Moral Economy of the Digital in Transport: A Study of Ola Auto

“Indians are used to having autos around. Autos are the most ubiquitous transport in any city and it makes absolute sense for the auto-driver and commuter to get on to the platform” – Director,Marketing-Communication, OlaCabs¹.

This study looks at how digital platforms are changing the nature of on-ground experiences of transportation in Indian cities. We argue that with the increasing use of digital platforms such as mobile-apps in the provision and access of public transport, not only do moral economies play a role, but also undergo reification and transformation.

Cab-hailing services such as Uber and OlaCabs have been gaining popularity in India, demonstrated by Ola raising US$1.3 billion in funding as of January-2016². With customers, they are gaining acceptance by offering lower prices per trip. This poses a challenge to autos³, a common mode of personalized public transport⁴ otherwise considered to be inexpensive in comparison to taxicabs. Autos are legally mandated to accept any ride-requests and to run by the meter⁴. However, often rides are not accepted and a demand for a higher fare from the commuter is made⁵. In the last few years, there have been attempts to incorporate autos into the digital economy⁶. While some services have succeeded and continue to be offered, others(such as UberAuto) have been put on hold following failed pilots. A relatively successful service was started by OlaCabs in 2014- Ola-Auto. It allows auto-drivers to register with Ola, and for customers to hail autos through the Ola-app. Ola is just the platform provider, and does not own any autos. Ola-Auto has expanded now to six cities in India, even while some auto-drivers claim it is not beneficial for all, as “such experiments have failed in the past”¹. Given the relative lack of success of apps like mGaadi and UberAuto, the apparent success of Ola-Auto raises multiple questions of interest with regard to the reasons for its uptake by both passengers and auto-drivers.

In this study,we look at the moral-economy of the Ola-Auto and how it gets complicated and consequently interesting when viewed as a digital-economic practice. Our study looks at:

1. What moralities are inscribed in the technology by design that makes auto-drivers enroll in peer-to-peer digital platforms such as Ola-Auto when they can access customers directly on the road?

2. How do existing moralities in accepting rides and calculation of fares get perpetuated through the use of the Ola-Auto Platform given that sometimes autos don't want to go to certain destinations even though it would result in a fare for them?

3. How do auto-drivers negotiate and find their space/voice within the Ola-Auto App, given the peculiar manifestation of intermediation that takes place in such usage; and how does this undergo change/redefinition in the context of the moral-economy?

4. How are new moralities produced and reproduced through the usage of the Ola-Auto platform and the embedded experiences such as the driver-rating system?

While Thompson⁷ looked at the underlying shared moral values and social norms as the cause of the food riots in 18^th century, contemporary literature⁸argues that the idea of the moral-economy goes beyond the notions of morality, social justice, and fairness to include ‘conceptions of the good’ or how a ‘good society’ ought to be. Within digital-economies, underlying moralities of economic practices constructed around the digital platform deserve closer scrutiny.

With technology being seen as the basis of organisation and resource-distribution⁹, it is pertinent to note that technology is differently accessed and experienced by diverse members of the society. This experience and access is a culmination of one’s social/political/economic/institutional conditions and physical location in society¹⁰. Kent¹¹ further argues that the wetware(knowledge/experience of the digital) and cultware(physical/social environment) of the individual are critical/most-important in shaping their access and interaction with technology. Thus, these dimensions shape and inform how opportunities and constraints embed and manifest themselves within the technological context, which may result in the marginalization of certain members of the community.

In our study we adopt a qualitative-approach by engaging in participant-observation and semi-structured interviews. The participants in this study include individual auto-drivers(both users and non-users of the Ola Auto Platform), members of auto-unions, officials of Ola, state transport-officials and commuters.

In our study we look at how the digital is shifting the moral-economy of offline experiences and how the line between the online and offline is blurring. It is interesting to note that conditions that are shaped and informed by the offline(the auto-ride) influence the interactions that take place on-line(booking the auto-ride). We present the recursive relationship between the online and the offline in case of the Ola-Auto, and discuss the moralities that are thus inscribed in the technologies, and are reproduced in practice.

Notes (all links last accessed on 31-Jan-2016)

1. http://www.financialexpress.com/article/companies/rick-drivers-see-red-but-ola-auto-plans-to-expand-get-them-on-board/59639/

2. http://www.livemint.com/Companies/iIQgur9P56qEjmyR11q8EK/Ola-appoints-Raghuvesh-Sarup-as-chief-marketing-officer.html

3. Autorickshaws are popularly referred to as autos. The Motor Vehicle Act 1988 categorizes them as commercial-passenger vehicles.

4. See: CiSTUP. (2012).A Study of Autorickshaw sector in Bangalore.IISc. In 2008, while 2.7% of all vehicles were autos, they accounted for 13% of all trips made in Bangalore.

5. Fares are set by the local municipal authority in consultation with autorickshaw unions.

6. Digital-economy is broadly defined as an economy based on digital technologies. Skågeby(2015) argues that digital technologies and its associated social networks have transactional identities which are part of larger economies. See: Tapscott, D.(1996).The digital economy: Promise and peril in the age of networked intelligence(Vol. 1). New York: McGraw-Hill.; B, Imlah (2013).The concept of a digital economy.URL: http://odec.org.uk/2013/09/02/the-concept-of-a-digital-economy/; Skågeby, J.(2015).The changing shape of sharing: digital materiality and moral economies.Discover Society, (18)
   

7. Thompson, E. P.(1971).The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century.Past & present,(50),76-136.

8. See: Calabrese, A.(2005).Communication, global justice and the moral economy.Global Media and Communication,1(3), 301-315.; Murdock, G.(2013).Comm Research-Views from Europe Communication in Common.International Journal of Communication,7, 19.; Sayer, A.(2000).Moral economy and political economy.Studies in political economy,61.

9. Castells M, (2000).The Information Age: Economy, society and culture; The Rise of the Network Society, Massachusetts: Blackwell.

10. Hilbert M.(2011).The end justifies the definition: The manifold outlooks on the digital divide and their practical usefulness for policymaking.Telecommunications Policy.35(8),715-736.

11. Kent, M.(2008).Digital Divide 2.0 and the Digital Subaltern.Nebula,5(4),84-96.