Off-platform Social Networks and Gig Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic in India

Household Members

In the section titled renewed understanding of networks in context of platforms, we define households. In both cities we found households of varied compositions. However, usually in both cities multiple male siblings and cousins, along with their respective wives and children, share a multi-generational household with the gig worker. Sometimes, the younger sibling of the wife also resided in the gig worker’s household. For much of the national lockdown, the income of most gig workers dried up. In all cases, we found that gig workers responded by mortgaging their wife’s gold and turned to co-resident male siblings and cousins for interest-free loans. Income from two sources in the household—the wife and the gig worker’s father—was also repurposed to meet basic needs during the pandemic. However, in some cases such supplementary incomes did not exist, or had dried up because the gig worker’s wife and father had also lost their jobs. In such cases, gig workers were more inclined to incur heavy loans primarily from the neighbourhood (interest-based) and, less frequently, from dispersed natal kin (interest-free). Alternatively, gig workers moved out to rural areas, frequently merging temporarily with households of their natal kin or, in rare cases, with marital kin. Once activity resumed after the first lockdown, platforms started to absorb increasing numbers of recently unemployed workers. Household members (co-resident siblings, cousins and in-laws) provided resources of mentorship and active networking that were crucial for platform recruitment. During the pandemic, the collaborative use of assets by siblings, cousins and in-laws became more routinized for gig work.

We start our discussion of households by taking up the case of Ravi (29 years), an Ola cab driver in Kanpur, whose income dried up because the platform ceased operations from 23 March 2020. With no income, he used his savings ($ 87.86) ¹⁴ to meet expenses in April 2020. Of this, $ 71.60 was utilized to pay off the April instalment on the car he had purchased for gig work. The family met its routine expenditure ¹⁵ by combining the rest ($ 16.26), with his father’s monthly pension ($ 41.26) and his wife’s income ($ 48.54) as a hospital helper. In May 2020, his wife was also laid off, due to downsizing at the hospital. Guérin et al. (2021) note that various household assets got liquidated during the pandemic in rural Tamil Nadu. In May 2020, desperate to meet his expenses, Ravi had to take the drastic ¹⁶ step of pawning his wife’s gold bangles. Of the $ 97.08 he got from pawning the gold, he used $ 71.60 to pay the May instalment on the car. His father’s entire monthly pension now was repurposed to pay his children₹s school fees, medical expenditure, electricity bills and house rent. Before the pandemic, Ravi would accept only $ 18.20 from the father’s pension for the children₹s education; the father had been saving up the rest to purchase land in the village.

With no other way to sustain themselves in Kanpur from the second week of May 2020, Ravi ended up temporarily merging his household with the household of his wife’s brother in the village. He faced considerable social stigma due to this decision. Ravi’s father rebuked him, ‘It’s better to die of this wretched disease than to move in with your in-laws’. Ravi₹s father stayed on in Kanpur and used his savings and pension to meet his own medical and food expenses, while simultaneously paying for the grandchildren’s school fees, the house rent and electricity bills. Ravi’s family had to stretch their stay from the intended ten days to the end of the lockdown. Ravi felt distressed by such an unconventional, extended stay in his in-laws’ household. Nevertheless, he could not return until August 2020 when gig work was resumed in Kanpur.

In this case, the wife’s income and the father’s income were repurposed in different ways. Many respondents in Kolkata and Kanpur similarly repurposed the income and assets contributed by their wives and fathers to the household. For instance, before the pandemic, the wife’s income was typically split into two portions—the major chunk was kept in the bank ¹⁷ and the other part was retained by the wife for more discretionary spending (to meet small household expenses, for investments and pin-money, ¹⁸ and a smaller proportion to buy cosmetics). Across all households, during the pandemic, the wife stopped retaining any part of her income. Instead, because of the disruption to the husband’s income, husbands used their wife’s entire earnings to meet routine household expenses, such as rent, electricity, food, school fees and medical expenses.

