The Future is Near

Children playing games with the family smart phone is now a familiar sight in the community.

I have uniformed opinions about AI. Depending on which news feed I’ve read, or the conversations I’ve had with friends and family, I have equal amounts of suspicion and angst about how AI will affect the world. When I read an article about the advances of medical technology, or other such reasonable inventions only made possible because of AI, for a bloated minute I feel so much better about the future of technology and the impact it will have, especially on healthcare. Then I read another article, and another, until I’m back to being perplexed, and become very concerned about how AI will affect families in the Saki Naka community.

In 2009, when we first arrived in the community, families got through their day without access to the internet - at most, families owned or had access to someone else’s flip phone. We used a USB dongle for our computer and purchased a local SIM card for our flip phone. Now, inexpensive made-in-India smartphones (priced at around CAD100) are in the hands of at least one family member, and local Internet providers compete to offer the second cheapest Internet data rates in the world. Families buy the data they need, recharging when they can afford more data. Children gather in the lanes, fully engaged in the Smart phone screens casting light on their faces while they scroll mindless content, play games, and take selfies and videos.  Parents rely on Indu for help to access the tech addled world outside their homes for school updates, banking, bill paying, and updating personal information for access to government welfare schemes.

A street vendor offers accessories for sale.

Most families in the community arrive in Mumbai from rural villages to find work in the informal, unorganized economy, earning a bare bones living.  To complicate their ability to earn wages, they are mostly illiterate, and many arrive without documents verifying their birthdate or birthplace, a basic requirement to receive the Aadhaar card used by the Indian government to identify citizens, which enables them to receive government services and cell phone data. 

A woman on her way to work for a middle class family as a domestic maid.

Many of the women work as domestic maids, providing cleaning, cooking, or nanny services. I asked some of them if they knew about the new Snabbit app which provides online maid service aimed at the middle and upper middle classes. Their replies varied from being content with their current employer, to being unhappy, and feeling frustrated and abused, while accepting they couldn’t work for Snabbit because they’re unable to use the online maps, or read the app instructions that enable this type of employment. Snabbit claims their workers can earn R25,000 (CAD360) per month depending on how many jobs they can complete in a day. To compare, the women in the community work as maids for two or three families 10 - 12 hours a day/6 - 7 days a week, to earn R15,000 - R20,000 (CAD200 - 290) per month. Should this app, and others like it, surge among the middle and upper classes as a viable alternative to their long time full time maid, many women in the community will be unemployable as domestic maids.

Recently, factory workers have been tasked with wearing cameras on their heads, pointed directly at the repetitive task they’re performing by hand for 10 - 12  hours a day. The cameras capture data that will be used to teach robots how to perform the same task. The human workers aren’t paid a bonus for this additional service, or informed about why they are wearing a camera, which will eventually be used to make their employment redundant. 

Priyanka and her mother earn money from piece work.

Many women, and some men, also work from home, completing piece work for factories such as sewing buttons on garments, embroidering hems, making tassels, clipping threads, attaching one plastic piece to another plastic piece. The work is unskilled and repetitive, and the pay per piece is less than one or two rupees requiring hours of hand work to earn a few dollars per day. Their children often help them with piece work after school, adding to the pile of finished work which will be picked up by a delivery person upon completion. The rise in factories using robotics could put these unskilled women out of work, along with the delivery person who picks up and delivers their piece work bundles. 

Shopping the street vendors in the neighbourhood.

The educated young urban population use the convenience of apps for most of their needs. Day and night, there are delivery drivers threading through snarled Mumbai traffic on their way to someone’s apartment to deliver something they ordered from their phone or computer a few minutes earlier.  While others use the obvious convenience of delivery apps, the poor and the lower middle class citizens shop the fruit and vegetable stalls lined along the roads, and the sprawling night markets for clothing and household goods. They establish relationships with the street vendors and small family owned shops offering credit and bargaining power. Payments can be made with a smart phone or cash. We rely on small shops and street vendors for supplies for the community, medicine, groceries and clothing. We had a mattress delivered by two men on a bicycle. A screen for a broken window was made for us by hand on site within minutes of purchasing the service of a worker waiting on the street. Wire cables for our internet service was threaded though a gap in the window by a young man who climbed up the outside of the building wearing flip-flops without a ladder in sight.  We order 20 litre plastic containers of drinking water from a nearby shop, and within minutes of us arriving back to the apartment, a worker climbs four flights of stairs, straining under the weight of two containers resting on his thin shoulders, to deliver it to us. He receives a tip from us, a small wage from the shop, and the family shop receives our water order for the months we live there. Mumbai delivers for us, just not through an app, at least not yet.

