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The aim of this paper is to understand the emerging practices of work from home drawing from the works of Friedrich Engels. Situating the rising debate on work from home, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article revisits some of the texts by Friedrich Engels to understand the issues of distribution, freedom, necessity and work. The idea of work from home becomes especially critical in the context of a developing country like India, with its limited access to digital infrastructure, inadequate work-space at home, and precarious work conditions. However, the digital network and devices play a pivotal role under these conditions and often offer a promise of “new freedom” and flexibility. It is not just the middle-class professionals, but several other dimensions of work and labour are implicated within the idea of work from home under sudden economic and social disruption. The new organisation of production, assisted by capitalism, forges new relations of production, and new predicaments and Engels's thoughts on freedom, work and the condition of the working class become increasingly relevant to understand these shifts, particularly in neoliberal, developing country like India under nationwide lockdown.

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Turkish television series have become increasingly popular in India, particularly since the telecast of the dubbed version of Adını Feriha Koydum in 2015. While India has a strong market of regional language TV series or serials, as they are known locally, international shows, except for syndicated television content from the United States, have hardly been popular in traditional television broadcasting. However, the rising popularity of Turkish television series and their circulation through digital media in India have opened up a rich site for exploring changing practices of audience engagement with transnational television content. This paper draws from ethnographic fieldwork among audiences of Turkish television series in India. Presently, there are hardly any Turkish series available on Indian cable television channels, barring a few on video on demand (VoD) platforms. However, social media platforms, such as Facebook, video-sharing sites, like YouTube, and file-sharing torrent sites, have continued the circulation of Turkish television series in India. These alternative modes of distribution compel us to rethink the notions of technology, medium, and emerging viewing practices and underline the parallel, often illegitimate circuits of distribution and access to international television content. Hence, this paper broadly addresses how Turkish TV series become an emblematic instance of understanding transnational media flow through alternative digital channels in a neoliberal, developing country like India.