The evolving landscape of gig labor, particularly within food delivery platforms, has been influenced by a shift towards algorithmic management, emphasizing performance metrics as a daily burden to be carried through delivery work. Through a study of Indian food delivery agents, our paper suggests an emerging gamification culture between delivery platforms and workers. Agents gradually yet consistently adapt to stringent algorithmic management to overcome everyday work’s precarity. Despite the challenges of performance pressure on food delivery labor, we capture the daily rhythms and routines of delivery work punctuated by flashes of agenting, revealing small capacities to make choices and influence work outcomes. By employing a qualitative research framework, we uncover the mechanisms through which delivery platforms manipulate labor, simultaneously exploring delivery agents’ tactics to extract agency and exploit the platforms’ rules. We develop the notion of ‘agency’ to disentangle the idea of ‘gamification by agents’ as a socio-technical derivative governing food delivery agents in urban India. The findings highlight the potential of platform work empowering, albeit with limits, delivery agents with agency and decision-making authority.

The COVID-19 pandemic required efficient allocation of public resources and transforming existing ways of societal functions. To manage any crisis, governments and public health researchers ex-ploit the information available to them in order to make informed decisions, also defined as situational awareness. Gathering situational awareness using so-cial media, has been functional to manage epidemics. Previous research focused on using discussions during periods of epidemic crises on social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook and developing NLP techniques to filter out important/relevant discussions from a huge corpus of messages and posts. Social media usage varies with internet penetration and other socio-economic factors, which might induce disparity in an-alyzing discussions across different geographies. How-ever, print media is a ubiquitous information source, irrespective of geography. Further, topics discussed in news articles are already ‘newsworthy’, while on social media ‘newsworthiness' is a product of techno-social processes. Developing this fundamental difference, we study Twitter data during the second wave in India focused on six high-population cities with varied macro-economic factors. Through a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, we further analyze two Indian newspapers during the same period and compare topics from both Twitter and the newspapers to evaluate sit-uational awareness around the second phase of COVID on each of these platforms. We conclude that factors like internet penetration and GDP in a specific city influence the discourse surrounding situational updates on social media. Thus, augmenting information from newspapers to information extracted from social media would provide a more comprehensive perspective in resource-deficit cities

Uber drivers in India are witnessing a slow emergence of everyday work formalization predominantly through their engagement with the Uber platform. If a vast segment of the informal employment sector in a country resembles gig work, can companies like Uber bring organizational ability and wage regularity to employment? Despite Uber's economic model being challenged on several labor fronts in scholarship from the global North, we argue everyday interactions with the Uber platform are ushering organized work practices and improved financial stability for drivers who formerly hail from the informal employment sector in India. The everyday driving for Uber is filtered through a conceptual and practical work model drivers gain with due experience of Uber's platform features. Our study uncovers the relationship between the controlling demands of the Uber platform and ensuing driver work adaptations. We present findings from a qualitative investigation of Uber ride-hailing services impacting drivers to 1. optimize earnings 2. link work effort to wages 3. converge towards platform compliance. We posit engaged and persistent interactions with the Uber platform bring structure and formality to the profession of driving for Indian Uber drivers.

The attempt to enroll citizens under the umbrella of effective governance is being accomplished by bringing digitization to the pedestal of identity. The paper unfolds the story of India's biometric based digital identity programme, Aadhaar, in fulfilling its goals of facilitating national security, financial inclusion and entitlement delivery. Using the socio-technical framework of '[Good ID', a user-centric approach to digital identity, we critique the intricacies of the design of Aadhaar as a bridge between citizen beneficiaries and the government and propose suggestions to forward the case of Aadhaar as '[good' digital ID.

Narratives of the gig economy are largely perspectives from the global North and the nature of their ride-hailing market. Freelancing or gigging offer contrasting connotations depending on the market and the labour it is situated in. India, with its demographic dividend and employment challenges, view opportunities arising out of the gig- economy differently. To investigate the impact of ride-hailing apps in the Indian market, and the challenges and opportunities it has brought in, we offer learnings from an ethnographic study of Uber drivers in India.

