App Alert: Don't Scream At The Gig Worker

There is little dignity of labour in India. Some startups want to change that

- Devina Sengupta

Few months ago, he accepted a ride request from a lady customer. She had to be picked from Kolkata’s Central Avenue but his map showed the pickup location on a parallel lane, 70 meters away. “I could not move ahead because the road was dug up and I requested her to walk towards the car," Farhan recalls.

And then, all hell broke loose.

“She started yelling at me and threatened to complain. I still picked her up and drove her to the destination. She gave me a low rating, which brought down my overall grade from 4.88 to 4.75," Farhan says.

Most gig platforms work on a continuous feedback mechanism. In Uber, for instance, both riders and drivers rate each other after every ride. A consistently poor rating can impact the work a gig worker gets. On the other hand, badly behaved customers, with a low rating, may have difficulty using the platform.

An upset Farhan also rated the lady customer poorly. “We work on commission basis and poor performance will lead to fewer customers. I get five-10 customers who use foul language every month and every time, I have raised complaints against them," he says.

Being verbally abused is a common grouse these days for nearly every gig worker at the bottom of India’s labour pyramid. And although many industry watchers now hate to colour-code them, these workers are often classified as ‘blue-collared’. The ‘white-collared’, in comparison, do work that requires higher cognitive abilities.