“There’s no ghost in the machine!: A field study of platform workers’ experiences of algorithmic management in India” is a research study conducted by the Centre for Labour Studies, National Law School of India University and IT for Change, supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. It examines how algorithmic management shapes platform work in India—through targets, ratings, surveillance, and data-driven control.
Algorithmic management has become a defining feature of India's platform economy, cutting work assignments into quantifiable components, enabling continuous data-based surveillance, and requiring workers to remain tethered to online platforms as a mandatory precondition for obtaining work.
Interviews with workers and union organizers reveal two critical findings concerning platform work in India today. First, workers experience a regime of machinic dispossession characterized by the despotism of algorithmically-set targets, the tyranny of ratings, and pervasive data surveillance that impedes collective action. Second, the worker’s navigation of these algorithmic assemblages entails pervasive algorithmic anxiety and the erosion of their autonomy.
The conversation around the regulation of algorithmic management systems is mostly framed as the need for enshrining obligations of transparency or explainability – that of seeing inside the technical system and understanding the pathways that led to its decision. This policy report turns the spotlight onto decoding the workings of the algorithm itself, adopting a socio-technical perspective that recognizes algorithmic systems not as autonomous boss-bots but as assemblages where humans and algorithms intersect and create complex relationships of power and control.
This report lays out recommendations for future-looking algorithmic regulation that meaningfully redistributes power and control over these assemblages. Recommendations address accountability beyond individualised and case-by-case transparency measures, worker-centric data governance & algorithmic design, and worker-first digital industrial policy.
Read the full report here.