📰 Centre extends mid-day meal scheme to 24 lakh pre-primary students
Centre rebrands mid-day meals scheme PM POSHAN; no progress on National Education Policy’s recommendation to start offering breakfasts.
•The Centre has rebranded the 26-year old national mid-day meal scheme to give a hot cooked meal to 11.8 crore government school students from Class 1 to 8, with the Cabinet approving a proposal to rename it as the PM POSHAN (Poshan Shakti Nirman) scheme on September 29.
•From the next financial year, it will also cover the 24 lakh children studying in balvatikas, the pre-primary section of government schools, Education Ministry officials said.
•Although this year’s budget for mid-day meals remains unchanged, an additional ₹266 crore is expected to be added as the Central government’s share to cater to balvatika students from 2022-23, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told journalists after the Cabinet decision.
A key recommendation
•The extension of mid-day meals to pre-primary students, who are to be incorporated into the formal education system, was a key recommendation of the National Education Policy 2020 and the population of balvatikas — which offer one year of pre-school classes — is expected to rise from the existing 24 lakh as the policy is implemented.
•However, there has been no progress on the NEP’s other recommendation to start offering breakfasts to school students as well. Mr. Pradhan declined to comment on the issue, but Ministry officials have previously told The Hindu that the Finance Ministry vetoed the proposal for this year, which would involve an additional budgetary allocation of ₹4,000 crore, due to a severe funding crunch. In fact, the School Education Department’s budget for this year has been cut by almost ₹5,000 crore.
•The PM POSHAN scheme has been approved for the next five-year period until 2025-26, with a collective outlay of ₹1.31 lakh crore, including ₹31,733 crore as the share to be borne by the State governments. It will “improve nutritional status, encourage education and learning and increase enrolments in government schools”, Mr. Pradhan said.
Holistic nutrition goals
•The rebranded scheme aims to focus on “holistic nutrition” goals, Ministry officials said, adding that a 5% flexi component would be built into the existing budget to allow States to incorporate additional nutrition-rich elements — such as fortified foods, fruits and milk — into the menu. Use of locally grown traditional foods will be encouraged, along with school nutrition gardens.
•Social audits have been made mandatory in all districts and college students and trainee teachers will be roped in to do field inspections to ensure the quality of meals.
•In other procedural changes meant to promote transparency and reduce leakages, States will be asked to do direct benefit cash transfers of cooking costs to individual school accounts, and honorarium amounts to the bank accounts of cooks and helpers. However, the rebranded scheme does not include any progress on the long-pending demand of cooks to increase the ₹600 allocated by the Centre as their monthly honorarium. “If States wish to give a top-up, they can do so,” said Mr. Pradhan.
Why shouldn’t contempt action be taken against makers, asks the court.
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday said a preliminary enquiry by the CBI into the firecracker industry, including in Tamil Nadu, revealed rampant violation of its ban on use of toxic ingredients like Barium and its salts.
•In an order in March 2020, the court ordered the CBI Joint Director in Chennai to conduct a “detailed” probe . The CBI was directed to examine the allegations of violation of the court ban in 2018.
•The CBI had filed a report in a sealed cover in the court.
•A Bench led by Justice M.R. Shah, referring to the contents of the report, observed that a chemical analysis of the samples of finished and semi-finished firecrackers and raw materials taken from the manufacturers showed Barium content.
•The court stated that loose quantities of Barium were purchased from the market. Firecracker covers did not show the manufacture or expiry dates.
•The court discussed why the manufacturers should not be asked to show cause why contempt action should not be taken against them.
‘Celebration everyday’
•“Everyday there is a celebration, but you should also be mindful of the people living around you... People who have asthma,” Justice Shah remarked.
•The court posted the case for further hearing on October 6.
•On Tuesday, the Supreme Court prima facie brushed aside the manufacturers’ contention that thousands of employees earned their livelihood in the industry.