Households are known to be sites of resource sharing, but often on an unequal footing between husband and wife (Mies, 2014). There is a notable distinction between how the repurposing decision was reached with regard to the wife’s income and gold as compared to the father’s pension. Although Ravi’s opinion was decisive in repurposing his wife’s income and gold, he perceived it differently, stating that ‘it’s always a mutual decision and my wife has never let me down’. Meanwhile, the father’s pension was repurposed through active consultation between father and son. Repayment of loans and purchase of vehicles was funded through pawning the wife’s gold ornaments. The amount of gold mortgaged increased substantially in comparison to pre-COVID times. Interestingly, a conscious decision was taken not to use the monthly income of working wives to repay vehicle loans, even during the pandemic.

To understand the role of male siblings or cousins in the household, let us consider the case of Satish and Pritish. Satish, a 35-year-old Uber driver, lives with his wife, child and wife’s brother in a single room apartment in Kolkata. They share the household with Satish’s elder brother, Pritish, and his family. When he could not work during the lockdown, Satish borrowed money from Pritish to pay the car loan instalment for one month. On observing Satish’s struggle, Pritish paid the instalment for four months and also handled Satish’s other expenses. Pritish characterized his support as an obligation towards the family; he interprets his action as one of reciprocity between brothers in continuation with previous fraternal acts by Satish.

The nature of kinship constrains the source from which monetary resources can be sought within the household. It is notable that Satish did not turn to his brother-in-law, who stayed in the same household and was working during this period. Satish avoided a loan from his brother-in-law because he feared that he would be branded as a good-for-nothing. People like Satish are often perceived as a guardian for the wife’s younger siblings and are obliged to provide them with shelter and food. We found that, within the household, the gig worker could only seek monetary resources from natal kin but never from marital kin. In the case of natal kin, monetary help was commonly sought during the pandemic, with the understanding that it had to be reciprocated, in either monetary or non-monetary terms. This kind of reciprocity was never expected from the wife’s siblings even in times of deep distress, such as the pandemic.

Co-resident kin within the household, both natal and marital, utilized their own networks to help each other to access work (both on-platform and off-platform). For instance, Nikhilesh (39 years), a Zomato worker in Kolkata, shares a household with his wife and her brother, Atul. In the guiding role of the brother-in-law, Nikhilesh convinced Atul about the viability of platforms as a steady income generating option. In addition, mentorship and training in how to use the platform infrastructure (mobile, application and vehicle) was often shared among male relatives (both marital and natal) in the household. Atul was further convinced because Nikhilesh, as a veteran gig worker, took on the obligation of mentoring him during onboarding, and subsequent engagements, with the platform. Atul joined Ola using his brother-in-law’s bike. We also observed collaborative use (Sam et al., 2021) of assets within the household, among both natal as well as marital kin. During the second wave (March 2021), Nikhilesh used the bike for gigs on the Zomato platform in the evening, while Atul used the bike to drive for Ola in the mornings.

Such mentorship and collaborative use proved to be essential resources that enabled both gig workers to earn and platforms to expand. Gig work became a sponge for absorbing many people who had lost income generating activities in other sectors. Meanwhile, due to the lockdowns and a speedy expansion of onboarding of new gig workers, there was an increased need for assets and training. The household emerged as a site which fed both these requirements. Consequently, during the pandemic, we observed a much greater incidence of co-resident kin from the household taking on such roles (providing access, collaborative use and mentorship).

