Comment by alephnerd
15 days ago
> Murmu, 26, is a content moderator for a global technology company, logging on from her village in India’s Jharkhand state
> With just four months left on her contract, which pays about £260 a month
Earning US$350/mo working remotely in a village in one of the poorest states in India is an extremely competitive given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast fashion for Zara earning US$130-150/mo [0], doing bit piece ag labor for around US$100/mo and participating in MGNREGA for US$50/mo, become a housewife, or become a Naxalite/Maoist insurgent to earn a couple thousand dollars when surrendering [1].
Content moderation means interacting with extremely depressing and horrid content, but someone needs to do it, and once models get good enough we would start seeing articles about how "all the good 100% remote first jobs with no barrier to entry" are being automated to oblivion.
Yes it sucks, but the alternative is becoming a migrant worker or working in light manufacturing where QoL is worse. Heck, we used to see similar articles about Chinese workers for Apple barely 14 years ago in then equally poor Sichuan [2], but you don't see those kinds of articles anymore.
Development takes time and the fact that US$350/mo remote data annotation and content moderation jobs are now penetrating into villages in what used to be the Naxalite/Maoist/Red Corridor where bombings and gun battles were a part of normal life just 10 years ago [3] is a massive step up developmentally - it means that there is robust enough internet, literacy, banking, and public services penetration for the seeds for a services economy to form.
Edit: Thanks for the downvotes westerners - my family is from these kinds of villages in India and Vietnam. The alternatives are extremely bleak - especially for a tribal woman like Ms Murmu at the bottom of the social and patriarchal hierarchy.
[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/industries-finally-return...
[1] - https://www.thehansindia.com/news/national/18-yr-old-maoist-...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-...
[3] - https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2016/Nov/23/six-maoi...
>>given that the alternative would be spending 12 hours sewing fast ...
That is the best case scenario. Mostly women roll beedis(a kind of needle sized cigar) on which you get like 1 paise per 10 rolls or something like that. Or worse do assorted labor chores which can really sap one's soul real fast.
Even with all that women actually have it a lot better than men. Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
Just drive 30 kms North of Bangalore, and you will see abject poverty scenes. People scavenging bovine dung for fuel, children with flies, no clothing. The ever present scene is always that of an elderly person with pencil thin legs wearing shorts he likely is wearing since a decade with nothing but boiled rice and salt water+turmeric to eat daily. 8 - 10 hr power cuts are the norm, that is if you can afford electricity at all. Most health care is either entirely absent, or you have to travel to the nearest metro and hope you don't die out of hunger getting treatment there. I could go on but that is life here.
£260 a month is actually great for some place like this.
I agree with you completely, but I'm confused by this phrase?
>Men literally die and are reborn every day in most parts of India.
Lots of really dangerous jobs. Like working brick kiln, physical strenuous work which requires eod alcoholism etc.
There is an argument.
but maybe you have an idea of how manual labor feels (people always do some of it) but no idea how this type of horror feels and what it does.
The alternatives in these kinds of villages in rural Jharkhand's tribal and red corridor are literally
1.) bit-piece agriculture work for the local landlord who will never pay salaries on time because he has the power
2.) migrate to the nearest big city (in this case Ranchi, Dhanbad, or Patna) and work at a factory for 12 hours a week with the exact same risks
3.) get married off
4.) join a Maoist outfit in order to surrender and get government rehabilitation benefits.
And all of this is assuming the men (and it's always men) who they are reporting to are not lecherous abusers which is a very real risk in these kinds of jobs for women in Ms Murmu's status.
Like out of all the bad options, this is the least bad one - especially in an area that was a warzone barely a decade ago.
> this is the least bad one
not that I wish this on anyone but you would change your mind very quickly if you had to do this job for just one hour. it can fuck you up for life
12 replies →
I see few people coming from Jharkhand and working as waitresses in my state.
Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand.
> I see few people coming from Jharkhand and working as waitresses in my state
Ststistically, a young Santali woman from rural Jharkhand would most likely end up working in West Bengal, Maharashtra, or Karnataka [0] according to Jharkhand's Migration Survey.
> Also, your first link mentions Bihar not Jharkhand
Because HDI and developmental indicators remain roughly comparable in both states. Salaries in Bihar are comparable to salaries for similar roles in Jharkhand, Eastern UP, or Northern portions of West Bengal.
[0] - https://iimad.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/salx20170525s-i...
Jharkhand was formerly part of Bihar >25 years ago, and they were administered jointly with Orissa before independence. Then, my family worked in the police service and were transferred between Patna and Hazaribagh without any problem.
Your entire argument falls down due to not understanding the psychological harm caused. This sort of Secondary Trauma with symptoms of PTSD literally destroys people and families over time.
As they say, "being poor make you invisible" and therefore nobody cares on how they end up over a longer time period but only look at immediate benefits. Given that the Govt. has lots of schemes for the underprivileged, it is better to utilize those and do some other job however difficult that does not destroy one's mental health like this one does.
Quite simply, the companies are taking advantage of poverty in poorer regions of the World to pay pennies for a job which literally destroys one's mental health.
See also my other comments in this thread where i link to informative documentaries/articles on this topic.
Yeah what’s the alternative to moderation…no moderation?