•Justice Shah retorted that “we have to balance between employment, unemployment and the right to life and health of citizens. We cannot sacrifice the lives of many for a few. Our prime focus is the right to life of innocent people.”
•The case gained significance with the onset of the wedding season and festivals like Dussehra and Deepawali. “Everyday, there is a violation in this regard... in religious processions, political rallies,” Justice Shah, accompanied by Justice A.S. Bopanna on the Bench, pointed out.
•He noted that the court had to fix liability on the authorities in charge. “Sometimes we have to fix liability. If the police commissioner is sedate about liability, only then all this will happen.”
📰 High levels of maternal and child under nutrition continue to plague India: UNICEF official
COVID-19 is interacting with under nutrition and exacerbating nutritional insecurities, says Arjan De Wagt, Head, Nutrition, UNICEF India
•Arjan De Wagt, Head, Nutrition, UNICEF India speaks to The Hindu’s Bindu Shajan Perappadan on how high levels of maternal and child under nutrition continue to plague the country, and the impact COVID-19 has had on the gains India has made in economic and human development in recent decades. He notes that for the future of children in India, controlling COVID-19 and ending malnutrition are equally important and urgent.
How has India fared on child and maternal nutrition in recent times?
•Overall, India has made impressive gains in economic and human development in recent decades. It has transitioned from being a food-deficit nation to a self-sufficient food-producing country in the last 30 years.
•However, high levels of maternal and child under nutrition continue to plague the country. Large-scale surveys like the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) and National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS) show that about one-third of children under five years of age in India are stunted, a third of them are underweight and almost two out of ten children are nutritionally wasted; many of these children suffer from multiple anthropometric deficits. The CNNS also highlight the emerging problems of overweight, obesity and micro-nutrient deficiencies.
•The government has put in place several programmes to address the triple burden of malnutrition. Particularly the launch of the Poshan Abhiyan in March 2018 refocused the national development agenda on nutrition. Building in Jan Andolan, or people’s movement, into Poshan Abhiyaan further intensified regular communication on nutrition behaviours and community leadership. Very recently, in the 2021-22 Budget speech, Poshan 2.0 was announced as a next step towards addressing malnutrition in the country. However, with the spectre of COVID-19, there is a heightened risk of increasing malnutrition and parts of progress made in the past may get undone.
How is COVID-19 likely to affect nutritional interventions in India?
•Broadly, we know that the impact of COVID-19 has adversely affected access to livelihoods. The containment measures to prevent the spread of the virus threatened livelihoods, resulted in price hikes due to reduced production of goods and services, and in disruption in supply chains for many families.
•Global research in 2020 on the effect of COVID-19 estimated about 14.3% increase in wasting globally. No specific data are available yet on the impact of COVID-19 on the nutritional status of the Indian population. Some data has been gathered from telephone surveys, community assessments and the Health Management Information System (HMIS) on the negative impact of COVID-19 on community food security and uptake of health, nutrition, and food security services. But these are not adequate in providing a comprehensive scenario on the potential impact of COVID-19 in the future. However, from global and India experience, it is increasingly evident how COVID-19 is interacting with under nutrition and exacerbating nutritional insecurities.
•First of all, like other infections, the COVID-19 infection negatively affects the nutritional status of a child, and those with poor nutritional status are more likely to have higher risk of morbidity and mortality.
•Secondly, disruption to food systems due to reduced food availability and broken supply chains, as well as dried income sources and depleted family savings is likely to have decreased financial and physical access to healthy food. As the period of pandemic prolongs, food insecurities and nutritional challenges will intensify too. It is also the compounding of such livelihood shocks due to COVID outbreaks and other factors, for example, in communities affected by floods. This will have more damaging impact on the most vulnerable communities that experience repeated natural calamities, as well the youngest children.
•On completion of six months, children need nutrient dense complementary foods in addition to breast milk to adequately fuel the growth of their growing bodies and brain. Lack of adequate nutrition at this stage can irreversibly damage physical growth, mental and cognitive development as well, with lifelong adverse effects. Additionally, adequate nourishment helps boost children’s immunity. Food insecurity arising out of the pandemic may cause families to shift to cheap food with low nutritive value, causing long-term adverse impact on the cognitive development of children.