There is broad consensus in social reproduction literature that the pandemic has provided ‘renewed visibility’ (Stevano et al., 2021, p. 271) to the role played by the household in sustaining work and value extraction in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in India (Carswell et al., 2020; Guérin et al., 2021; Mezzadri, 2019; Shah & Lerche, 2020). In this section, we extend this insight to the hitherto underexplored service sector in India, by demonstrating this in the specific case of platform-based gig work. While detailing how ‘invisible economies of care’ sustain value extraction in the Indian manufacturing sector, Shah and Lerche (2020, p. 720) argue for a need to go beyond taking gender as the primary lens to understand the crucial role of households in this process. Here we have demonstrated how obligatory ties among a variety of kin members within the household, such as reciprocity between male natal kin or marital kin, structured the types of resources that gig workers could access within the household during the pandemic. We found that while men could only seek monetary resources only from their natal kin and wife, co-resident marital kin did help each other with onboarding, shared use of assets and mentorship.

Dispersed Kinship Network

While the previous sub-section considered kin support among co-resident kin, we now consider kin relations that are spatially dispersed. An important contribution that emerged from social reproduction theory is that kin who reside in the home villages play a key reproductive role by providing ‘invisible economies of care’ for migrant workers at their sites of work, particularly during COVID-19 (Shah & Lerche, 2020, p. 720). Studies emerging from the pandemic have demonstrated that migrant workers sought shelter (Carswell et al., 2022; Shah & Lerche, 2020; Stevano et al., 2021) and depended on food grains and vegetables from villages for survival. In the absence of any economic support or care from the platforms (Medappa et al., 2020; Rakheja, 2020), many gig workers had to depend on village kin (Choudhary & Sherishi, 2022). However, in our study we found that gig workers avoided asking for loans from blood relatives in the villages and from in-laws. Any request to dispersed kin in the village for credit to tide over a lack of income carried the danger of loss of face through being labelled a nikamma (good-for-nothing).

In this sub-section, we elaborate on the reproductive role of dispersed kin in the cities. Gig workers also relied on dispersed kin, specifically those dwelling in cities, for non-monetary resources such as mentorship to access gig work or managing economic transactions within the platform ecosystem. For instance, during the pandemic, Joy (23 years), then an undergraduate student in Kolkata, joined Zomato at the insistence of Michael, an elder cousin who was a veteran Zomato worker. Although Joy was initially reluctant to take up gig work, Michael reminded him that this income would be crucial for Joy’s family since his father was no longer able to work due to post-COVID-19 health complications. Michael also explicitly assured Joy₹s mother that he would ensure that his younger cousin would not face any danger or have to discontinue his education due to gig work. After convincing Joy and his parents, Michael referred Joy for work in Zomato. Such referral activity has been studied in the context of gig work through the prism of economic incentives (Komarraju et al., 2022). In contrast, here we have tried to foreground the relational significance of mentorship by dispersed urban kin in gig work referrals. Like co-resident kin, dispersed urban kin too provided crucial mentorship for work in the gig economy. This gendered mentoring takes the form of dispersed urban male kin (linked through both blood and marriage) teaching each other specific skills like driving, using mobile phones, and accessing the internet.

In this sub-section, we reoriented the analytical lens towards dispersed kin living in the same city, who provided crucial non-monetary resources such as mentorship and active networking for gig work. Significantly, their reproductive role involved access to key resources through collaborative use. Unlike the formal training centres described by Gooptu (2013) in her study of service workers in India, here the platforms did not invest in either training infrastructure or assets, such as cars and bikes, and so these had to be provided by dispersed kin living in the same city.

Neighbourhood relations

Neighbourhood networks performed a crucial reproductive function for gig workers by facilitating access to different resources (such as interest-free and interest-based loans, mentorship, cooked food, sanitizers and masks) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neighbourhoods are structured differently in both cities. In Kanpur, a conventional neighbourhood is called a mohalla. Typically, a mohalla is large, encompasses multiple intersecting streets and is heterogeneous in terms of class and caste but homogenous in terms of religion. In Kolkata, on the other hand, the term ‘locality’ is used to refer to neighbourhoods. In comparison to the mohalla, the ‘locality’ is smaller, clustered around a neighbourhood club, ¹⁹ and is homogenous in terms of class but heterogenous in terms of caste and religion. Neighbourhood credit practices were marked by different social logics in these cities. While neighbourhood borrowing was shaped by caste in Kanpur, it was shaped by common migratory routes in Kolkata. Neighbourhood networks also provided vital non-monetary resources, such as mentorship and collaborative use of assets. Significantly, gig workers also accessed non-monetary resources (such as vaccinations, food, masks and sanitizers) through neighbourhood-level mobilization by a variety of institutions (such as local authorities, religious and charitable groups). Consequently, it was important to consider not just the networks but their active participation in the neighbourhood to understand how the social reproduction of resident gig workers was sustained over time.

