On 19 March 2018, drivers of ridesharing platforms Ola and Uber from several cities in India called for an indefinite strike, affecting commuters in these cities. Among the protesting groups' core concerns was the discrepancy between what Uber and Ola had promised would be their total business, between INR 80,000 (USD 1183) and INR 125,000 (USD 1850) per month, and the actual amount the drivers – or driver-partners as these platforms call them – take home. The drivers' earnings have been consistently falling. As one of the leaders of the protest said, "Ola and Uber had given big assurances to the drivers, but today [the drivers] are unable to cover their costs. They have invested Rs 5-7 lakh [USD 7400-10,356], and were expecting to make Rs 1.5 lakh [USD 2219] a month but are unable to even make half of this."
Since 2015, the drivers on these platforms have protested, been on strike, filed legal petitions, and even resorted to self-harm, to get the government, aggregator companies, media and consumers to take their issues seriously. However, drivers' associations across cities have differed in their approach to these demands, and, until now, protested in relative isolation. The most recent call to action, one of the first such attempts to coordinate collective actions of platform drivers in several cities, did not meet with much success, reflecting not only the difficulty digital service workers have in organising, but also how uniquely each Indian city's taxi transport sector has emerged. The protest had the most impact in Mumbai, due to the political strength of the Maharashtra Navnirman Vahatuk Sena, the transport union of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a Marathi nationalist political party, in the city. Yet, while drivers' associations may be splintered by city and local economic histories, their grievances with platforms echo common sentiments. Yet few media reports have been able to capture the content and spirit of these demands, often running the risk of caricaturing the drivers as urban poor lacking any agency.