•Third, health and social services such as anganwadi centres, nutrition rehabilitation centres, and village health sanitation and nutrition days (VHSND) were disrupted. As schools remained closed for a large part of 2020 and well into 2021, we also noticed that distribution of iron and folic acid tablets to children in schools was significantly reduced, and awareness campaigns in schools on nutrition were suspended. It was not until early 2021 that more and more States started opening anganwadi centres again, but centre-based activities soon were suspended due to the second wave of COVID-19.
•As COVID-19 demanded extraordinary attention, health workers were diverted from nutrition programmes for contact tracing, vaccination, and other response and services. This is likely to continue as vaccination coverage for such a large population will take more time.
•Fourth and most importantly, COVID-19 related priorities could threaten delivery and financing of nutrition and nutrition security responses, which we had seen in recent times, especially since the launch of the Poshan Abhiyaan. Poshan Abhiyan is a great platform and opportunity to accelerate reduction of child malnutrition in India. However, with competing priorities like the vaccination drive, there is a risk of resources and attention being diverted away, when the situation demands additional resources to accelerate multi-sectoral responses to urgently address the nutrition situation. For instance, when COVID-19 struck in March 2020, Poshan Pakhwara had to be abandoned mid-way. Community-based events have also been suspended in many States due to the pandemic. It is great to see many of them resume in the ‘Poshan Maah’ (nutrition month).
Given that the threat of subsequent COVID-19 waves looms, what do you foresee as the biggest challenge in the nutrition space?
•We fear double threats here. On the one hand, pandemic response services such as COVID-19 vaccination will need to be prioritised. However, it is important to recognise that this puts a tremendous strain on systems, capacity and resources earlier dedicated to deliver routine health, nutrition and social protection interventions. On the other hand, COVID-19 may inflict repeated shocks on families and communities. Health expenses of families and communities are going up significantly when so many people fall ill, and at the same time, their economic productivity is going down.
•If it was about dealing with one shock of a COVID-19 wave of limited duration, systems, services and personnel would have found a way. But the compounding effect of repeated shocks on income and resilience might have a much more serious and longer lasting impact than we expect. Here we are not even factoring in the annual cycle of shocks that families in many parts of India face due to natural hazards such as droughts, floods and cyclones.
As Covid-19 affects resources and priorities, how should then the government address those nutrition related challenges?
•Prior to COVID-19, Poshan Abhiyan had a strong potential to significantly reduce child malnutrition in India by 2030. However, the onslaught of COVID-19 risks are significantly reducing this potential progress that Poshan Abhiyan could have yielded by 2030, unless nutrition gets back on track again among the top priorities in leadership, financing, and service delivery at all levels, from Central and State governments down to the communities.
•Six areas need immediate attention. First and foremost, a strong leadership at all levels — from national to district — is essential to bring back focus to address food, income and nutritional security.
•Second, uninterrupted, universal, timely and high-quality coverage of essential evidence-based nutritional services must be ensured, with special focus on children below two years of age, pregnant women and adolescent girls, which are the critical growth and development periods of life.
•Thirdly, the pandemic calls for strategies adapting to COVID-19 guidelines and innovations in the service delivery mechanism. Urgent attention is needed to address food security, dietary diversity, micronutrient supplementation, social protection, economic support, gender, and financial inclusion. Keeping girls in school and delaying the age of marriage should be emphasised. The mid-day meal programme benefits should continue uninterrupted even when school services are disrupted.
•Fourthly, adequate financing is needed to ensure delivery of high impact interventions, and additional financing will be required for ensuring food and nutritional security, especially for the vulnerable population groups. Accelerating fund release to States and decentralised decision making are required to improve fund utilisation. The main causes of underutilisation of funds potentially available for nutrition responses must be identified and addressed.