Credit was an important monetary resource and gig workers accessed loans on either a for-interest basis or an interest-free basis (where only the principal needed to be repaid). Gig workers have been turning to neighbourhood lenders because they have found it challenging to access loans from formal institutions such as banks. During the pandemic, unstable conditions also compelled gig workers to borrow small amounts at frequent intervals. Since borrowing money from village kin involved heavy censure, the neighbourhood became the only source for this kind of credit. For interest-based loans gig workers approached neighbourhood money lenders, whereas for interest-free loans they approached neighbours with whom they shared ‘good neighbouring’ relations (Perren et al., 2004, p. 967). Across both cities and both categories of credit, we observed that reputation was an important consideration in gauging the creditworthiness of a prospective borrower. It is important to understand that creditworthiness depended on the ‘good reputation’ of not only the individual who borrowed, but also the ‘good reputation’ of their family. Reflecting the literature on neighbouring (Peren et al., 2004), we found that ‘good reputation’ was evaluated through behaviour of the family in day-to-day neighbourhood interactions, their regular participation in neighbourhood events, and their past reputation in the neighbourhood.

Moneylenders charged similar interest rates (maximum of 7 per cent per month) during the pandemic in both Kanpur and Kolkata. In both cities, we found that such moneylenders had political patronage, and their wealth was derived from multiple sources (inheritance/ agricultural land/ government job /business). There were, however, significant differences in for-profit money lending arrangements between the two cities. In Kanpur, moneylending was organized at the mohalla level and so the scale of their operations was much more limited (both in terms of lower amounts lent and fewer creditors interacted with). In contrast, in Kolkata, informal moneylenders operate at a larger spatial level (often at the ward ²⁰ level, where a sole lender caters to multiple localities) and have many clients. In Kanpur, we found that gig workers obtained loans based on a combination of caste ranking and common neighbourhood ties. Meanwhile in Kolkata, gig workers obtained loans based on a combination of common villages of origin and urban neighbourhood ties.

In Kanpur, gig workers took for-profit loans from moneylenders belonging to the same caste or from higher castes. For instance, 40-year-old Narsim drives for Ola in Kanpur. During the second devastating wave of COVID-19, from April to June 2021, he had no income. Narsim had already depleted his savings (held in bank deposits, gold and land) in October 2019 to purchase the car he used for gig work. Unable to save again and reluctant to sell his only asset, Narsim turned to borrowing money for sheer survival. Narsim approached Ajanta, a mohalla moneylender. Both Ajanta and Narsim belong to the Valmiki community, a historically deprived caste (and a Scheduled Caste [SC]) that has not been able to gain upward mobility due to a lack of material resources combined with a lack of political influence. Narsim borrowed $ 12.14 from Ajanta every week from April to June 2021. Ajanta decided to lend these amounts because although Narsim did not have any material collateral, he was known to him, both as a neighbour and as a caste brother. Respondents from Kanpur explicitly stated that because of the shame and social sanctions involved, even during the pandemic they were unable to borrow from anyone belonging to a caste ranked lower than their own. Our findings from Kanpur are similar to those of other anthropological studies on debt in India, where debt relations were found to be structured along caste hierarchies (Guérin, 2014; Guérin, et al., 2021).

