Anatomy Of The Lazy Economy

When WALL:E first saw the morbidly obese inhabitants of the spaceship Axiom, bound to their floating chairs, their whole existence automated; it gave us a glimpse of a grotesque world. Our world. Not precisely as visualised in the animated film but close enough to the truth to make us go in our pants. The good news: There's probably an app that'll deliver a clean-up crew in a Domino's-minute. And another that'll deliver fresh pants with a 10% discount if you are an existing Uber customer. Christopher Orr of The Atlantic summed up the Pixar film's moral in his review as "...the seductions of comfort and importance of effort, the proper relationship between man and machine, the need to clean up our own mess..." And, perhaps unwittingly, raised a question that's never been more pertinent given the digital age's uninhibited consumerism.

Is the tech-enabled, on-demand economy turning humanity into an equally terrifying version of life on the Axiom?

The answer is yes and no.

Emergence of the Uber Class

Citing convenience, time and traffic as cause to outsource our entire lives, large swathes of upwardly-mobile, urban classes are becoming, to an ever larger degree, wholly-dependent on digital platforms that deliver everything and anything short of a Bengal tiger to your doorstep. With the proliferation of on-demand firms 'within a day or week' has become 'now, or I go to the next guy'. As Balachandar .R of Wassup, a Chennai-headquartered hybrid laundry platform, says, "People demand pick-up in the next 10 minutes in Mumbai! A city that's a logistical nightmare." These factors have led to the creation of a class of impatient, intolerably entitled consumer species who couldn't be bothered with even the most unthreatening of life's mundanities like shopping offline for carrots or hailing taxis or cleaning the fridge.

Now, to be fair, India has always been an on-demand economy. Here labour is cheap and plenty. Desk or doorstep service is a given not a luxury. Privileged folk are all too familiar with the concept of Jeeves, a man-Friday who's just a snap away. We even have people to fetch papers from the copy machine two cubicles away. This is a country where, as Future Brand's Santosh Desai puts it, "an Alto will have a chauffeur." What the likes of Amazon, Uber, errand service startups like Russsh (formerly GetMyPeon), service aggregators like UrbanClap, food, search, order and delivery platforms like Zomato, FreshMenu, TinyOwl, etc, have done is give us all, people armed with smartphones packed with apps an opportunity to live and feel, however illusionary, like spoilt fat cats; Eat, sleep, self-improvement, play with hard-earned kill, update Facebook, look scornfully at lesser species, be pampered by personal head-scratchers, repeat. Even if we aren't shoo-ins for citizenship on Axiom, yet, we're hopelessly addicted to being served; whatever, whenever and wherever we want. TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington has an intriguing solution to nip this potential epidemic of selective lethargy in the bud; "I propose an anti-venom for this trend: Inconvenience-as-a-service. Someone please build an app that actually makes it more frustrating, more arduous or just more logistically complex for me to get what I'm after."

On-demand evangelists tell us it's 'time' they're selling by allowing us to increasingly outsource avoidable tasks which lie at the bottom of the work-pyramid. Thus we have monikers like Timesaverz. But that just leaves us with one niggling question: what are we doing with all that freed time? The answer, often, is pursuing a life upgrade, a superior existence with time and inclination to spare for non-functional needs and what we perceive as the 'important things'. Like discovering a little cafe that you can boast about on social media like a proud Columbus who thinks he found the Indies. The digital economy, says Desai, besides offering so much, so easily, allows for "reallocation and expansion of effort wherever there's more reward." And there's no reward in doing the dishes.

Rise of the Working Class

As the uber-class swells so does the section of humanity bound to serve it. Irving Wladawsky-Berger asked in a Wall Street Journal piece; "Is this good or bad for the world? Does this mean that we're seeing the rise of a medieval-kind of feudalism, or simply the market's invisible hand creating a new way for millions to find work?" These millions now include a growing number from this country. Freelance workers from home-chefs to digital dhobis and the thousands of smartphone-brandishing delivery men (over 1,00,000) and "errand executives" or "pickup & delivery associates" plying Indian streets like ground-bound human drones collecting and depositing others' loads, gadgets, divorce papers and everything in between. A newborn digital working-class.

Like its unorganised predecessor this working-class has minimal protection from upheavals in the market and companies' fortunes. (In July over 400 delivery men went on strike over wages, working conditions, hours and inadequate facilities.) However, competition, high visibility and the scrutiny these new age industries are under might ensure they're protected and even afforded the dignity of labour that as Indians we've traditionally robbed certain sections of the working classes of.

Hyper-local startups, says Balachandran, are "rebranding the existing, unregulated on-demand industry and modernising it. Wassup is giving dhobis (11 million at last count) a platform to upgrade. My pitch to our network of dhobis is that they need a brand platform." Not just to organise so wages are standardised and rights safeguarded, but also to improve their lot in life. For instance, a dhobi who recently joined the network signed up on one condition - he wanted a corporate identity card. Since he belongs to a "dhobi family", desirable social status in his community has been elusive. However, working for a company would change that and perhaps even help him find a bride, he reckoned. Four months later he walked into Wassup's office with his wedding invitation. Companies might do well to remind consumers that it's not just a package through the door.

Delhi-based startup Million Kitchen, a home food delivery service, is not just providing restaurant-fatigued professionals and only-weekend-chefs a taste of homemade food, but also empowering women. From maids who've made it an additional source of income to mothers whose sons own BMWs but she's never had a bank account to a mother who bought her child a watch, for the first time with her own money. Currently, there's only one man on Million Kitchen's roster. These women, and man, are partners, stakeholders, "it's not just a food delivery company" says Million Kitchen's Pratik Kumar. So far the service has grown on the back of quality, word-of-mouth and stories of Sunita aunty's mutton curry. Chandni Malik has dabbled in the hyper-local food delivery services, both as a consumer and contributor. She believes urban consumers have become less motivated to go out and do the hard work. But, on the other hand, "that irreversible consumer transformation is affecting change that's helping some people understand the value of their work and get what they deserve."

As relentless consumers, we've conditioned ourselves to think 'not a person, just an app'. Perhaps now is a good time for companies that belong to this collaborative, on-demand industry to humanise their brands. Before the new economy becomes an exploitative digital serfdom where a few are at the beck and call of many Axiom blobs.

(Published in Brand Equity - The Economic Times)