Dear MEL Topic Readers,
You can hire house help in 15 minutes in India. But is the system fair?
Domestic workers perform a variety of household services, such as cleaning
and household maintenance, cooking, laundry, and caring for children and
elderly dependents. In India, domestic work is traditionally low-paid,
insecure, and unregulated. Now, online, on-demand home services are becoming popular
in large cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, where there are a lot of house
owners who are often too busy doing other things (or just lazy) to perform
household chores. These services are just like on-demand ride-hailing services like
Uber, whose apps provide information about available workers with ratings, the
time of arrival, and the price. Once the service is booked, the selected worker
goes to the place at the expected time, performs the services, and leaves. If
they arrive late or receive a poor review, penalties are deducted from their quoted
payments. Such services certainly create gig-work opportunities and clearer pay
schemes for individual workers, but they tend to put too much pressure on them.
Should the performance quality be maintained by rewards or penalties? In any
case, India’s online house-help platform is another on-demand service that
engages users and service providers through smartphones.
Read the article and learn about this rising on-demand household service in
India.
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