In Kolkata, migration history seemed to be a more important factor—considerable emphasis was placed on borrowing from moneylenders who have similar village roots. Both gig workers and moneylenders preferred that the other party should belong to the same rural area. Even intergenerational migration links were valued. A typical Kolkata migrant ‘locality’ comprises people who have all moved to the city from neighbouring villages of origin. During the pandemic, gig workers were borrowing relatively small amounts ($ 121.35–$ 1213.54). Consequently, these loans involved only a guarantor and a paper contract, but no collateral. The shared regional identity, and the fact that they lived in the same neighbourhood, were both crucial to gig workers in securing for-profit loans from the ward-level moneylender. For instance, after the first lockdown, Krishna (32 years) bought a motorcycle to start driving for Swiggy and Uber Moto. ²¹ In order to buy the vehicle, Krishna borrowed $ 776.67 from Sardar, a ward-level moneylender. As Krishna stated proudly, ‘Sardar doesn’t help ²² any loafer or harami [crook]’. As a young man just starting out, Krishna was able to borrow such a large amount from Sardar primarily because both their grandfathers had migrated from the same village in Bihar. Sardar belongs to the lower ranking Dusadh caste, while Krishna belongs to the relatively higher ranking Bhumihar caste. As elsewhere, in the village caste shapes access to credit. However, since both Sardar and Krishna were born in Kolkata, most caste-based restrictions, other than for marriages and ritual practices, had disappeared. The diminishing importance of caste on the organization of neighbourhood lending in Kolkata reflects the observations of Carswell and De Neve (2014), who found that caste-based economic dependencies were watered down with migration to cities.

Other than relying on interest-based loans, during the pandemic gig workers were compelled to frequently seek interest-free credit. For this, they turned to their neighbours to borrow money in a way that was cheap (interest-free) and flexible (not strictly time-sensitive). Borrowing from neighbours could not be done with the same frequency as borrowing from moneylenders. The borrower’s reputation in the neighbourhood served as collateral for this kind of lending. In Kolkata, we encountered Bimal Mondal (37 years), who had lent money to multiple gig workers (and other neighbours) in his ‘locality’ on an interest-free basis. Bimal’s idea of a good borrower was similar to that of the moneylender who lent money on interest. For Bimal, a bad borrower has a ‘selfish’ attitude. Bimal clarified this expression in the context of COVID-19, ‘We as a community came together and the ones who stayed away from initiatives of distribution of ration or masks can be described as selfish locals’. Bimal is an Uber driver himself and also rents out vehicles to other gig workers in the neighbourhood.

The influence of caste on interest-free lending in Kanpur and Kolkata was different in nature. In Kanpur, neighbourhood relations facilitated interest-free loans on the basis of caste lines. gig workers only borrowed from individuals belonging to higher castes or the same caste. Narsim stated that non-interest monetary help can only be sought from neighbours from the same caste. He added that even within the same caste, the borrower’s lending history and family reputation matters. In Kolkata, the situation was more complex. For instance, Bimal belongs to a SC, and yet borrowers of all castes and classes came to him for help. Bimal claims, ‘Nobody sees the Mondal ²³ , Bimal da ²⁴ is what they call me’. This kind of philanthropic lending helps Bimal accumulate a good reputation in the neighbourhood and blurs the stigma attached to his caste.

Thus, neighbourhoods in both cities facilitated interest-based and interest-free borrowing and lending practices. The lending pattern in both cities was shaped by acts of goodwill, borrowers’ community engagement and one’s family reputation. The process of evaluating to who is a good neighbour and subsequently likely to be a good borrower is a continuous one. For interest lending in both cities is marked by different socialities: in Kanpur it was shaped primarily by caste and mohalla ties, while in Kolkata it was shaped by common migratory roots and ‘locality’ ties. Similar to interest-based loans, for interest-free lending in Kanpur, people only borrowed from a person of same caste or higher caste. In case of interest-free loans in Kolkata the situation was more complex. Although lending and borrowing took place across all castes, when a person belonging to a lower caste lend money to someone one from a relatively higher caste, the lender took it as an indicator of their upward social mobility and gaining social status.

