Are some gig platforms reviving colonial-era servitude?

It is hard to find a railway porter (coolie) these days. The iconic helpers clad in red were relied upon to carry heavy luggage and expertly navigate the chaos of an Indian railway station.

- VANDANA VASUDEVAN

They have largely vanished since the arrival of wheeled trolleys and escalators. Technology packed them off. Ironically, last week, technology brought back a new kind of coolie to Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar. A new service called CarryMen allows shoppers to book a man who will hold your shopping bags. Clad in orange T-shirts, they can carry up to 12kg for 30 minutes for a payment of ₹79. Additional services include providing umbrellas, folding-chairs and power banks so that consumers can shop and never drop.

It is starkly reminiscent of the punkha-wallahs, bhishtis and coolies of the British Raj—the invisible ‘natives’ who pulled fan strings for memsaabs in hot Indian summers, carried water in sheep-skin pouches while running along with the sahib’s entourage or transported luggage on their heads. In Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel, he writes “...the coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away.”

Small mercies that the CarryMan walks straight and alongside the memsaab in 21st century India, according to the service's poster. However, the spirit of hyper-convenience for the privileged while the physical burden is passed on to a poorer person remains the same.