Nothing, apparently. Not for the present moment, at least.
Because how does a transgender sex worker, who earns their livelihood through cheap and dangerous sex work with cisgender"straight" men, under bridges and in other public spaces after night has fallen, "work from home"?
In this time of lockdowns and social distancing, can we pause for a moment and think, without judgment, about people whose livelihoods, and very existence even, depend on physical contact:
Sex work, benedictions, and begging
That trifecta was identified by Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, a transgender activist and community organizer in Hyderabad. Now imagine the additional stigma when you bring into this mix marginalized communities such as gay men and transgender persons.
A couple of days ago, I received an urgent WhatsApp missive from Vyjayanti. Broadly, and among other things, she urged:
"India Inc. must adopt laid-off, retrenched, unemployed, and structurally excluded queer, gender nonbinary/gender nonconforming, transgender persons in need, as their traditional livelihoods of begging, benedictions and sex work stand decimated now in the epoch of this global pandemic."
In my world on WhatsApp groups, where hundreds of messages are constantly vying for my attention, this painful yet well-articulated dispatch from her jumped to the front of the line. She was broadcasting the suffering of a community that few are willing to stand up for.
Eventually, The Pain Will Visit Everyone
Yet, we know that transgender sex workers are not alone in this suffering: daily wage labourers, small business owners, people in the gig economy, and even tech giants are all impacted. I call this the trickle-up effect: as the economy grinds to a halt at the bottom, there's less money available to spend overall, and this ripple effect keeps working its way upwards. Which means digital economies are not untouchable.
But for now, I seem to be protected: I work for CRM giant, a company that's often lauded as one of the four horsemen of the digital transformation economy, and I get to work in the comfort of my home, with my income and lifestyle preserved. Legions of workers like me in tech hubs across the world share my comfortable plight. Aside from complaining about our free will being taken away from us, we don't have a whole lot else to gripe about.
But spare a thought for your friendly Swiggy delivery person or Uber driver. What about construction workers and other daily wage earners? And yes: what about sex workers and panhandlers? We can't just look the other way and let them starve and die while we're in lockdown for God only knows how long.
Bill Gates Said So
We've all watched this astonishingly prescient TED talk by Bill Gates from 2015, where he seems to predict so much of what's unfolding in front of our eyes at the moment. He cogently argues for what governments and corporations should do to protect our society from the shocks of such a viral outbreak. Yet even he wasn't able to bring into focus the plight of people whose economic existence doesn't depend on being chained to a desk and a computer all day.
How Do We Digitally Transform Everybody's Livelihoods?
This is not a frivolous question, and I admit I don't have all the answers. But COVID-19 is exactly the perfect storm that was needed to get government, policymakers, community-based organizations, and even tech giants, to think about this:
When the next round of lockdowns and social distancing measures come into effect, are we prepared as a society to quickly adjust and move forward, or are we going to be caught with our pants down again (as the situation we currently find ourselves in so amply demonstrates)?
What will the future of digital transformation look like for these digital refugees: people whose jobs involve tactile work and body contact? How can we help them adapt and thrive in a new paradigm, where the world as we know it today has been upended? The future of our society depends on the answers to these pressing questions.