•Multisectoral interventions that directly or indirectly impact nutrition, like health, nutrition and social protection schemes need to be delivered effectively to the same household, same woman, same child. Migrant labourers and urban poor need special focus.
•Finally, nutrition needs to be retained as a key indicator for development. Regular reviews aided by robust data systems, like HMIS, Poshan Tracker, and NFHS, which track changes in coverage, continuity, intensity and quality of interventions, are essential to help identify areas where urgent actions are needed. Data quality needs to improve for better policy and programme decisions.
•We must realise that COVID-19 has compounded manifold the nutrition-related challenges but giving up at this critical juncture is not an option. If children needed nutrition interventions before COVID-19, they need it much more now than ever before. For the future of children in India, stopping COVID-19 and stopping malnutrition are equally important and urgent.
📰 A scheme before its time: On digital health mission
A digital health mission needs to get all the fundamentals of the ecosystem right
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the National Digital Health Mission, the most salient aspect of which is that all citizens will have the option of voluntarily opting for a Health ID, a 14-digit health identification number that will uniquely identify every citizen and will be a repository of their medical history. Illustratively, it will contain details of every test, every disease, the doctors visited, the medicines taken and the diagnosis. The portability this offers implies a person will, in theory, never have to haul around their reports. The doctor who is examining the patient can give more well-informed advice because it is possible that patients may not consider aspects of their medical history relevant to share with a doctor, or sometimes may forget about them, but which may be valuable for a better diagnosis. This id can be created by using a person’s basic details and mobile number or Aadhaar number, and there will presumably be an app acting as a convenient interface.
•As snazzy as all of this sounds, a digital health id right now is really a solution looking for a problem. There is no clear justification that the immobility of medical records is an insurmountable obstacle to the provision of affordable, high-quality health care in India. The challenge of health care in India, as decades of research and the experience with the novel coronavirus pandemic have shown, can be expressed quite simply. There are too few hospitals with trained staff to cater to all Indians. But expanding the health-care system will not be easy. India’s federal structure, the size of its population — and a large rural one at that — the cost of researching, finding and buying appropriate drugs and treatment, competing systems of medicine and the very challenging nature of health itself, mean that the issues are manifold. The graver problem is that the technocratic sheen of a digital health id hides a mammoth store of personal data, which in the absence of a privacy law and little public awareness and control over their data, could be open to misuse. There is the danger that any large private insurance company could use sophisticated algorithms across the health and other databases to construct risk-profiles for people and make access to affordable insurance difficult. Also, data mining can prioritise certain rich demographics for their services and direct public and private resources to people who can afford a high premium for their services rather than to those who need them but cannot pay as much. For a digital health ecosystem to work, it is important that the fundamentals be fixed from the ground up.
📰 A fund without a care for the RTI
The Government’s claim that the PM CARES Fund is not a public authority is unacceptable
•It may not be an exaggeration to say that when it comes to seeking answers and information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is consistent in putting up a screen. The manner in which the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund was set up — with its acronym created to publicise the point that the Prime Minister cares for people — shows a bypassing of the statutory obligations of a public authority.
The other funds
•A statutorily constituted National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF), which was established under the Disaster Management (DM) Act of 2005, is deliberately ignored while a new, controversial, unanswerable, and ‘non-accountable’ vehicle is created; its character is not spelt out till today. The NDRF is mandated to be accountable, and answerable under the RTI Act, being a public authority, and auditable by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The Government seems to consider statutory provisions for enquiry and information seeking to be embarrassing obstacles. The DM Act provided for a Disaster Response Fund — state and district level funds (besides the national level) and also to collect and use the donations at the local level, with mandatory transparency and audit provisions. The PM CARES Fund centralises the collection of donations and its utility, which is not only against the federal character but also practically inconvenient.
