Gig Workers Are Being Stabbed, Stoned, and Abused in India | Hacker News Reader

Gig Workers Are Being Stabbed, Stoned, and Abused in India

wired.com

55 pointsBrajeshwar39 comments

As a Latin-American I believe there is something more than 'India' going on here.

There is the overall incompetence of governments so common all over the underdeveloped countries. This causes incompetent and corrupt police and that causes impunity to criminals and danger to the weakest and most fragile in society.

You'll find lots of similar stories in other poor/corrupt countries, from Latin America to Africa, from Indonesia to Brazil.

Although caste and religious violence is a very Indian thing, for sure.

You are right. I can confirm that South Africa has similar problems. A few Uber and Bolt drivers have met sad ends. My nephew a driver has been robbed a few times. Both Uber and Bolt allow you to pay in cash so drivers are targeted for the cash and phone. Some areas are just a no go at night for drivers.

> (Uber India spokesperson Ruchica Tomar says that they reached out to Devi as soon as they were made aware of the incident. The Uber app has an “in-app emergency button through which the driver can directly call the local police,” Tomar says, adding that Uber’s records show Devi didn’t use it after her attack.)

Why even publish such hollow meaningless drivel? Wired is pathetic.

Devi "tried calling Uber" only for them to respond "a few days later." Criticizing someone for calling their ersatz employer when badly injured on the job is not the high road.

Also, the article claims Uber is lying:

"Uber spokesperson Tomar says that the company gave Devi financial support to cover her loss of earnings as a result of the incident, and that the company 'helped her claim her medical expenses under Uber’s on-trip insurance policy, which covers all drivers on the app.' Devi claims that both the insurance money and Uber’s financial support for her loss of earnings haven’t made it into her bank account."

Company well known to be unethical with a long history of unethical behavior behaves unethically. The only people surprised, briefly, are the Uber employees who work hard to quickly forget this to justify continuing to work for Uber.

There are lots of reasons someone might not want police to show up.

I'd also like to add that the crime rate is so high in India that a lot of folks don't even bother reporting crime because the system is overwhelmed and nothing will likely ever be done about it, let alone whilst it's happening.

There is a running troupe in indian comedy movies that in western world if you are having trouble, you call police, they come & you feel good because help is here. In India if you are in trouble, and by chance police arrives, you are like I am already in trouble & now on top that police too is here (implying trouble is gonna get bigger).

People don’t call the police in India.

The police showing up well after everything has gone down is a well worn cliche that is parodied in nearly every movie that comes out of the country.

The only problem with the cliche is that it understated how terrible it is to call the police.

The police will first harass the victim engaging them in hours of bureaucracy and paperwork even as they may be bleeding to death. If they don’t give them the answers they want (in some cases the cops may not want the case because it will hurt their numbers, since they don’t actually solve any cases), they will then take the next step of harassing the witnesses and good samaritans they may have called. And then, the final step is to simply pin the blame on the good samaritans themselves.

Just dropping in a “Call the police” button in India and pretending that’s a solution of any sort is the biggest indication that they don’t care about their workers on whose backs they’re making their profits at all.

What do you expect from Uber? How can Uber deal with that level of unsafety? Should they then leave and leave another company do the same or even less?

> how can Uber deal with that level of unsafety

Ban racist customers. Ensure benefits get to the victim’s bank account.

They have a rating system for their customers and will go after users with low ratings. No normal taxi company does that.

> have a rating system for their customers and will go after users with low ratings

Low ratings and racism or violence are categorically different. A single substantiated allegation (e.g. backed up with video) should result in a ban. It does in America.

Also, the article claims they do not go after users with low ratings.

> Ban racist customers

Well that sounds simple! How do you test against racism at scale, make people pass some kind of a test?

What does this even have to do with racism? Feels like some kind of projection, tbh

So it sounds to me like this isn't Uber's fault and there's probably nothing they can realistically do to solve this problem.

they could develop an 'uber for security services'.

small monthly fee, paid out to whoever responds if you press a panic button.