Neighbourhoods also functioned as sites of social reproduction and value extraction because they generated non-monetary resources for workers. In addition to household and dispersed kin, urban neighbourhood relations also provided non-monetary support for gig work, including access to such work, platform-specific mentorship and access to vaccinations, safety equipment and COVID-19 related relief initiatives. We can take the case of Guddu (24 years) from Kolkata, who started working with Swiggy during the pandemic. Guddu was introduced to the platform by his neighbour, Mahanta (22 years), when they had a chance encounter at the ‘locality club’. At that point, Guddu was desperately seeking work since his mother, the sole earning member of the family, had lost her job after contracting COVID-19. The neighbours started sharing the same vehicle for their gigs. Mahanta would drive the bike for Zomato in the morning and afternoon shifts (from 8 am to 6 pm), while Guddu would drive it for Swiggy in the evening shift (from 6.30 pm to 2 am). Mahanta actively mentored Guddu in the initial few days, by calling him up at almost every hour to see how he was managing work. Collaborative use and sharing of assets can deepen altruistic ties, but conflict can emerge too. This arrangement between the neighbours continued for a month, after which they fell out over the maintenance of the bike.

The notion that onboarding of new gig workers is easy is a faulty assumption common to both popular discourse (Alton, 2018) and academic literature on platforms (Schor & Attwood-Charles, 2017). It works on the flawed logic that platforms expand the geographical scale of existing labour markets, and that the technology is supposed to enable the supply and demand for labour to meet each other, irrespective of their geographic location (Graham et al., 2017). This implies that, to a large degree, platforms are impervious to local conditions and forms of sociality. A related argument is that unlike other types of work, gig workers face no, or low, entry barriers to platforms. As a result, gig work is considered less vulnerable to the barriers that plague other labour markets. These narratives implicitly assume that the platform either eliminates or minimizes the need for social contact in order to gain access to employment. However, the cases discussed above illustrate that neighbourhood relations (in addition to family ties) were crucial for obtaining gig work during the pandemic. The neighbourhood fostered local solidarities which, in turn, aided the gig worker to cope with unemployment and underemployment. This finding is in line with literature from urban sociology. Zhao and Jin (2020) note that neighbourhood contacts were crucial for urban migrants seeking employment in Beijing. This influence was very clear in both of our field sites, where through the mentorship provided by neighbours, gig workers could understand how to enter the platform ecosystem and how to procure the means (a referral, uniform, bag, vehicle, mobile and internet connection) to participate in this economy.

Gig workers also accessed crucial COVID-specific non-monetary resources at the neighbourhood level. For instance, in February 2021 there was a tremendous public concern about contracting COVID-19 through gig workers, who were labelled super-spreaders. At the national level, the government and platforms came together to insist on mandatory vaccinations for gig workers. While platforms did not make any arrangements to facilitate vaccination, neighbourhood networks stepped in to help. A councillor ²⁵ from Kolkata said that it was only in July 2021 that the municipal corporation began to vaccinate gig workers on a priority basis under the category of super-spreaders. To be identified as a super-spreader eligible for vaccination, gig workers depended on political patronage at the ‘ward’ level. This patronage was accessed through local networks. The councillor boasted, ‘We got 19 gig workers vaccinated last month on a single day, they were all from our ward’.

In addition to vaccination drives, our fieldwork findings illustrate the role of religious organizations and charitable institutions in activating neighbourhood networks for disbursement of non-monetary relief. For instance, a Gurudwara in Kanpur and a mosque in Kolkata provided cooked food (daily) or rations (occasionally) to gig workers, irrespective of their religious affiliation. Their community kitchens also served as recruitment grounds to platforms. Existing gig workers would encourage manufacturing and construction workers visiting these centres to join digital service platforms. Some charitable institutions (run by local elites) even distributed masks and sanitizers in the neighbourhood; these commodities became vital for gig work when platforms made them mandatory for work. These non-monetary resources made sure that the gig worker survived and could follow the COVID-19 related mandates imposed by the state and the platforms. In turn, this helped the platforms to maintain a viable workforce on the ground and accrue value, even during the pandemic.

