Latest news with #VandanaVasudevan
New Indian Express
11-07-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
Gig Zone's Give and Take
'We need to talk…about deals starting at R29'. Early mornings of Gen Z and millennials are often about waking up to smart lines like these. Sent by multiple food delivery applications such as Swiggy and Zomato, ordering online is not restricted to food delivery applications. E-commerce platform Amazon, registered 1.1 billion customer visits during its Great Indian Festival sale in 2023. [legitimising a shift in the mentality of Indian consumers from going to the market to buying things online – both swiggy n amazon happening online so where's the shift – delete this part ]. Urban studies expert Vandana Vasudevan's new book, OTP Please Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia (Penguin), studies data from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to show how the culture is driving change in the lives of buyers, sellers, and workers of the gig economy. Free from the kitchen 'The biggest change food delivery applications and its workers have brought in the lives of a working person, especially a woman, is freedom,' says Vasudevan. Her book cites the example of Shobha Raani, a cyber café owner in Patna, who orders food for herself every weekend afternoon as she is exhausted after managing her own business. 'Earlier, women had to sweat it out in the kitchen in case they had sudden guests. They now have the freedom to order in food. On the one hand, this saves time, and on the other, it pushes women, at least in the urban space, towards more creative things,' Vasudevan adds. This freedom has also impacted singles, men and women. 'Living alone is suddenly a lot easier and an option for a lot of people. They can buy any kind of food they want online. They are free from the struggles of cooking food every day,' says Vasudevan. The pain and struggle This new-found independence has a downside—for the workers of the gig economy. 'Many jobs were lost during COVID-19. This economy offered new opportunities so that they could earn and take care of their families. However, there are many incidents of delivery partners meeting with accidents as they have to speed their bikes to deliver food/groceries fast,' she says. Recently, both the Rajasthan and Karnataka state governments introduced measures to protect the well-being of gig workers. Vasudevan welcomes these policies as they will ensure the safety of workers and give their jobs security—after all, they are major stakeholders in this economy. Workers and their families are often deprived of accidental insurance if they are involved in a mishap in the course of the job, she points out.
The Wire
03-07-2025
- Business
- The Wire
A Culture of Excess? What the Ease of Food Delivery Has Done to Our Eating Habits
Excerpted from OTP Please!: Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia by Vandana Vasudevan. Growing up in Mussoorie, smoking was an occasional, furtive indulgence for Aarav Tiwari, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer in the Supreme Court. He would join his friends at a local paan shop and puff away, secure in the knowledge that their parents had no idea about their antics. Even in law school, about five or six years ago, he would only light up by walking to the corner shop and getting a smoke. Vandana Vasudevan OTP Please!: Online Buyers, Sellers and Gig Workers in South Asia Penguin Random House India, 2025 When he is at the court, he doesn't carry a packet. He has a deal with the paan shop around the corner, where he has paid the panwallah for twenty cigarettes in advance. Every time he goes and smokes one or two, the pan wallah sends him a message on WhatsApp to record how many cigarettes are down, and when it is zero, Aarav renews the deal. 'This helps me restrict my smokes because I have to make an effort to go down and buy a cigarette. If I had a packet, I would pull it out and light up.' But at home, when he orders through a quick commerce app, one can't order separate sticks, so it is always a complete packet. How would he have managed the late-night cravings for a cigarette without the apps? 'Well, if the delivery system was not there and I had a craving for a smoke at midnight, I guess I would have just turned over and slept. Of course, I wouldn't leave home and start searching for cigarettes at that hour. It would be too much of an effort.' There's a moment's pause, and he admits, 'Obviously, one smokes more, I guess. Because it has become so readily accessible.' In a sub-Reddit group of Gurugram, a young man seeks help to escape the grip that food delivery apps seem to have on him: I am a working male. I'm addicted to ordering food from Zomato & Swiggy. I have been trying to quit/keep it in check for 2 years now but to no avail. I order in almost daily even though I live with my parents and food is cooked at home. Sometimes twice a day. The ordering experience has become too smooth imo [in my opinion]. Fixing a meal for yourself takes effort, and the bland taste of home-cooked food, as compared to the junk that I order, also doesn't help. The repercussions are multi-pronged. This is affecting my physical, mental as well as financial health. I have tried a lot of things like uninstalling the apps, not renewing gold (membership), and eating before I'm hungry, but I end up coming back. I'm still trying. There must be others dealing with the same issue. Please share tips. Sub-Reddit groups of different Indian cities have threads by young working folks worried about health and high prices of ordering restaurant food but unable or unwilling to cook. A woman in Bengaluru living in a co-living arrangement without amenities or time to cook is sick of ordering healthy food on Zomato. She asks for recommendations for a meal service that will supply mainly salads. A man in Chandigarh is worried and seeks suggestions for newer restaurants in the city to break the ennui he feels because of frequent ordering. With delivery at one's fingertips, it is accessible for children who have grown up with mobiles since they were toddlers. During the pandemic, Zomato sent an email targeted at children titled 'Hey, parents not letting you order?' encouraging kids to order food secretly. The mail helpfully provided a cheat sheet to the kids to convince their parents to let them order. One of the tips was that kids should patiently wait until their parents fell asleep, then sneak in the order and enjoy it in their room quietly. The marketing campaign was roundly criticized for encouraging children to be sneaky and secretive. The campaign went live in August 2020 when no vaccine was in sight. Parents were angry that in their hurry to pick up the order and run in before being spotted, kids were liable to be negligent about the usual precautionary measures of sanitizing the packaging surfaces. Prof. R.S. Khare, a pioneering sociocultural anthropologist and a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, now eighty-seven, has written about how moderation is a fundamental gastronomic principle of the Indic civilization. Portion control was inbuilt as it was impossible to have too much of so many dishes. Dietary balance was embedded in the ideal of niyamita ahara or a regulated meal. Overeating was both morally undesirable and personally harmful. Fasts were a way to control meals among Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. A Buddhist monk can eat only the amount necessary to sustain life. A Jain monk is not to be bothered with taste or any aspect of the food except that it is edible and available. From there to a whole nation ordering enough biryanis in 2023 via Zomato to fill eight Qutub Minars, as the company humorously noted that year, we have indeed come a long way.