We hired this man off the street to put a screen in a glassless window in the apartment we rented.

While searching online for something encouraging to add to this post, I came upon a company enabling the rural poor to jump on the AI train. Karya is an ethical social enterprise tech company employing rural villagers to dictate their native dialect into a smart phone app (described as basic voice tasks) that will use the data collected to build user friendly online platforms for the millions of people who speak dialects that prevent them from accessing online information. The villagers earn the equivalent of 5 USD per hour until they reach 1500 USD in wages. (To compare, the average wage for unskilled labour in India is approximately $3 USD per day.) This isn’t a permanent job, but one that transitions from person to person so that everyone has the chance to earn an amount up to 5 times what they would earn in a year doing manual work in the fields. They report using their earnings from Karya to dig their family out of debt from on going loans needed to cover basic living expenses or medical emergencies. They continue to earn small royalty amounts from the AI data they collected during their employment phase.

A rural village in Bihar. Many families from Bihar leave to find work in large cities.

There is always some great news in the community. Samiksha, who we’ve assisted throughout her primary education by paying her yearly school fees, recently obtained a job as a computer science teacher for children in the early grades.  She positioned herself with a science driven college education, securing a wage (20,000 rupees/CAD290) that will aid her family. There’s promise of upward mobility in her job, and her immediate goal is to eventually move into a position teaching students in the higher grades, adding to her work portfolio and her wage. 

Samiksha and her mother Jyoti. Samiksha's earnings as a new teacher will help her family with basic needs.

With every new app, or AI technology that comes along, the already vulnerable families scraping by in slum communities will either find a rung to climb up the economic ladder, or find the ladder wobbling beneath them. The millions of children who complete their education could be a positive force in the Indian economy and in their own communities, if the economy enables them to join the AI revolution. As in the rest of the world, bracing for how AI will transform lives is an ongoing discussion.

A look at what we spent donations for from January 16 - August 18, 2026:

School Fees:

Dr. VS Jadhav College College/Divya Govind Namwad: 30,000 rupees (paid January 21, 2026)

Dr. VS Jadhav College College/Divya Govind Namwad: 30,000 rupees (paid July 29, 2026)

Eklavya IAS Academy/Ghatkopar/Chembur/Andheri/Kushi Singh Gagan: 10,000 rupees (paid June 1, 2026)

Sneha Kailash Wankhade: 40,000 rupees (prep academy for government exam) (paid April 11, 2026)

 Rukshar Shaikh (school books for son): 1100 rupees (paid June 18, 2026)

Medical Fees:

January 30, 2026

Nirali Hospital/Saki Naka/Mrs. Seetadevi Thapa - medical bills/hospital fees related to hysterectomy: 31,600 rupees (paid January 30, 2026)

The Curve Dental Solutions/Santosh Pravin (surgical extraction of wisdom teeth): 10,000 rupees (paid February 16, 2026)

Gopinath Panchal/Paramount Hospital/bug bite infection/hospital stay/meds/medical tests:  20,000 rupees (paid. March 12, 2026)

Shri Mauli Hospital Sangola District/Solapur/Sujata's relative in village: 20,000 rupees (paid April, 2026)

Inlaks Hospital/Keshar Singh Vishwakarma/cancer surgery: 20,000 rupees (paid Apri 2026)

Inlaks General Hospital/Chembur/Mr. Keshar Singh Vishwakarma/10,000 rupees (paid May 31, 2026)

Inlaks General Hospital/Chembur: Keshar Singh Vishwakar: 10,000 rupees (paid June 13, 2026)

Nirali Hospital / Karuna Choudhary/gave 10,000 rupees toward medical bills (paid June 12, 2026)

Other expenses:

Karan required rent assistance (March 2026) while he waits for his first paycheque: 5000 rupees

Karan required rent assistance (July 2026) because of missed work days/illness: 5000 rupees

Total spent: 252,700 rupees (CAD3900) (based on current currency conversion and taking into account bank fees)

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