Author Archives: Ambika Tandon

Ambika Tandon is a feminist researcher and activist working at the intersection of labour and technology. She is currently a PhD candidate in human geography at the University of Cambridge, and has worked with the Centre for Internet and Society, India, and AWID.
at2063@cam.ac.uk
The picture is composed of three separate images. The first shows a woman with medium length black hair in a blue saree. The second shows a man with black hair and a white patterned shirt holding a mike. The third shows a man with a white shirt and grey trousers addressing a gathering.

Platform Workers’ Organizing Diaries: Messages from Union Organizers to Researchers

Javed Siddiqui, Abdul Nayeem, Ambika Tandon, Anushree Gupta, Eesha Kunduri, Isha Bhallamudi, Manju Goel August 3, 2026
यह सामग्री हिंदी में भी उपलब्ध है।
ಈ ವಿಷಯವು ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಲಭ್ಯವಿದೆ.
ఈ కంటెంట్ తెలుగులో కూడా అందుబాటులో ఉంది.
Listen to a reading of this post.

This article is the fifth and final post in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network . Read the introduction to the series here, the second post in the series here, the third post here and the fourth post here. Collectivization, unionization, and resistance by platform workers form prominent themes in emerging scholarship on platform work, with exciting new collaborations taking place between researchers, platform workers, and gig worker unions. As more researchers join these ranks, we are attentive to the risks of research fatigue and exhaustion faced by gig workers and organizers, who receive numerous requests for interviews and other forms of data collection. When practiced non-extractively, this space opens up possibilities for researchers to collaborate and co-create resources that are useful to unions and workers in their mission to win basic work rights and establish dignity of work. (read more...)

share
Two photographs taken from behind workers sitting in labor meetings, one labeled "Kolkata, 2025", the other "Delhi, 2024."

Writing About/With Platform Unions: The Role of Culture, Politics, and History

Ambika Tandon, Debopriya Shome, Kaveri Medappa January 28, 2026
Listen to a reading of this post.

This article is the second in a series about gig and platform worker unions in India written by members of the Labor Tech Research Network. Read the introduction to the series here. This post offers a worm’s-eye view of the tensions and opportunities shaping platform labour organising in contemporary India. Platform work has exposed larger numbers of workers, especially younger workers with little memory or experience of organizing, to mobilize against capital and to do so using innovative means and campaigns (Wadikar, 2025). Building upon literature on platform workers’ mobilization in India (Ray and John, 2025), we highlight how efforts to organize emerge within regionally specific terrains of culture, politics and histories of labour mobilization. Through three vignettes, we bring the everyday together with the cultural, political histories and contexts of three metropolitan Indian cities – Bengaluru, Delhi and Kolkata, cities in which we have lived and engaged in research and activism with platform workers. Spanning between 2019 and 2025, these vignettes reflect the political landscape in India. They shed light on the capital–state nexus that limits the power of workers, unionization efforts built on foundations of loyalty and often exclusionary hypermasculine politics. What are the tensions and contradictions that we confronted while doing research with ‘gig’ worker unions? How do we navigate making certain aspects of unionizing visible while muting others? How can we be less extractive and more useful to the workers we write about? (read more...)

share