The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South survey data was never disclosed. Instead, local authorities uploaded only a partial list of “eligible vendors”, without explaining the criteria for eligibility or the grounds for exclusion. This violated the core provision of the Street Vendors Act, which mandates that all existing vendors identified in the survey are to be issued certificates of vending and accommodated in vending zones. Out of 1,400 vendors surveyed in-situ across Shillong, only 760 were arbitrarily deemed eligible. This was an act of digital erasure that disenfranchised nearly 50% of those who were officially documented. The consequences have been immediate and devastating. In Police Bazaar, one of Shillong’s oldest and most vibrant heritage markets, nearly 100 hawkers, about a quarter of those surveyed have already been evicted for not possessing vending certificates, despite being recorded in the digital survey. Similar patterns are emerging elsewhere, in Laitumkhrah, the projections suggest that as many as 82% of surveyed vendors risk eviction if this exclusionary model continues. Street vendors, already among the most precarious urban workers, now face new threats to their survival, mediated not through the visible apparatus of state coercion but through the silent authority of a database. 94 The administration has consistently invoked the “digital sanctity” of the system to justify these exclusions, claiming that errors are impossible because the survey was conducted online. This faith in technological infallibility has enabled a dangerous abdication of responsibility. There are no parallel non-digital processes for claims, objections, or grievance redressal effectively denying vendors the right to be heard, a fundamental principle of natural justice. Instead of empowering hawkers with a verifiable digital footprint, the system has produced an opaque database that dictates their eligibility to exist in public space. The outcome is a stark inversion of the Act’s intent. What was meant to protect livelihoods has instead become an instrument of digital dispossession. Street vendors, already among the most precarious urban workers, now face new threats to their survival, mediated not through the visible apparatus of state coercion but through the silent authority of a database. The digital survey in Shillong exemplifies how the language of transparency and efficiency can be weaponized to obscure injustice, displace accountability, and erase entire communities from the right to work with dignity. Platformed Lives: Technology, Accountability, and the Reshaping of Everyday Work The Platform Question: Power, Accountability and Global South Platform-Based Gig Work: The Illusion of Freedom While the above examples illustrate the use of publicly-funded IT systems to violate the letter of the law, digital platforms are also being projected as enablers of autonomy and flexibility as in the case of platform-based gig work. This is a digitallymediated work relationship touted to be a blessing for the unemployed as it enables freedom, flexibility and choice to work on one’s own terms. Sign in and take up a “gig” whenever you like, and ‘get off’ the platform when you don’t wish to work. But the truth could not be further. Platform aggregators frequently perpetuate traditional mechanisms of labor exploitation once the domain of contractors and factory owners, be it arbitrary wage-cuts, withholding critical information or penalising collective action. A vast, historically marginalized workforce now encounters these familiar challenges through modern veneers like application-based interfaces and performance ratings. Algorithms designed by platform aggregators enable them to control and discipline workers, to ensure that they follow the companies’ rules and cooperate with customers. They do so in two key ways, “nudge” workers to perform actions that are profitable for the company and use threats of suspension or deactivation of workers’ accounts and penalties to prevent workers from acting against the platform-companies’ protocols and policies. Documented evidence and protests against algorithms designed to surveil, manipulate, inhibit worker autonomy and control, build opaqueness, build in bias and discrimination have started to emerge. In response, the movement for gig worker rights has rightly focused on demanding transparency and unveiling the realities concealed by digital systems. Conclusion: The Reconfiguration of Power The above examples demonstrate how digital technologies are being used to redraw lines of access and dignity between the poor and the powerful. In each of these instances, databases, algorithms, and digital platforms play a central role Platform aggregators frequently perpetuate traditional mechanisms of labor exploitation once the domain of contractors and factory owners, be it arbitrary wagecuts, withholding critical information or penalising collective action. Platformed Lives: Technology, Accountability, and the Reshaping of Everyday Work 95