Toxic work culture is upwardly mobile

A sewer is the world's least desired workplace. Yet blocked sewers and septic tanks make up the daily place of work for over 700,000 Indians known as manual scavengers, a profession that is officially supposed to be banned in India.

- KANIKA DATTA

A minuscule proportion of such workers get to use the giant cleaning machines that their counterparts in the West can depend on to do their work every day. In the past five years, over 300 Indians, overwhelmingly from among the lowest castes and backward communities, died by drowning or asphyxiation in the line of duty.

Slightly more fortunate than them are the almost 4 million waste pickers for whom a day at the office constitutes picking through a city's refuse without basic equipment such as gloves and masks that their Western counterparts take for granted to protect them from the fumes of burning garbage and hazardous material, from leaking batteries to discarded syringes and broken glass.

Further up the "value chain" is the smaller cohort of gig workers - cab drivers and delivery boys attached to platforms that command huge valuations from the private equity/venture capital community and on the stock markets. A survey in March revealed that most work more than eight hours a day and about a fifth reported working 12 hours a day. All of them work without benefits. This template is critical to the success of platform owners' business model.