The neighbourhood thus shaped how gig workers survived the pandemic—it offered economic aid, mentorship and access to gig work and pandemic related non-monetary resources crucial for gig work. Access to monetary resources was shaped by past acts of goodwill and a communitarian spirit. Reputation was gauged from a temporal aspect. Gig workers and their families needed to be seen to be constantly engaging in ‘good neighbouring’ acts and maintain good rapport with others in the neighbourhood. Throughout the pandemic, neighbourhood relations were crucial for the provisioning of care and support for gig workers.

Work-related Ties

We now turn to the significance of different relations of work in gig workers’ coping strategies. We found three distinct types of work-related ties that were invoked during the pandemic: other gig workers (co-workers), co-residing workers from the same sector and employers and owners of assets who leased out their vehicles. Since other workers were experiencing tremendous strain themselves, gig workers could not use work-related ties to access credit. However, co-workers shared COVID-19 related protocols, information on containment zones and details on vaccination acquisition over Telegram and WhatsApp groups. We also found that many gig workers co-resided with one another. Such co-residents provided a crucial safety net when gig workers could not pay for food or rent. Although employers and asset owners could not provide money, they helped gig workers access food and education for children. They also tried to facilitate the return of gig workers who had migrated out of the city during the lockdowns.

Gig workers regularly interacted with other gig workers in common informal waiting areas within the city. Consequently, we might conceptualize them as co-workers. The relationship between co-workers in platform work has been studied using the category of fictive kinship (Lalvani, 2019). In our field sites, this form of kinship shaped the frequency and type of interactions amongst them. This fictive kinship (Lalvani, 2019) was formalized, for instance, by referring to the co-worker as an honorary ‘elder brother’. In Kolkata, gig workers use the term dada while the term bhaiya is used in Kanpur. In Kolkata we also encountered a different type of sociality, where recognition was given to the experience accumulated by a co-worker in internet and phone operations and in navigating the city. Such co-workers, who could be younger or older, were honoured through the English term ‘boss’. These forms of co-worker relations became essential to accrue vital non-monetary support during the pandemic. In both Kanpur and Kolkata, gig workers helped one another cultivate social ties to access valuable resources of knowledge, skill and risk mitigation strategies.

Rather than seeking financial help from a co-worker, gig workers only sought non-financial assistance from one another during the pandemic. For instance, co-workers contributed to the informal networks (online and offline) through which off-platform ride details, information on economic help and other work opportunities were shared. Co-workers actively shared COVID-19 related updates and notifications related to vaccinations in WhatsApp and Telegram groups. For instance, Vikas, a 31-year-old Zomato worker in Kolkata, told us that co-workers would share news about containment zones on these groups. He explained that this information was crucial at a time when the demarcation of containment zones by the city administration changed rapidly and erratically. Although platforms would erroneously accept orders from containment zones, gig workers would warn their co-workers as well as the platform itself based on their own real time updates on mobility constraints. Thus, work-related ties became vital for not only sustenance of gig work but for the sustenance of platform dependent service itself.

Another category of work-related ties was that of co-resident workers from the same sector. In both cities, a significant number of gig workers were found to be co-residing with people working in the same sector. This is a distinct category of ties which is not simply characterized by friendship but also by the conditions of co-residence and working in the same sector. Particularly in the ride hailing sector, in both cities gig workers shared living quarters with others who identified themselves as ‘drivers’. The co-resident could be a non-platform cab driver or a gig worker. The continuation of these room-sharing arrangements was crucial during the lockdown, when only a few roommates could still afford to pay their share of rent. Yet, those who could no longer afford rent were not asked to leave immediately. Instead, other co-residents would try to pool resources to help cover the gig worker’s share of the rent for a brief period (typically up to a couple of months).

