The penetration of digital technologies is deep in the lives of millions of Indians. It is especially evident in the case of employees working in the Information Technology sector. While this sector offers a decent livelihood, and avenues of upward social mobility to a large section of the educated population, it also has been seen as enhancing already existing structural inequalities. An implication is that the logic of merit is not entirely followed in this sector, contrary to the official claims of multiple IT corporations. This is demonstrated sufficiently by various scholars. The employees’ ability to accumulate and utilise cultural, and social capital becomes crucial. For instance, constant updation of one’s skills, and expansion of social networks in their respective workplaces, have a bearing on the entrance, and the subsequent survival, of employees in this sector.
Contradictions between opportunities of mobility and conditions of inequality have been coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic that threatened the employees with potential unemployment. The hitherto existing modes of accumulating various forms of capital needed to be adapted to the new reality of Work From Home (WFH). In the context of such tensions, this research is attempting to study the changes brought about by WFH arrangement, and digitisation broadly, in the ways through which employees could ensure their continuance. For the sake of empirical investigation, accumulation of forms of capital has been identified as one of the ways through which employees secure their employment, or seek to better their positions. This paper is in the process of studying IT employees working in Gurgaon through qualitative interviewing techniques. The central focus, however, is on contrasting the pre and post pandemic modes of accumulation of social and cultural capital among various groups of IT employees in the context of availability of WFH, and increasing digitization of life.
