Somewhat controversial but also useful for job creation, a bunch of new Indian startups are doing something that seems to many like the opposite of what startups were meant to do: engage in high technology and come up with scalable business models - and better still, generate intellectual property.

Are these blue-hued startups good or bad? That depends on whom you are talking to and what your value system says, but one thing is clear: India’s labour market is turning a new leaf that invites policymakers to think anew on what employment or job can be. It calls for both regulation and what I would call ‘opportunity farming’ in a nation where unemployment is still a big issue.

Things reached a new pitch this month when one TV anchor described a company as a “slavery startup” -- because CarryMen offers at ₹149 per hour somebody to carry shopping bags in busy centres like South Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar. The workers in such ventures are nothing but affluent-sounding equivalents of our old railway porters, and signal a new demand-supply equation in India’s economy, where income and status inequalities are generating jobs of a different kind.

Blue Shades Of Hi-Tech

You could trace the origins of blue-collar startups to the blue shades of white-collar high-tech. E-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart joined food companies like Zomato and Swiggy to usher in delivery boys (later called partners) and then a broader tribe called gig workers. These were originally meant as last-mile linkages to close the loop in technology-based services. But now that every errand boy carries a fairly advanced smartphone and generating apps is as easy as A-B-C for the software industry, we have a stronger shade of blue.

The Urban Company began offering a higher level of expertise through its on-demand domestic workers for deep cleaning, house cleaning, and meal preparations in under 30 minutes, with introductory prices as low as ₹79 per hour.

But lower down the skill order, we now have Snabbit that offers all sorts of domestic work, the kind done by “kaamwalis” in Delhi and “bais” in Mumbai, at ₹99 an hour. Its competitor Pronto that offers digitally managed convenience, however, faced a social media uproar following allegations that it was using artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted recordings through workers fitted with cameras inside the homes of customers. There is a privacy issue here, but Pronto says it is doing what it does with customer consent in a limited “pilot” programme to train robotic systems.

A Dystopian Future?

Robotics? Are we doing to domestic workers what is already happening to software programmers? As AI generates in a few seconds huge bundles of software code and creative-sounding essays and poems, a whole lot of working people are feeling insecure.  Adding a scenario in which housemaids and cleaners potentially suffer the insecurities currently faced by software engineers sounds disturbing.

Are we heading for a dystopian future in which a driverless car transports a busy geek home, where robots do the cleaning while Alexa or Siri keep her company?

Wait, there is another twist to the tale. There is a startup called Goodfellows that does what I would call inter-generational dating. This startup supplies - if that is the word - proxy grandkids to elderly citizens.

Shantanu Naidu, who was for a long time the late industrialist Ratan Tata’s young companion, says his startup offers a “strong group of empathetic young graduates and professionals” who are ready to do whatever nice grandkids do: shopping, teaching digital devices, visiting a restaurant. Whatever. This would help, Naidu believes, India’s 15 million “elderlies” who live by themselves.

Bhopal-based YourDOST provides anonymous psychological counselling through video, audio or text.

The New Normal

Meanwhile, labour costs are shooting up in some of India’s enchanted urban zones where ultra-busy executives in uber-important industries make loads of money that critics will term as obscene. But they offer terms that seem like a dream to blue-collar or low-skill workers.

One startup founder says he pays ₹20 per piece to iron a garment in Bengaluru against the ₹5 he paid in Noida, with the caveat that his southern “istriwala” uses an LPG-powered iron.  That might sound “ironic” to those worried over the current LPG shortage and shooting fuel prices in the wake of the US-Iran war.

Evidently, we are in a “new-normal” sort of situation in various spheres of economic life.

While some may crib about exploitation of workers and others about the imminent doomsday arising from high-technology, it is clear that for policymakers there is a need to recognise the gig economy in its various forms and dimensions - to farm opportunities as well as minimise threats.

This basically means that policymakers must shed the idea that employment means a full-time, eight-hour-day, monthly-salary benefits under a big-tent corporate or in a giant factory. It also means that gig work should not lead to short-term honeymoons for labourers followed by long-term unemployment for those used in a technology transition only to be suddenly discarded. I have already met laid-off BPO workers hurt by AI.

There are other issues that need to be addressed: social security, healthcare and safe working conditions. Mental health startups like YourDOST help meet needs earlier not found in the government’s to-do list.

Tightrope For Policymakers

Policymakers have to walk the tightrope between easy employment generation on the one hand and moving towards a secure framework of laws, administration, and intermediaries for those at the bottom of the employment period.

They can help startups and even one-person acts to generate self-employment through dissemination of information, promotion of ideas or digital platforms but also ensure that short-term workers and vendors of miscellaneous services get a semblance of long-term security.

Initiatives like the e-SHRAM portal, a grievance redressal mechanism for workers, and social security payments by giant digital platform companies, besides various initiatives by state governments do recognise the importance of gig workers. But a curious mix of emerging technologies and flexible deployment of labour amid increasing but uneven wages demand extra attention.

Recent instances of labour unrest in Noida show that we need a balancing act in which the government has to play not a political but compassionately regulatory role in balancing the expectations of workers with the methods of the employers.

I am just wondering if we need a Department of Gig Economy in the Ministry of Labour.

(The writer is a senior journalist covering a diverse range of subjects, including economy, technology, and politics. Views are personal.)