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IntroductionWe evaluated the impact of a 'Team-Based Goals and Incentives' (TBGI) intervention in Bihar, India, designed to improve front-line (community health) worker (FLW) performance and health-promoting behaviours related to reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition.MethodsThis study used a cluster randomised controlled trial design and difference-in-difference analyses of improvements in maternal health-related behaviours related to the intervention's team-based goals (primary), and interactions of FLWs with each other and with maternal beneficiaries (secondary). Evaluation participants included approximately 1300 FLWs and 3600 mothers at baseline (May to June 2012) and after 2.5 years of implementation (November to December 2014) who had delivered an infant in the previous year.ResultsThe TBGI intervention resulted in significant increases in the frequency of antenatal home visits (15 absolute percentage points (PP), p=0.03) and receipt of iron-folic acid (IFA) tablets (7 PP, p=0.02), but non-significant changes in other health behaviours related to the trial's goals. Improvements were seen in selected attitudes related to coordination and teamwork among FLWs, and in the provision of advice to beneficiaries (ranging from 8 to 14 PP) related to IFA, cord care, breast feeding, complementary feeding and family planning.ConclusionResults suggest that combining an integrated set of team-based coverage goals and targets, small non-cash incentives for teams who meet targets and team building to motivate FLWs resulted in improvements in FLW coordination and teamwork, and in the quality and quantity of FLW-beneficiary interactions. These improvements represent programmatically meaningful steps towards improving health behaviours and outcomes.Trial registration numberNCT03406221.

Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) and Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, and crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, and education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically and historically with an eye toward the kinds of social orders such practices produce. This article focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site of social practice where techniques from information technology (IT) production become ways of remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce technologies, and they always, however, produce subjects. This article argues that the hackathon rehearses an entrepreneurial citizenship celebrated in transnational cultures that orient toward Silicon Valley for models of social change. Such optimistic, high-velocity practice aligns, in India, with middle-class politics that favor quick and forceful action with socially similar collaborators over the contestations of mass democracy or the slow construction of coalition across difference.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) demonstrates how infrastructure projects can be designed and undertaken smoothly. AMT is a Web-based labor market that draws workers from all over the world to perform small bits of digital labor for pay. AMT organizes workers for the pleasure of programmers and the productivity of companies and researchers. Turkopticon is one such concept that has been initiated by AMT from 2008 after engagements with Turkers. AMT brings stopgap, short-term jobs to those with limited employment options, due to geography, mobility limitations, or economic conditions. Turkopticon is a application and browser add-on that augments the AMT interface with reviews written by Turkers. Turkopticon, along with crucial worker communities such as Turker Nation, mTurk Forum, CloudMeBaby, mTurk Grind, and the mturk and HITsWorthTurkingFor 'subreddits' on reddit.com, helps in bridging the worlds of workers and employers.