Since platform work was slow during the lockdown, gig workers could also access information about any other non-platform work in the same sector. Co-resident gig workers also shared their cars with each other when they were not working, so that the other person would have a chance to earn some income during the lean period. Off-platform ride informations was shared throughout the pandemic. If a co-resident was unavailable for a ride booked through personal networks, he would pass on this information to a co-resident gig worker. Rather than being just an altruistic act, such sharing enabled these co-residents to retain their common living space and sustain the rate at which gig workers rent cars in the city. Co-residents also cared for the car that was assigned by the asset owner to the gig worker, untill the latter returned to the village during the pandemic.

Finally, ties with asset owners (the gaadi malik) and past employers served as an important source of support. In contrast to the rhetoric of individually owned assets used for gig work (Schor & Attwood-Charles, 2017), in our field sites we found multiple sharing arrangements. Platforms are often accused of creating rentier capitalism (Sadowski, 2020), but in practice we found that platforms also actively harnessed pre-existing rentier networks. These rentier networks not only provided the essential asset for gig work, they also provided non-monetary aid to the gig worker and their family during the pandemic. Thus, we found pre-existing forms of sociality, embodied in the figure of the asset owner and the past employer, providing care and support for gig workers during this time of distress.

The gaadi malik was a key figure in facilitating gig work in both cities. This person either rented out his vehicle on a daily rate or employed a gig worker on a monthly basis. Rather than being a strictly transactional relationship, interactions between the gaadi malik and the gig worker were driven by reciprocity during the pandemic. For instance, since many gig workers had fled from the city to their villages, the Kanpur gaadi maaliks substituted them by recruiting new drivers from their own neighbourhood. The gaadi malik himself had to repay loans on cars and could not afford to leave the car idle. However, due to their moral obligation to the old gig worker, the gaadi maalik only recruited the new drivers on a temporary basis until the original driver returned from the village. During the pandemic, gig workers frequently turned to the gaadi maalik for loans. However, only some gig workers managed to procure money from the gaadi maalik. Nonetheless, the gaadi maalik was expected to extend solidarity in other ways. For instance, Rajnish (42 years), an Uber driver in Kanpur, sent his daughter to the gaadi maalik’s home so she could attend online classes from August 2020. Since his own family was not assured of three meals a day, he appreciated that the gaadi maalik would also feed his daughter when she went over to his house for these online classes.

In both cities, erstwhile employers also played a vital role in aiding gig workers during the pandemic. For instance, Ganesh (36 years) rides a motorbike for Uber and delivers food for Zomato in Kolkata. Ganesh procured the motorbike as a gift from his previous employer, a doctor who had employed Ganesh as a personal driver in Kolkata from 2012 to 2021. When the doctor relocated to Mumbai, Ganesh lost the job and entered platform work. While parting, the doctor gifted him a used two-wheeler. Ganesh stated that the doctor’s daughter guided him through the registration process with Zomato over a WhatsApp video call. Erstwhile employers helped gig workers by providing food provisions, COVID-19 related provisions, gifts of small amounts of money, mobile phones and mobile recharge coupons.

Labour sociologists have long argued that it is important to consider reciprocal moral obligations between employers and employees (Carswell & De Neve, 2014). Our ethnographic evidence illustrates how moral obligations, stemming from work-related ties from both current and past employment, were crucial for the sustenance of gig workers and their ability to work for platforms during the pandemic. Further, we found that social relations between gig workers and the gaadi malik were characterized by reciprocity. Although the exchange of monetary resources was uncommon, we found various forms of sharing and reciprocity amongst co-workers, asset owners and ex-employers. The reproductive role played by such work-related ties provided social security and support that was vital to sustain gig work and to revitalize platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.