Today, the consequence of viewing work automation as a face-off between human potential and smart technology denies the role of business acumen, tacit knowledge, market forces and social contexts that shape work environments around the world. Using a socio-technical framework, we examine the consequences arising out of the introduction of automation in the quality testing segment of the IT industry in India. We highlight key socio-economic parameters influencing the decisions to automate a testing environment. Next, by applying an ICTD lens, we analyze the ensuing discourse emerging from the voices of Quality Testers imbuing value into the testing job profile and juxtapose these discourses with current QT work practices. Finally, we highlight the importance of creating better QT work practices in tandem with training strategies that allow IT professionals to draw upon their implicit knowledge, critical thinking, computing skills, and business process knowledge, and combine it with automated QT testing procedures to add more value to QT profession.

India is home to the largest under-25 demographic profile in the world, but lacks a job-ready educational system. It requires a wide-spread, skill-oriented educational model, equipping youth to thrive in highly dynamic job markets. As a response to the huge demand for technical education, a large private skill-tutoring ecosystem has sprung up in In-dia but remains geographically limited. This paper, drawn from a three-month ethnographic research conducted in Ameerpet (arguably India's largest IT skilling hub), probes the pedagogic style and characteristics of tutoring, and of-fers reasons why learners prefer to enroll into a physical model of classroom teaching over online courses. We make design suggestions for online learning platforms to attract students who are marginalized in the more formal and com-petitive education system, and opt for Ameerpet-like skill-hubs. Our primary offering is to suggest a shift in perspec-tive of online education platforms to include job readiness and accompanying changes in course content and delivery.

Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) apps such as WhatsApp are heralding new communication behaviors amongst students in peri-urban India. From an ethnographic study of a co-ed engineering college, we describe and analyze the role of WhatsApp in both engendering and balancing the ripples caused by cross gender communication. Through in-depth interviews and immersive participant observations in both physical as well as digital spaces, we show how WhatsApp emerges as the backbone of student interactions in a gender segregated academic environment. In analyzing social conditions and identifying structural features of WhatsApp that led to its bottoms up appropriation, our study presents possibilities for educators and designers aiming to create technology enabled collaborative spaces between people otherwise hemmed in by social norms from reaching out to one another.

Building on a growing body of human-computer interaction (HCI) literature on information and communication technology (ICT) use in the developing world, this paper describes the vast, growing mobile media consumption culture in India, which relies on the ubiquity of informal socioeconomic practices for reproducing, sharing, and distributing pirated digital media. Using an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) based approach, we show how piracy not only fuels media consumption, but also drives further technology adoption and promotes digital literacy. To do this, we first uncover the role of piracy as a legitimate actor that brings ICT capability to underserved communities and reveal the heterogeneous character of the pirated mobile media distribution and consumption infrastructure in India. We then emphasize the benefits of an ANT-based theory-driven analysis to HCI's efforts in this arena. In particular, ANT enables us to one, draw attention to the ties in the pirate media network that facilitate the increased decentralization of piracy in India; two, highlight the progressive transition from the outsourcing to the self-sourcing of users' media needs as this network evolves; and three, recognize the agency of human and non-human entities in this inherently sociotechnical ecosystem.