•There is the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund operative since the days of Jawaharlal Nehru. The website says: “In pursuance of an appeal by the then Prime Minister, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in January 1948, the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) was established with public contributions to assist displaced persons from Pakistan. The resources ... are now utilised primarily to render immediate relief to families of those killed in natural calamities... and to the victims of the major accidents and riots. Assistance from the PMNRF is also rendered, to partially defray the expenses for medical treatment ... The fund is recognised as a Trust under the Income-Tax Act and the same is managed by [the] Prime Minister or multiple delegates for national causes.” The fact is that there is substantial money also left in the PMNRF. But the Narendra Modi government does not want to use it. The PMNRF has the President of India and the Leader of Opposition also as trustees. The Centre now considers it as another obstacle and has created a new trust with the Prime Minister and his Ministers only.
•While both funds, the NDRF and the PMNRF, have been relegated to the back burner, the PM CARES Fund is in the limelight. It has been created not by law, not by notification, but by the mere creation of a webpage, and set up last year in March to raise funds for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The page lists its structure, functions and duties in an arbitrary manner. The official appeals for funds are made under the emblem of the Saranath lions and ‘Satyameva Jayathe’, which means “Truth Alone Triumphs”. Therefore, the recent affidavit, where the Delhi High Court was informed that “the PM CARES Fund is not a Government of India fund and that the amount collected by it does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India”, is strange. The affidavit was filed by an Under Secretary at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), who added that the trust functions with transparency. The most significant lie of this sworn statement is that the Government has no control over the Fund.
Query and response
•After initial denials, the Government has conceded it to be a public charitable trust, but still maintains that it is not a ‘public authority’. In his public speeches, the Prime Minister often makes assurances of transparency. The Bharatiya Janata Party also says it is committed to its promise made in its election manifesto — of there being zero tolerance for corruption. If these are true, then the PM CARES Fund should be declared as ‘a Public Authority’ under the RTI Act, and all RTI queries answered truthfully.
•Going back to the affidavit about the PM CARES Fund, the Under Secretary’s response reflects the adamance to not be transparent and is a stand in defiance of the RTI Act. The issue arose after a petitioner/lawyer, Samyak Gangwal, filed a petition seeking that the PM-CARES fund to be declared as the “State” under Article 12 of the Constitution. In another plea, he had sought for the fund to be designated as a “public authority” under Section 2(h) of the RTI Act. The point is that the PMO operates the Fund, but says it cannot supply any information about the PM CARES Fund because it is not a public authority. The PMO completely glosses over the fact that the PMO is a public authority and has to give us answers about the fund under the RTI.
More questions and gaps
•Some of the claims made in the affidavit are: The PM CARES Fund was neither created by the Constitution of India nor by any statute. If that is the case, under what authority does it use the designation of the Prime Minister, designated symbols of the nation, the tricolour and the official (gov.in) website of the PMO, and grant tax concessions through an ordinance? Why does the Prime Minister make appeals for contributions to this fund saying it will help the Government fight COVID-19? The link, “About PM CARES Fund”, makes it clear.
•The amount received by the Fund does not go to the Consolidated Fund of India. If it goes to the CFI, it could have been audited by the CAG. Because this Fund is not audited by CAG, the Government has to ensure that it is answerable and foreclose any possibility of corruption. It should be transparent when it comes to its sources and fund disbursement.
•The third claim is: “This Trust is neither intended to be or is in fact owned, controlled or substantially financed by any Central Government or State Government or any instrumentality of the any Government. In other words, there is no control of either the Central Government or any State Government/s, either direct or indirect, in functioning of the Trust in any manner whatsoever”. The Prime Minister is the ex-officio Chairman and three cabinet Ministers (for Defence, Home and Finance) are ex-officio members. A Government advertisement for the PM CARES Fund says: “PM announces new fund for people to donate towards Govt. fight against Coranavirus”. Another advertisement makes the claim, “MY Govt or Meri SARKAR”. It is interesting that the Prime Minister is the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees, when the claim is that it is not connected with the Government. If the PM CARES Fund is unconnected with the Government, then the Fund could become an office of profit. And that could disqualify him and the three Ministers from holding those constitutional offices.
