself. They have become a critical part of urban kinship networks and have been important parts of the urban development-based social imagination that the middle class prides itself in. Two customers of platforms, one from Bengaluru and one from Hyderabad, stated:
They have helped so much in allowing me to be a part of family functions and celebrations. Some years ago, it was a very difficult job to get something to someone’s birthday or a celebration, but these days, you just need a [credit] card, and you can get something. The greatest thing is that you can know exactly when and how it will be delivered.
Without these apps, it is impossible to live these days. The neighbourhood shops have shut down, and all across you only have malls which often take a lot of time to get to. Moreover, price is also an issue. The ones that they sell on those apps are cheaper and you do not have to go out also.
That pricing, reliability and convenience are an important of these platforms’ positioning in the society has been noted by scholars such as Huws (2016a, 2016b) and then Surie (2020) in the Indian context. These factors help to generate a sense of belongingness for middle-class consumer and contribute to the development of a middle-class consumer base for the platforms in urban spaces (Banerjee, 2024). Such a sense of belongingness however is absent in the case of the workers who make these experiences possible, and who suffer because of the algorithmic management techniques that are used by the platforms. These kinds of management strategies contribute to a gradual dehumanisation of the workers and make them a part of the production process creating impoverishment and converting the individual worker ‘into a mere cog in the machine’ (Dunayevskaya, 1958, p. 94).
Algorithmic management processes dictating online platform-based employment structures and digitally mediated jobs have a great effect on the everyday lives of people creating distinct consumer behavioural models that are designed to further capitalist power and its influence in shaping social reality (Chen, 2018; Sun, 2019). These algorithmic management processes make the workers’ subjectivity a redundant element within the labour process—much like typical industrial capitalism—where the objective idea of them being ‘delivery partners’ dominates over their subjective selves within which many of them consider themselves to be employees of the company that they work for. For migrant gig workers, algorithmic management comes to mean an increase in the extent of alienation that they face. The introduction of technology alters the production mechanisms and creates the conditions under which new and low-skilled workers suffer considerably, especially if they need to provide for other facilities such as housing and health (Lee & Clarke, 2019). Such circumstances compel many gig workers to work multiple jobs. Such kind of gig workers who simultaneously work different kinds of jobs for different platforms are usually referred to as being platform amphibians or slashers (Ichino, 2018).
5 MIGRANT GIG WORKERS OF INDIA’S CONSUMERIST CITIES
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