Work From Home is a facility anchored in a certain degree of privilege, and a few assumptions. One the employee will have a laptop, a steady wifi, no powercuts as well a dedicated space at home with silence and no distraction. In most desi homes these are not a given. Will companies also pay for the internet and the coffee? Or these are built in to the pay structures? As we make #WFH normal, these are questions to wrap our heads around.

This is the era of surveillance capitalism, and over the last couple of days there has been incriminating articles in the HuffPost India regarding the creation of an Orwellian state. There is nothing to create, we are in the age of Pegasus where Bezos’s phone can be compromised. There are retina scans at airports, finger prints everywhere and we are datafied. Where ever I have lived, each entry and exit, transactions and the granular details have been mapped. Indian academics carrying OCI cards have been very vocal, and the arguments have a point. The question however is, why are they not contesting bio politics in their adopted lands or is all their activism dedicated to South Asia, obviously most of them are poco scholars working with ‘marginalised communities’ here.

Data security and privacy is an imperative in the digital era, however most of us are simply oblivious or simply not even aware of the rights and redressal mechanisms. The effort should start with the education.