•The composition of the board of trustees can never be a determinative factor to ascertain whether the respondent is a “public authority” or not; the Prime Minister as chairman and three Cabinet Ministers as members, in their official capacity, determines it to be a public authority. This board decides how to spend the funds collected, which is the prime function. The Prime Minister’s Office administers the activities. This is ‘substantial control’ which is the test to determine its character as a public authority under the RTI Act as highlighted in the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court of India in Thalappalam Service Coop. Bank Ltd. vs State of Kerala.
•The point that some Government officer provides ex gratia services to the public trust is of no relevance; a Government officer providing secretarial assistance on an honorary basis while discharging his official duties can never be a relevant consideration for declaring a body to be a public authority. By agreeing that it is a public trust managed by the Prime Minister and three Ministers in their ex-officio capacity, the Government cannot say that it was irrelevant to declare it as a public authority. The Prime Minister and the Ministers do not take decisions in their personal capacity. They have to work to implement the objectives of the trust.
Funding avenues
•The mere grant of certain tax exemptions with regard to the voluntary donations made to a public trust is not a determinative factor for the purpose of Section 2(h) of the RTI Act. An ordinance was promulgated to amend Income Tax Act, 1961 and declare that the donations to the PM CARES Fund “would qualify for 80G benefits for 100% exemption”. The official website and the Press Information Bureau also declared that donations to the PM CARES Fund “would qualify for 80G benefits for 100% exemption under the Income Tax Act, 1961. Donations to PM CARES Fund will also qualify to be counted as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure under the Companies Act, 2013... PM CARES Fund has also got exemption under the FCRA [Foreign Contribution Regulation Act] and a separate account for receiving foreign donations has been opened”. All this amounts to substantive funding.
•Section 19 of the Indian Trusts Act mandates the trustees to present full and accurate information of the amount and state of the trust property to the beneficiaries. Because of this statutory access, all information about the PM CARES Fund should be accessible as per Section 2(f) of RTI Act; “information” here means any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force” (this enables access to information of trust even if it is private, through the Indian Trusts Act). The claim that the PM CARES Fund is not a public authority is absurd to say the least.
📰 A lesson from China on gig workers’ rights
The swell of public opinion in China has enabled government regulation and change in company policy
•On September 20, 2021, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers, on behalf of gig workers, filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court demanding that the Union government provide succour to workers affected by the pandemic. The petition has asked for ‘gig workers’ and ‘platform workers’ to be declared as ‘unorganised workers’ so they come under the purview of the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008. In short, the petition demands social security benefits from food delivery platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy and taxi aggregator apps such as Ola and Uber.
•That same week, China strode ahead in this regard. Owing to public pressure, two of its food delivery platforms, Meituan and Ele.me, committed to end the practice of forcing workers to register as ‘independent businesses’, which has long helped these platforms evade responsibilities as employers. Both platforms run a duopoly in the sector, capturing over 90% of the market share, and employ millions of gig workers. In a notice to labour aggregator partners, Meituan said it prohibited signing on delivery workers “through deceptive or coercive means”.
‘Invisible’ to ‘frontline’
•The one major factor that the pandemic has helped change is the erstwhile ‘invisibility’ of delivery workers. Through 2020, a trend that spanned China, India, the U.S. and Europe saw ‘invisible workers’ being propelled to ‘frontline workers’. In China, this was especially the case in Wuhan, the pandemic’s epicentre, where there was a clear transition of social discourse in favour of delivery workers. People’s Daily, the largest state-affiliated daily in China, responded to public sentiment by ranking delivery work among the top 10 occupations.
