Indian IT professionals bear unseen costs of multinational companies’ shift to home-based working

Research from the University of Bath exposes the overlooked burdens of remote working in the Global South, revealing how it transfers economic, physiological and emotional strain to Indian IT workers supporting global firms.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 51 Indian IT professionals*, the research reveals how remote work demands adaptations going far beyond setting up a home office or managing work-life boundaries. 

Workers are balancing the needs of multigenerational households in small living spaces, adjusting daily routines, managing frequent power outages and unreliable internet connectivity, navigating pervasive surveillance technologies, and sharing constrained internet bandwidth among several family members.

The research shows that while organisations benefit from reduced operational costs, they often transfer infrastructural responsibilities to employees, without adequate support. Workers even reported installing industrial-grade power backups in regions with unreliable power.

“In the Global South, where infrastructure is volatile and homes are often shared with extended family, the burden of making remote work viable falls disproportionately on entire households,” said Professor Vivek Soundararajan, from the University of Bath’s School of Management, who led the study.

The study, published in the Journal of Economic Geography, highlights five key dimensions of how IT workers have to adapt their households at multiple levels to sustain professional work, namely space, time, technical, surveillance, and emotional. 

“Remote work's big promise was that talent could work from anywhere but it didn’t eliminate workplace inequality, it just moved it into the home," said Professor Soundararajan.

"Indian IT professionals - doing identical jobs to their counterparts in London or New York- spend their salaries on industrial backup power systems, negotiate with apartment associations over equipment installations, and coordinate elaborate family schedules just to stay online.” 

India’s IT sector employs 5.80 million professionals. They supply remote services to multinational clients across finance, healthcare, retail and government.

“Our findings call for a rethink of remote work policies, one that integrates home as an integral component of productive work,” said co-author Dr Pankhuri Agarwal. “Organisations and policymakers must recognise that home/remote working is not inherently equitable or flexible.

“Family structure and housing arrangements are completely different to the Global North and pose very different remote working challenges. Companies must better understand the realities on the ground for remote work if they want to protect worker wellbeing.”

The researchers say that while 'infrastructural volatility' is a condition endemic to the Global South it is increasingly relevant worldwide, as climate change and economic pressures strain infrastructure globally, including the UK. 

The research was supported by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and contributes to emerging debates on the geography of work, digital capitalism, and the future of labour in post-pandemic economies https://embed-dignity.com/.

Remote work and reorganisation of household infrastructure in the Global South: insights from the Indian Information Technology industry is published in the Journal of Economic Geography.