LOW–END DTP SERVICES IN SOUTH ASIA: BLINDSPOT IN DIGITAL LABOUR DISCOURSE?

The paper focuses on the low–end DTP shops catering to common people and small organisations in the city of Kolkata. Beyond the specialised work of designing various kinds of visual material, the worker here typically does a lot of ‘computer jobs’: typing, printing and some online work. Labour here is characterised by informality at various levels: job–based payment, absence of legal contracts, lack of minimum wage and social security, absence of unionism, recycling, outdated hardware, ‘jugaad’, piracy, etc. I show how the ‘located sociality’ of the traditional bazaar conditions livelihood, creativity and the everyday technoculture in this sector, where digital capitalism’s emphasis on obsolescence and IP is interrogated by practices of repair, recycling and piracy. The paper presents the reasons why this sector has remained a blindspot in the digital labour discourses. It demonstrates how this sector has a complicated relationship with the state and the capital, bearing a ‘social in the digital’ that poses a threat to these institutions, but at the same time being a site of the e–waste coming from economically advanced countries. Lastly, I look into some of the current efforts of the Indian state that aim at appropriating/formalising this informal bazaar of digital production.