{"id":2908,"date":"2026-03-23T16:28:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2026-03-23T16:28:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:28:25","slug":"no-space-no-power-no-support-what-life-is-really-like-for-indian-it-workers-serving-global-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/2026\/03\/23\/no-space-no-power-no-support-what-life-is-really-like-for-indian-it-workers-serving-global-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"No space, no power, no support \u2013 what life is really like for Indian IT workers serving global firms"},"content":{"rendered":"

India\u2019s IT workers play a crucial role in supporting global technology systems, yet many face challenging remote working conditions, including overcrowded homes, unreliable power and limited internet bandwidth. Vivek Soundararajan<\/span><\/span><\/a>, Professor of Work and Equality at the University of Bath<\/span><\/span>, explains how the shift to remote working has transferred costs from companies to workers, highlighting inequalities and prompting protests for stronger labour protections.<\/em><\/p>\n

IT workers in India keep a lot of the world\u2019s technology ticking over. They may be operating your company\u2019s helpdesk, or responding to a query about your latest gadget.<\/p>\n

They may also be working from home. And in India\u2019s IT hubs, like\u00a0Bangalore<\/a>, Chennai or Hyderabad, this is likely to be from a cramped apartment filled with backup battery systems the workers have paid for themselves.<\/p>\n

For despite often working for some of the biggest companies in the world, research I carried out with colleagues shows that working conditions for many of India\u2019s IT workers are\u00a0far from pleasant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ever since COVID, the pros and cons of remote working have been tested across the world. In some places, for some people, a switch to hybrid or fully remote working represents a degree of freedom and self-determination.<\/p>\n

But not everywhere. So what does working from home actually look like for the 5 million Indian IT professionals who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running?<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges is space. In India, more than half of the population live with\u00a0members of their extended family<\/a>. Many of the 51 workers we interviewed share their homes with children, parents, grandparents and in-laws \u2013 all squeezed into small apartments which now double up as offices.<\/p>\n

For them, remote working means organising large family groups in small spaces so that one person can have a quiet corner in which to work.<\/p>\n

A professional background for a video call required careful choreography in a crowded household with two rooms where babies might be crying next to elderly relatives with medical complaints.<\/p>\n

For the workers we spoke to who had care responsibilities for various family members, the juggling required was extraordinary. We were told of profound knock-on effects for family life, with chaotic mealtimes and evenings hijacked by calls.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the biggest challenge we learned about was to do with basic infrastructure. Power cuts are routine in many Indian cities. Internet bandwidth, shared among other family members working or studying from home, is often unreliable.<\/p>\n

We met many IT professionals, doing identical work to their counterparts in London or San Francisco, who had spent their own money on domestic backup power systems so they could stay online. During home visits, we saw battery units occupying valuable domestic space on balconies, in hallways and porches \u2013 equipment these homes were never designed to hold. A proper unit \u2013 the kind needed to run a laptop, router, and fan through India\u2019s routine power cuts \u2013 costs up to \u00a3400, roughly equivalent to a month\u2019s take-home pay for a junior IT worker.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, internet bandwidth had to be carefully rationed. Television schedules were reorganised around work calls. Most meetings defaulted to audio-only, with video reserved for special occasions.<\/p>\n

Along with power supplies and other equipment, some said workplace surveillance had also moved into their homes. One 33-year-old male IT worker said his employer\u2019s online system would \u201ccalculate how many hours you work, and which other websites you visit\u201d. He added that lapses would \u201cautomatically trigger a [message to my] manager\u201d.<\/p>\n

The surveillance extended into absurd territory. When power cuts struck \u2013 a routine occurrence \u2013 some workers were expected to prove it. A 28-year-old male engineer told us: \u201cThe boss said \u2018go out and take photos of your house and send it\u2019. He needed proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working conditions<\/h2>\n

These frustrations are not going unheard. In 2025, hundreds of IT workers\u00a0took to the streets in Bangalore<\/a>\u00a0carrying placards which read \u201cWe are not your slaves\u201d and demanding a legal right to disconnect and the enforcement of limits on working hours. When the state government proposed extending the maximum working day from ten to 12 hours,\u00a0workers protested again<\/a>. So far, India\u2019s IT sector remains exempt from key labour protections, and no right to disconnect has been brought into law.<\/p>\n

A key part of their protest was to do with workplace inequality \u2013 which had simply been relocated from the office into the home.<\/p>\n

Organisations saved on office space, utilities and equipment. Those costs didn\u2019t disappear \u2013 they were transferred to workers and their families.<\/p>\n

In some countries that might mean buying a desk. To many of the Indian IT professionals we spoke to, who keep the digital infrastructure of big western companies running, it meant investing in domestic power backup systems, rationing internet bandwidth, rearranging entire households, and absorbing the emotional toll of work without boundaries \u2013 all while managing infrastructure failures.<\/p>\n

A software developer in Bangalore with identical skills to one in Boston faces entirely different remote work realities. If remote work is to deliver on its promise, organisations and policymakers must recognise that \u201cworking from home\u201d means fundamentally different things depending on where that home is \u2013 and who bears the hidden costs of making it work.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of the IPR, nor of the University of Bath.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India\u2019s IT workers play a crucial role in supporting global technology systems, yet many face challenging remote working conditions, including overcrowded homes, unreliable power and limited internet bandwidth. Vivek Soundararajan, Professor of Work and Equality at the University of Bath,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2050,"featured_media":2909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[120,155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-development","category-public-infrastructure"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/115\/2026\/03\/No-space-no-power-no-support-\u2013-what-life-is-really-like-for-Indian-IT-workers-serving-global-firms-scaled.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/iprblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}