Engagement y burnout en tiempos de COVID-19

During my field work, I used to ‘hang out’ frequently with a group of young and middle-aged men who were all mostly dominant caste Hindus and work in various businesses and

professional roles in Ambikapur. One is a real estate dealer, another works in the real estate construction business. A couple of them are teachers in public and/or private schools and colleges. Some of the older members of this group are retired. A few of them are

salespersons for pharmaceutical companies, while some of them own stationery or computer parts, or mobile phone repair shops. The routine was the same – they meet at one tea shop on one of the main roads of the commercial market thrice during the day - in the morning, afternoon and then again in the evening. Sometimes, for no obvious reason there would be more than 15-20 people while on other days, most members would be busy and only two or three would appear at the tea shop. Most of them are earning good money (compared to the majority of citizens I met during my stay in Ambikapur) – easily above 50,000 Indian Rupees (approximately 720 US Dollars in mid-2018) per month and have no real compulsions or urgency in their daily activities. They all belonged to Ambikapur, grew up in the city and therefore could be said to have tremendous cultural capital alongside their secure financial positions. Most of these men knew on a first name basis virtually everyone in the administration, courts, police force, not just in Ambikapur but in Surguja and sometimes even across the state of Chhattisgarh. In fact, it is through this group of friends that I easily got research access to the bureaucracy and to a wide range of people working in the state.

To my surprise, most of these men did not express much care about or interest in the internet. As far as I could see, most of them used internet infrastructure to change their personal modes of life and sociality through mobile phones and applications such as

Facebook, Instagram and cross-platform applications such as WhatsApp. The older members in the group bemoaned the stupidity of smartphones and wished to bring back the bygone era of discussions of Hindi literature, poetry and politics. One of them did use the internet to look for books on poetry and literature, or specialised canvases and paintbrushes for his art – equipment and material that was not available in Ambikapur – while another used the internet to download European art cinema and to post political content (critical of the BJP) on social media networks. However, these two were the outliers amongst the group, for they actively seek out other life-worlds to which there was absolutely no access in Ambikapur.

While their physical bodies were caught up in the humdrum of daily life in a small city (and it is easy to see it as humdrum when one has caste, cultural and economic capital), internet infrastructure (especially broadband access and digital literacy on figuring out niche

websites, using social media, piracy tools for downloading movies etc.) provided them with a portal to alternative life-worlds. In these outlier individuals, the process of subject

construction with respect to internet infrastructure was double-edged. Access to virtual life worlds was liberating, like leading a double life where the private mediated life provided enjoyment, solace and an outlet for that part of them which had no outlet in the offline world. At the same time, this very same virtual life seemed to exacerbate the ‘disconnect’

they experienced with offline social networks – the people they had grown up with, the people they knew better than anyone else, and the people they knew would be their companions for life – for better or for worse.

However, as far as I could see, most people in this local elite group of men were either interested in discussing the politics of their WhatsApp groups or sharing pictures of their family and friends, or selfies which they had posted on Facebook. For example, they had started a WhatsApp group called “Friends Forever”. In this group, the same people who would meet sometimes thrice a day in a tea shop, would perform sociality for the benefit of the larger WhatsApp group. In this group, sides would be taken against some and in favour of others, ‘fights’ would occur over banal issues (for example, ‘why wasn’t I invited to X’s birthday party’) and then compromises made to resolve the disagreement. Snide remarks were made against some while others were praised. In the physical space of the tea shop, most people would endlessly discuss the chatter and banter of the WhatsApp group and complain about each other’s online behaviour or tease each other. And then the

conversations in the tea shop would find their way back into the WhatsApp group. An everyday circular sociality had formed around this extremely male-centric group. These sets of everyday practices – selfies, sharing information and messaging on WhatsApp etc. had little overt impact on their economic or cultural situation on a daily basis. Elsewhere, I have argued that along with such relatively benign everyday practices, local elites are highly likely to share misinformation and disinformation, especially during charged occasions (elections, religious festivals, cross-border conflicts) resulting in mob violence against Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis (Banaji & Bhat, 2019).

