Abstract:
The explosive growth of the gig economy has reshaped labour markets and daily life in India. In contrast to old work arrangements defined by rigid working hours, formal hierarchies, and standard contracts, gig work is defined by flexibility, autonomy, and the intermediation of digital platforms. This new landscape has opened up millions of livelihood opportunities for individuals ranging from delivering food to ride-hailing, domestic care work, to freelance design. But such flexibility is usually a cloak for underlying insecurities. Gig workers haveno accesstobasicsocialprotectionslikehealthcare, maternity leave, pensions, and protection from arbitrary termination. They are both indispensable and invisible—keen to city economies but on the periphery of labour law. The Social Security Code of 2020 was a legislative milestone by officially acknowledging gig and platform workers as a separate category that should be covered by welfare schemes.
However, the vow of inclusion has been largely unkept. Scheme delay, uncertainty around platform contributions, and low awareness among workers have left the framework struggling to deliver on its ambitions. State-level innovations like Rajasthan’s welfare law provide bright spots, while the judiciary and comparative analyses illustrate how other authorities are developing stronger protections. This article examines these dimensions while putting center stage the accounts of gig workers themselves, whose everyday lives put into public view the human price of legal invisibility. It argues finally for a more compassionate and enforceable social security model that recognizes gig workers not only as economic actors but as persons due dignity, equity, and long-term security.
Introduction:
The term “work” in India has never been fixed. From rural agrarian labour to urban factory jobs, every economic shift has restructured work relations and the law that governs them.Now we face another turning point, as the emergence of the gig economy is redefining the way people make their living. As opposed to traditional employment marked by continuity and predictability, gig work is broken, flexible, and technology-mediated. A worker gets into an app, takes a task, finishes it, and waits for the next one. Payment relies on algorithms and volatile incentive structures, not negotiated contracts or collective bargaining. To many, this model presents opportunity.
Urban migrant workers, students looking for part-time jobs,or women looking for flexible work hours, seeing ig platforms a substitute for cumbersome employment regimes. Gigworkers may form more than 6% of India’s workforce by 2030, at over 23 million workers. ^ 1 However, accompanying these possibilities are deep insecurities.Income is precarious, working time is frequently excessive, and there is minimal protection against sickness, accident, or old age. This freedom and precarity impose challenging questions on labour law. Are gig workers employees, independent contractors, or a new kind of category altogether?
Can legislation balance the adaptability that draws workers to gig platforms with the safety measures required for a dignified living? India’s first effort to grapple with these questions came in the form of the Social Security Code of 2020. ^ 2 This article unpacks its implications and places it within larger debates regarding rights, justice, and the future of work.
Conceptual and Legal Recognition of Gig Workers:
Fundamentally, the idea of gig work overturns conventional notions of work. Traditionally, labor legislation was written to govern a dichotomous relationship: a controller-employer a worker employee. In exchange for control, the employer is owed minimum wage, provident fund, maternity leave, and workplace safety.Gig work upsets this dichotomy. Platforms claim that they are simply intermediaries that make transactions between consumers and service providers possible. Workers, however, feel reliant on the platform’s algorithms, incentive policies, and rankings. ^ 3
This raises a legal conundrum: are gig workers really independent contractors, or merely employees by another name? Indian labour laws for years dismissed this conundrum, and workers remained unrecognized and unprotected. The Social Security Code of 2020 was the first official recognition of their presence by defining “gig workers” as those who do work outside a classical employer-employee relationship, and “platform workers” as those who earn through digital platforms. ^ 4
But recognition was two-faced. Rather than adding to existing cover, the Code exempted gig workers as a separate group. On the one hand, this provides for bespoke schemes. On the other hand, it can produce a “second-best” workforce—recognized but not on par.In contrast to employees with enforceable rights, gigworkers are still at the mercy of welfare schemes whose provisions and financing are subject to the state and platforms’ whim. ^ 5
The Social Security Code,2020: Unfulfilled Potential:
When the Social Security Code was enacted, policymakers welcomed it as a move towards universalizing the welfare of labour. ^ 6 It had envisioned schemes for health, maternity, disability, protection of old age, and even life insurance, with central and state governments, platforms, and sometimes even workers making contributions.
In reality, though, this potential has been largely unfulfilled. Implementation has been exceedingly slow. ^ 7 Schemes remain largely paper-based, with few provisions to actually deliver. Many workers remain unaware of their rights, and electronic registration procedures pose obstacles for those with poor literacy or access to technology. Platforms have often resisted paying mandatory contributions on the grounds that they would drive up the cost of operation and undermine business viability. ^ 8
Additionally, the Code falls short of promising rights. While regular employees can insist on benefits like provident fund or maternity leave as enforceable entitlements, gig workers have to depend on schemes that will or may not be funded or operationalized. ^ 9 Therefore, even though the Social Security Code, 2020, is a progressive move on paper, its present application reveals the distance between legislation and ground realities. Lacking explicit notification of schemes, the creation of specialized boards, and more robust administrative coordination, gig and platform workers remain legally recognized yet socially and economically exposed, emphasizing the necessity for urgent policy intervention to turn the Code into a theoretical framework into an effective safeguard measure.
Innovative State- Level Interventions:
While the central law fails, states have made attempts at more localized answers. Rajasthan’s Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023, is India’s first such legislation.^10It mandates compulsory registration of gig workers, establishment of a welfare board, and a separate fund that the platforms are obliged to contribute to.
