As part of her Marie Jahoda Visiting Fellowship (2022), Sudipa Sarkar investigated ‘The Impact of Digitalisation of Work on Disadvantaged Social Groups: Evidence from Indian Data’.
Specifically, the topic of her fellowship was investigating the impact of digitalisation on the caste inequality in the labour market in India. The tasks carried out by workers on the job serve as valuable indicators of the direction and impact of technological advancements. Routine repetitive tasks have been identified as particularly vulnerable to technological innovation, while non-routine tasks are considered to be at a lower risk. This fellowship looked at the task contents of occupations in India and compare them for workers belonging to different social groups or castes (a social and hierarchical stratification system that has existed for centuries in India).