Low Wage in High Tech

Low Wage in High Tech focuses on the lives and livelihoods of housekeepers, drivers, and security guards who work in India's multinational technology firms. These call centers and software firms are housed in gleaming corporate towers within lavish special economic zones; spaces which have become symbolic of new, sanitized, technology-driven development regimes. However little is known about the workers who are responsible for the daily maintenance of these multinational corporate spaces. The book assesses the impact of the growth of multinational technology firms on low wage service workers, arguing that these workers stand out in several ways. They are highly visible because they work in organizational sites which are distinctively associated with wealth, progress, and promise. Despite their backgrounds, they also have the desire and imagined possibility of joining those included in India's economic miracle. Yet they experience social and economic barriers, which continually threaten to perpetuate long established cycles of poverty and in this sense they are left standing outside the "new India" which their places of work represent. The rich ethnographic narratives combined with institutional and policy analysis make this book methodologically as well as empirically unique.