It would probably be a lot better than the current policing system. Though the actual police might have more avenues to show their displeasure than taxi unions.

That is possible, but directly challenges the states monopoly on violence in an organized way AND means we have to admit that society has become a cyberpunk dystopia that is way less cool than any of the fiction I read.

modern problems, right? Accepting the truth is step one.

How does the rate of violence compare to non-gig workers doing similar work?

I'd be surprised if such incidences ratr is high in south India compared to Ganges plains. Delhi and its surrounding areas are infamous for such crimes, gig or non gig workers.

> Delhi and its surrounding areas are infamous for such crimes

“Violent crimes are particularly [prevalent] in Eastern India, Northeast India, National Capital Region (India). Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh” [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_union_terri...

Hey I was gonna make a sarcastic comment asking the same thing, you beat me to it! Welp, back to disrupting everything and ignoring the negative effects that we don't have to experience ourselves I guess.

I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, because doesn't the answer really change how we approach the problem? If it is unique to gig work, that really changes how we deal with it.

Ever since I heard the story behind India's Daughter [1] I became hyper-aware of the seriousness of violence in India. Since then I have heard of a lot of social and political issues going on there. The problem is huge and goes all the way to the top levels of government. I really have no idea how Indians could begin to untangle it all. From what I've seen, anyone with the educations and means is looking to get out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India's_Daughter

I don't think you need to be that paranoid about India. It's a very safe and free country to live in. Not everyone wants to get out looking for work. But with a large population like India, there ought to be some problems that are inevitable. And like any country you have to be careful while visiting as a tourist.

> I don't think you need to be that paranoid about India. It's a very safe and free country to live in. Not everyone wants to get out looking for work. But with a large population like India, there ought to be some problems that are inevitable. And like any country you have to be careful while visiting as a tourist.

There are laws(official and unofficial, where vigilantes act with impunity) against "love jihad", this is enough for me to know how free this country is.

> And like any country you have to be careful while visiting as a tourist.

I don't understand what you mean by any country. I think every country i've visited so far has been safer than my home country. So in my case at least, no, i didn't have to be particularly careful as a tourist, in fact i've needed less care when being abroad than when being at home.

These things are bound to happen when 80% of the population lives on less than 120$ a month.

Source: Indus Valley Report 2023

And government provides wheat and rice to those people at less than a dollar a month. India is pretty much a socialist country.

what do you mean 'pretty much'? The word 'socialist' is literally in our constitution.

> India is pretty much a socialist country.

I take this as an example that anyone that uses the words "socialist", "capitalist" and "fascist" in derogatory terms doesn't have a very good understanding of what these words mean.

What makes you think he's used it in a derogatory way?

Tech companies are not responsible for organizing India's safety. Feels like a unwarranted attack on Uber and such. It's great if they help, and of course would be disgusting if they don't care but in the end it's India's job to get their act together.

Doesn't mean that Ubers handling of customers or workers can be a lot better.

It is quite common for employers being responsible for employee safety and there’s a lot of good arguments for saying that platforms relationships with gig workers are employer-employee.

Yeah for work events like safe work environment. Not for fixing a police system.

I worked for a nice SF company. I had to take bart to get there, which felt like the least safe thing I've ever really done in my life. Then I had to walk past people on the street that made me feel less safe than that anywhere else in the world I've been, but atleast I was outside and could run if I needed to, which I can't on bart.

For those wondering like me what "bart" might be in this context, it seems to be the heavy rail "Bay Area Rapid Transit" system in San Francisco, California.

Yes, sorry, it's the metro train system in the SF Bay area. Supposedly has its own dedicated police force but you rarely see them on tracks or on the trains.

When I was riding BART around 2014.. 3 people died that year on the trains.

1 person stabbed to death from random altercation. 1 person punched and fell and cracked their head open. 1 person was in altercation, pushed and cut their knee on the floor. Died of infection from incident.

> unwarranted attack on Uber

Uber did itself no favours by lying to the reporter:

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