XFH / ‘Anything From Home’: Are Society, Economy, Labour Ready?

Viiveck Verma Dec 23, 2020

It surprises none anymore to say one has little need to leave home often. In this new co-COVID world, I wake up to groceries and a newspaper delivered to my doorstep before I sit at a laptop to get to the office. I have a meeting on Zoom, after which I browse for some nice headphones on Amazon and perhaps a new shirt on Instagram. Somewhere in the house, someone is attending school while someone else is in a virtual satsang. Later, my barber will set up my living room for my monthly trim as usual. Once he’s cleaned up the place, the family and I will join our friends via Teleparty for a movie night. For a certain section of society, the new co-COVID world order means XFH — anything from home.

Well, almost anything. While private sector services have been quick to advertise themselves as providing customers with XFH, the public sector has been slower to do so. A lack of digitisation of administrative processes as well as the infamous red-tape has forced administrative departments’ hands. There has been little innovation in this regard. Rather, public departments work around the problem by simply forcing their employees to risk infection and attend office or by declaring a holiday. Such a paradox that the State — a body created specifically for unconditional reliance (no pun intended) during collective emergencies — cannot deliver when citizens need it most.

That being said, as much as it is necessary to introduce to the public sector, XFH isn’t without its hazards. As most things in the current economy go, XFH is only possible for one section of society at the expense of another.For some XFH means receiving all services in the home; for others, it means delivering these services to other people’s homes. In the latter group are the millions ensuring our food comes in from the farm to the mandi to the market, also the service sector workers we call home for maalish and pedicures, and even the safai karamcharis, construction workers, policemen, and countless others who’s work infrastructure cannot possibly exist in the home. XFH is the privilege of a small class while providing it is the bread-and-butter of the rest of society.

The divide between manual and intellectual labour in our economy is not new. Physical exertion is considered “unskilled” labour while “skilled” professions fetch much higher prestige. Goes without saying that the market rates for a day’s manual labour and a day’s intellectual labour are not nearly at par. The universality of this means that we’ve begun to take it for granted. Perhaps if we question this distinction it’ll show itself in all its ridiculousness. There is no real reason to assume that manual labour can be done by just about anyone and only intellectual labour requires skilling. I’ll invite anyone who thinks a construction worker should not make as much as a doctor to live in a house they’ve made themselves.

And XFH culture only worsens this divide. Those who can get anything done from home, do. Those who cannot must risk losing their livelihoods, their lives, or both. That is not to demonize the XFH culture. It is necessary that we ensure that any and all functions that can be conducted without contact are facilitated so. However, the current unequal distribution of resources requires that the privilege of XFH is also distributed unequally. XFH is not the problem; it’s hazardous unequal distribution is.

Manual labour is not the only fraction with the short end of the XFH stick. On the one hand, many working men have reported preferring WFH over the office. It has been especially beneficial to fathers who may now spend more time around their kids. Even people with motor or sensory disabilities reported an increased ease from not having to commute and being able to control the environment in which they work. On the other hand, women reported preferring the office over XFH; it didn’t serve them for the line between home and work to be blurred.

It is not a new revelation that women with higher access to public spaces are safer and have more financial independence. Being able to step out of the house means to step away (to some degree, for a while) from maintenance and caregiving roles. Now, XFH means that the woman of the house becomes truly of the house, finding no escape from the chores that fall automatically in her bucket. Women reported a decrease in their personal job satisfaction due to the constant disturbance during work hours due to household activities.

Data from 16 Indian metros showed that there has also been a 8.2% increase in the number of working hours per day and an increase in the number of meetings. On a graver note, instances of domestic abuse have also risen greatly now that survivors are forced to live in close quarters with their abusers 24x7. All these factors combined do not bode well for working women. When female workforce participation was already declining before the lockdown, the future seems bleak for gender equality in WFH workspace. Yet again, XFH has consequences for those already on lower rungs.

In May 2020 itself, 90% employees from the IT sector were already working from home. 75% of TCS employees are to be permanently working from home till 2025. At home, my groceries have just arrived and my barber has finished setting up the living room. XFH is definitely here to stay. The house is the new universe for many things we’d only ever thought of as “public”. We brought in the chunks of “public life” that could make their way into our private space. But for those who couldn’t, XFH has proven to worsen existing burdens of inequality. And thus, XFH poses the newest conundrum in India’s co-COVID story — What does a society do when unprepared for necessary changes? What to do when one person’s necessity is another’s wreckage? Only time will tell.