This paper seeks to bring scrutiny to 'Jugaad' as concept of user driven innovation in the context of ICTD research. We collate and organize a variety of definitions denoting adoption and innovation of technology in constrained eco systems. We attempt to bring a nuanced understanding of contextual processes supporting or hindering use adoption and innovation of ICTs by probing the multi-meanings of Jugaad as ground-up processes of technology adoption

In this paper we present results from an anthropological study of everyday mobile internet adoption among teenagers in a low-income urban setting. We attempt to use this study to explore how information about everyday ICT use may be relevant for development research even if it is largely dominated by entertainment uses. To understand how ICT tools are used, we need to study the spaces users inhabit, even if these spaces are dominated by mundane, non-instrumental and entertainment-driven needs. The key here is for ICTD discourse to situate insights from anthropological studies (such as this one) within an understanding of what drives a specific user population to adopt technologies in particular ways. Clearly there is a link between context and use, and understanding this may be invaluable for development research. Adopting a narrow development lens of technology use may miss the actual engagements and ingenious strategies marginal populations use to instate technologies into their everyday.

This paper attempts to re-imagine ubiquitous computing and technologies for populations in resource-poor, digitally unstable, and diversely literate environments. Extending UbiComp’s frame of reference to include any ICT with a ubiquitous presence, we articulate how technologies are adopted, accessed, used, and diffused in three urban slums of India. We showcase important local practices surrounding technology diffusion and their widespread implications for entrenching ICT use through sharing, learning, training, renewing, and extending use and access. We do this by discussing three main processes at the intersection of technology consumption, resource constraints, and cultural production specific to low-income communities in India: Cutting Chai or sharing technology ownership and maintenance to cut costs, Jugaad or workarounds in the face of resource constraints, and Here Pheri or gray market activity that subvert legal business processes. We also suggest a few design principles to provoke new kinds of inquiry and practice in the design and implementation of UbiComp for a global community.

The Indian government has undertaken an ambitious strategy for financial inclusion (FI) as part of its development agenda. With the aid of technology-enabled branchless banking initiatives, this drive has been successful in regards to extending access---nearly 60% of the Indian population is banked. However, empirical evidence suggests that the majority of bank accounts are not being utilized, especially not by the poor who are the target of FI. This paper examines the reasons for such underutilization and also recommends ways to improve the FI drive. The paper contributes to the strand of ICTD literature that focuses on FI in two ways. First, it makes clear that the measures of FI success should not be focused on access alone. The real impact comes from appropriate usage of these accounts. Second, it argues that financial education (FE) should be integrated into the FI drive. This would help the poor to more effectively exploit their links to formal financial services and decrease their reliance on costly informal alternatives.

The field of Information and Communication Technology for Development includes participatory and action research pilots with a research and change agenda. Such ICT4D research does not fit traditional models for evaluating community risk and benefit. Looking at the history of informed consent and international development, uses of informed consent in development scenarios, and at efforts specific to ICTD research, we present how informed consent is currently addressed, as well as the inadequacy of adapting present academic informed consent models to development. Informed consent in ICT4D research provides academic rigor to the field, helps establish a fair, moral and candid relationship with the community to set expectations, and standards for other intervention-based research efforts. We suggest practical recommendations for models that contribute to community involvement and trust, while offering the target community an opportunity to negotiate their level of participation.

This paper attempts to re-imagine ubiquitous computing for populations in low-income and information-challenged environments. We examine information infrastructures in mid-sized urban slums of Mumbai and Bangalore in three ways--1) highlighting technologies supporting social networks, 2) examining underlying notions of trust and privacy in building information networks, and 3) discussing protocols and practices around shared access. We then discuss our thoughts on designing for low-income, low-literacy, and resource-challenged communities, presenting new ways to think about the design of ubiquitous technologies for international development. We argue for collaborative exchange between the established strengths of the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) and Ubicomp communities to generate new ways of shaping technologies towards poverty alleviation in previously neglected socio-economic contexts--Ubicomp4D.

My paper looks at rural Internet kiosks as small businesses run by owners/operators who display good entrepreneurial spirit and skills that match kiosk offerings to local needs, creating opportunities in constrained commercial environments. Kiosk operators display enough imagination to keep businesses afloat recasting information technologies to accommodate the growing demand for image/visual consumption. We argue for considering the rural Internet kiosk not simply as an information booth but as entrepreneurial space to tap several commercial possibilities