Low Wage in High Tech: An Ethnography of Service Workers in Global India (Issues of Globalization:Case Studies in Contemporary Anthropology)

Featuring rich ethnographic narratives combined with institutional and policy analyses, Low Wage in High Tech assesses the impact of the growth of multinational technology firms on low-wage service workers. It provides a unique look at the lives and livelihoods of housekeepers, drivers, and security guards who work in these firms. Despite working for wealthy global corporations that are distinctively associated with progress and promise, service employees often work extremely long hours, at low wages, with no health or pension benefits, and few prospects for social or economic mobility as a result. While they may have the hope of joining those included in India's economic miracle, these workers also experience social and economic barriers that continually threaten to perpetuate long-established cycles of poverty. In this sense, they are excluded from the "new India" that their places of work represent. Low Wage in High Tech presents these workers' stories of immobility and exclusion, giving them a long-overdue voice and representation in the research on India's technology boom.

Kiran Mirchandani is Professor in the Adult Education and Community Development Program at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Sanjukta Mukherjee is Associate Professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at DePaul University, USA.

Shruti Tambe is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Centre for Advanced Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University, India.