•The media aided this transformation. In the fall of 2020, Renwu, a monthly Chinese magazine, took an exhaustive look at the plight of delivery workers across the two food delivery platforms. Titled ‘Delivery Riders, Trapped in the System’, the article was shared over 200 million times on the Chinese internet indicating how deeply Chinese social media users connected with the issue. One indicator of how seriously an issue is taken by the public is its virality on the Chinese web. In 2015, for instance, a TED-style talk on China’s pollution crisis got 100 million views across major video streaming sites within 48 hours of its release, resulting in policy change.
•The Renwu piece highlighted how delivery workers were trapped in a “sophisticated labour control system” that they had unwittingly downloaded onto their phones. Simply put, the algorithm that is put in place by platforms is designed to create animosity between app users and workers, where the platform inherently shifts the pressure of receiving orders and maintaining smooth flow of deliveries onto the workers.
•But it is important to note that the pushback against influential platforms had begun long before COVID-19. Over the years, strikes in different parts of China have reflected this growing backlash. As food delivery platforms expanded through the pandemic period, growing massively in revenue and scale, strikes increased in numerous Chinese cities and have continued despite various barriers to collective action. In early 2021, in successive strikes spanning over two months, delivery workers protested against poor working conditions. In cities such as Shenzhen, Tongxiang and Linyi, delivery workers protested against new company policies that slashed their pay per delivery. A protest in Taizhou saw a delivery worker set himself on fire demanding unpaid wages.
•In 2018, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, Ya-Wen Lei, documented strikes in Chongqing, a municipality in southwest China. She found that workers had mobilised through social media and offline meetings. They united to protest against “decreasing piece rates” and “unilateral change of contract terms or platform rules”. At the time of her fieldwork, the Chinese state had not intervened in the market to restrain the monopoly powers of platforms or initiate antitrust investigations. This provided platforms with unrestricted powers to exercise technological control.
•But the pandemic was curious in this regard. It began with the Chinese state indicating that platforms should help soak up the devastating effects of the pandemic on the workforce. And it ended with the state asserting “increased control” over major tech companies, including Meituan for allegedly abusing its dominant market position, via the new anti-monopolistic guidelines.
•In China, where the government is now focused on “common prosperity”, which seeks to narrow a widening wealth gap that threatens the country’s economic rise, the government’s scrutiny over food delivery platforms has increased. The authoritarian context, a weak civil society and the absence of independent labour unions leaves gig workers in China with very little option but to go on strike or protest, despite the risks, to affect change. In April, Caixin reported that a government official disguised himself as a Meituan driver and worked a 12-hour shift barely making RMB 41 ($6.32) for a day’s work. He was featured in a television programme in Beijing and stated that the experience left him feeling humiliated. In July, seven government agencies jointly passed guidelines directing online food delivery platforms that they should not set evaluation criteria based on optimisation algorithms, must respect the rights of delivery workers and ensure that they earn at least a minimum wage with social insurance. Many of these government initiatives have been public-driven. It was in the government’s interest to intervene when it realised that there was growing discontent not only among the delivery workers but also the public about their plight.
The Indian context
•The situation is vastly different in India. Any reform in this sector is led wholly by delivery workers, not the public. For 27 days in 2020, close to 3,000 delivery workers from Swiggy went on strike in Hyderabad to protest the slash in remuneration from ₹35 to ₹15 per order. The strikes disbanded only after the Joint Commissioner of the Labour Department called a hearing with the platform’s operations manager and the workers’ union. It was the first time in India that such a negotiation was taking place, that too on the street. This year, in the lead up to Zomato’s July IPO, several anonymous Twitter accounts set up by delivery workers called customers’ attention to what they deem as “exploitative practices” employed by platforms. The PIL in the Supreme Court is another major step in this regard.
•The biggest lesson from China is the swell of public opinion that has partly led to government regulation and change in company policy. In the U.S., a gig workers collective has urged customers to delete the Instacart app as a show of solidarity until demands for better working conditions are met. Indians could make an effort to be better informed about the way platforms work by seeking out delivery workers and asking about their work conditions and the pressures they face. We will then be aware of the price that a person, who we only see as a miniature bike on our apps, pays for our convenience.