Most of them were already absolutely dominant in Ambikapur through their caste position, their (offline) social networks and the extent to which these networks were embedded in government and business structures in Ambikapur. Everything that I observed and

everything that they told me indicates that the internet had nothing to do with this dominance and neither was the internet required to sustain it in the near future. What mattered was their social networks based on caste, which were then reflected in terms of occupation, or spatial logics – as neighbours, friends and so on. If internet infrastructure appeared at all, it would be superimposed on pre-existing offline modes of sociality and dominance, and thus their digital footprint would work to reinforce offline dominance.

Every time I brought up the subject of my research with them, they would always direct me to the villages where I could ask about these things with the Adivasis, but we rarely if ever discussed what the presence or absence of internet infrastructures meant for them. This is not to suggest that they were reluctant to disclose their thoughts on the subject. It was more the case that they had not thought about their own subject positions with respect to internet infrastructure. If they had ever thought about internet infrastructure at all, it was as bystanders – internet connectivity, internet infrastructure, the discourse of development – all of this was meant for others who lived and suffered elsewhere.

A young man, the son of one of my key informants was interested in buying a tablet to read digital books. He had ordered some e-books on Amazon and had downloaded some free publications already. He was not sure which tablet had the best characteristics for the price he was willing to pay. To make matters worse, he bemoaned the fact that there were no proper distribution, storage and other logistical systems for online delivery of goods in Ambikapur. His order on Amazon would take weeks to arrive. A few days later, he was scanning a few different identity cards, and uploading them to a service called DigiLocker, a digital locker service provided by the central government under the banner of ‘Digital India’⁷⁵. In order to upload his own documents digitally as well as to store digital documents

75 Nikhil Agarwal. ‘What is DigiLocker and how to use it to carry all documents on your mobile phone’. (2018, August 10). Livemint. Retrieved from:

https://www.livemint.com/Technology/vt7Sx2J2DTaoyVpMqsRxiM/What-is-DigiLocker-and-how-to-use-it-to-carry-all-documents.html

sent by government agencies, he had to link his digital locker with his Aadhaar (biometric identification) details. On the one hand, this would mean that his documents were apparently secure and that there would be less paperwork, but on the other hand, his personal data and hence his privacy were now vulnerable on yet another government platform.

Another young woman, just starting her Master’s degree in a college situated in the capital city of Raipur shared the complexities of negotiating with a host of smartphone applications.

She had more than 10 applications that enabled messaging, moderating on discussion forums and posts, posting photographs, posting text and so on. She also had different sets of friends who would engage with her on specific applications, so she would often juggle between several applications through the day, whilst managing different groups of people – ranging from family and friends to study groups in her university. There were several other things on her mind – the difficulties and the excitement of life in a large public university, meeting students from other backgrounds, the sexism, indifference and academic

incompetence from her teachers and administrators but also the freedom to stay up till late in the night and explore romantic relationships and her own sexuality.

In the case of these two young middle-class subjects, both of their subjective attention is significantly invested in online life. Like the media-rich teens and young people discussed by Banaji (2017), they were familiar with memes and jokes about Game of Thrones, and with the latest sporting news from around the world, and with political news from across the country. Both of them would spend significant amounts of time on their digital devices chatting with their peers and discussing all elements of their life, their dreams and

aspirations. In contrast they were alienated from what has happening in the villages merely 10-15 kilometres away from their homes. Their everyday practices of using their phones and other digital devices generated new kinds of anxieties (about privacy for example) but also generated or promised to generate new kinds of freedoms (exploring sexuality or

polyamorous relationships). These anxieties and freedoms were present with even other non-Adivasi groups in Ambikapur. In contrast to my account in the previous section, internet infrastructure here was entangled with processes of subject construction that involved using public and private infrastructure (both physical and virtual). For these well-to-do young city

folk, subject construction processes were tied to the global public sphere (for example, they were ‘interpellated’ by the global discourses on the individual subject whose privacy was at risk) whilst simultaneously negotiating with local challenges (relations with peers, local convenience, logistical flows, contrasting their own situation with their imagined counterparts in other bigger cities in India or indeed other parts of the world). It is unsurprising that subject construction processes of this type are much more tightly integrated with wider and more global media and technoscapes (Appadurai, 1990; Banaji, 2017)