Karnataka has piloted accident insurance schemes for delivery riders and cab drivers, ^11 and Tamil Nadu has opened policy engagements with platforms. Such efforts are small but important. They show that reforms can be achieved when governments recognize gig workers as key to urban economies. But without sufficient funding and strong enforcement, such efforts can be symbolic instead of transformative. ^ 12
These state interventions demonstrate the potential of decentralized methods in offering instant and context-based responses to the problems of gig and platform workers. By requiring registration, making aggregators accountable, and providing segregated welfare funds, these initiatives show how realistic, implementable frameworks at the state level can yield tangible social security gains even without fully functional central legislation. But while such innovations are promising, they also highlight the shortcomings of piecemeal policy initiatives. Absent an overarching national scheme, gaps in coverage, benefits, and enforcement will continue to exist within states, leaving many parts of the gig workforce vulnerable.
Judicial Recognition and Comparative Perspective:
Indian courts, however, have so far shown restraint in granting full employee status to gig and platform workers, in accordance with both the novelty of the problem and the lack of a codal scheme. In the 2022 case of Zomato delivery partners, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) recognized that gig work in reality has various structural attributes consistent with traditional employment.
These were features like fixed targets of performance, algorithmic monitoring, sanctions for failure to comply, and the power of platforms to suspend workers, which individually and collectively enact a control level akin to that by employers over employees. Even while acknowledging such similarities, the NCLAT refrained from awarding final employment status, pointing towards the intricacies involved in classifying gig workers under prevailing legal definitions. The issue was then taken to the Delhi High Court, whose proceedings continue, a measure of the judiciary’s sensitive weighing of the protection of workers against the operational freedom of online platforms. ^ 13
Conversely, some foreign jurisdictions have implemented more activist judicial options, reclassifying the legal status of platform workers. One such landmark case is the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court’s decision in Uber BV v.Aslam (2021), categorically establishing Uber drivers as “workers” under UK labor law. This status afforded drivers minimum wage, paid time off, and other fundamental employment protections, effectively countering the argument that gig work represents purely independent contracting. ^15 Proposition 22 in California ignited heated debates regarding innovation versus protection. ^ 16
These comparative lessons show that the law needs to evolve in order to maintain equity in changing labor markets. For India, the challenge lies in creating a hybrid model that maintains flexibility while maintaining dignity.
Worker Narratives and Field Realities:
For example, Sufiyan, a biketaxi driver in Delhi, remembered that his daily yearnings had fallen by almost 40% in four years. This was due to continuous tweaking of incentives and a constant hike in platform commission, which made him financially vulnerable while he continued to work regular hours. Likewise, Rina, a beauty service professional with Urban Company, shared a harrowing story of her instant removal from the platform after receiving one negative customer rating. She had no recourse to a redressal system or appeal process, showing the asymmetry of power between gig workers and platform providers.
These examples highlight the disempowering character of algorithmic management in which workers’ autonomy is illusory and their livelihoods can be threatened at any time. These stories also explain the psychological and social aspects of precarity in the gig economy. A majority of the respondents exhibited high stress levels, anxiety, and employment insecurity due to the uncertainty of daily income and the possibility of deactivation. Female laborers, especially, noted issues of safety, harassment, and insufficient social protection, further increasing vulnerability in an otherwise unregulated working environment.
Beyond personal narratives, these accounts identify systemic issues: platforms can offload risk, constrain accountability, and offload responsibility for welfare altogether on the worker, thus threatening the dignity and security of labor. These narratives point to structural precarity: workers reliant on impenetrable algorithms, unpredictable incentive shifts, and rating systems. Organized groups such as the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) have started organizing demonstrations calling for enhanced protections, ^17 but institutional changes take their sweet time.
Policy Recommendations and Road Ahead:
Reforms need to transcend symbolic acknowledgment:
- Gig workers need to have enforceable rights for health insurance, accident cover, and pensions. ^ 18
- Platforms should make social security contributions in proportion to their reliance on gig workers. ^ 19
- Representation of workers on welfare boards is necessary to ensure participatory governance. ^ 20
- Registration and benefit disbursal need to be made easier with multilingual, offline modes. ^ 21
- India should adapt lessons from the U.K., Spain, and California to its context. ^22
- Gender-sensitive protections, including maternity benefits,mustbeprioritized.^23
- Futurepoliciesmustanticipateautomationandprovideskilldevelopmentsupport.^24
Conclusion:
Growth and innovation, while at the same time posing a daunting challenge in regards of protectionoflabourandsocialjustice.Digital platforms have certainly opened up employment avenues for millions of workers in urban and semi-urban spaces, providing flexibility and access to earnings that were hitherto unobtainable. Yet, the existing regulatory and legal frameworks lag far behind in providing safety, equity, and respect for workers who constitute the backbone of this fast-growing industry.
The simple legislative acknowledgment of gig and platform workers, without enforceable rights or working procedures, threatens to create an illusion of inclusion, exposing workers to exploitation, earnings instability, and arbitrary treatment by managers. While India places itself in the forefront of digital services and platform economy globally, it needs to do so through the simultaneous prioritization of a fair, equitable, and strong social security system for gig workers. This would involve an integrated approach of statutory recognition, transparent and responsible platform management, legally enforceable social security measures, and mechanisms for collective representation.
Author Name- Aryan
Designation: Student, Batch of 2028
Course: B.A. LL.B. (Hons.)
Institution: Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar National Law University, Sonipat, Haryana
