From 7.7 million in 2021 to 23.5 million by 2030, India’s gig and platform workforce is on a trajectory of explosive progress. Nonetheless, this rise has been shadowed by mounting issues, from unfair labour practices to outright exploitation. Beneath the host of challenges that gig and platform staff expertise is a broader structural difficulty: We’re not onboarded as staff however as ‘companions/customers’ utilizing the platform to supply a service to our purchasers. This removes us from the ambit of most formal labour rights in India that promise pensions, maternity go away, medical insurance, and compensation for dying by chance or accidents on the job.

A number of states, most just lately Jharkhand, Karnataka, Telangana, and Rajasthan, have launched legislations to make sure that these staff have fundamental rights. Numerous unions and employee organisation, a lot of which I’m a part of—such because the Telangana Gig and Platform Staff Unions (TGPWU) and Indian Federation of App-Primarily based Transport Staff (IFAT)—have been carefully concerned with the event of those legislations, which have come into being greater than 10 years after gig and platform work took the nation by storm. 

In my very own state, a draft invoice titled the Telangana Gig and Platform Staff (Registration, Social Safety and Welfare) Invoice, 2025 was launched in April this 12 months. It contains the institution of a social safety and welfare fund for the employees, necessary funds by aggregator firms to the employees, introduction of a grievance redressal mechanism, and organising of a gig and platform staff’ welfare board.

However the street to introducing these legal guidelines in India has been lengthy and arduous, marked by frequent disputes with aggregator firms and the federal government, and protests that led to the imprisonment of many union leaders.

The early days of aggregator firms

Aggregator firms resembling Ola and Uber appeared within the Indian market within the early 2010s, proper when the web and smartphones had been drawing in thousands and thousands of customers, and the market was recovering from the 2008 disaster. I’ve been a personal driver for a very long time, and had been carefully concerned with union work even earlier than the arrival of those firms.

In 2013–14, a number of staff had been lured by the beneficiant incentives these firms supplied; I used to be certainly one of them. The incentives had been outstanding, and promised to remodel peculiar lives. They included a bonus of INR 1,000 on each fourth journey, a referral bonus of INR 5,000, together with superb charges per kilometre. On each bus stand, billboard, and prepare station, one may see commercials promising an earnings of INR 1–1.5 lakh to the drivers of those firms. Many moved from villages, leaving their jobs as farmers or barbers or shopkeepers, to chase the dream these firms had been promoting.

On the opposite aspect of the market, prospects had been incentivised with free rides and heavy reductions.

Because the months glided by, an increasing number of drivers and prospects joined these platforms of aggregator firms. That is when the goals got here to an aggressive halt. The incentives had been pulled again; the reductions had been gone. These firms bought precisely what they needed: They’d established a big base of shoppers and staff, and had been slowly however absolutely on their option to exchange conventional fashions of taxi companies all around the nation.

Within the years that adopted, extra gig-work-based aggregator firms entered the market, every bringing with it guarantees of higher livelihoods, which had been shortly changed by an onslaught of labour exploitation. There was no earnings safety, mounted earnings, or any advantages that staff are entitled to beneath conventional labour legal guidelines. Opaque algorithms determined who will get to work and for the way a lot. IDs would usually be deleted with little to no rationalization, reducing individuals off from their solely supply of livelihood. This was taking place to each gig and platform employee, from supply boys and drivers to beauticians and mechanics.

Why we would have liked to construct collective energy

That is after we realised that the a number of, fragmented unions and advocacy teams all around the state must come collectively and battle for the rights of the employees.

Lone voices may be drowned, however a refrain is more durable to disregard. The small unions throughout Telangana that had been preventing for the rights of various sorts of staff all got here collectively. Our expertise led us to seek the advice of with teams advocating for legislations in Rajasthan and Karnataka, each states with a Congress authorities on the time. On the nationwide stage, IFAT was turning into one of many main our bodies advocating for gig and platform staff’ rights to equitable therapy, protected working situations, and truthful wages.

The unions began protesting towards the aggregator firms and demanding higher working situations. We didn’t obtain any assist from the labour ministry, the transport ministry, or the IT ministry. Every time we approached the labour ministry, they’d inform us that we have now a ‘accomplice’ relationship with the aggregators, and should not staff. Therefore, gig and platform work was outdoors the jurisdiction of labour legal guidelines.

But, we continued to protest. On a number of events, Ola filed police complaints towards us and I used to be jailed a few occasions in relation to those expenses.

Whereas aggregator firms had been sending beneficiant quantities of cash to the PM-CARES fund, drivers and staff died by the hundreds with no reduction offered to them.

Issues took a flip for the more serious in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Many firms requested us to proceed driving and delivering at a lesser fare. Gig and platform staff had been probably the most uncovered to COVID-19 and had been often transporting sufferers. Whereas aggregator firms had been sending beneficiant quantities of cash to the PM-CARES fund (which acquired greater than INR 900 crore within the first 12 months of the pandemic), drivers and staff—uncovered so often to the virus—died by the hundreds with no reduction offered to them in any way. We don’t even have an estimated variety of staff that died in the course of the pandemic as a result of nature of their work.

Finally, we began protesting towards this, and had been lastly supplied with the right PPE kits and small rations of pulses and wheat.

In the course of the second wave of the pandemic, Ola began requesting its prospects for donations that it could then switch to its drivers. However the prospects had been unaware that Ola was sending this cash to us as a mortgage, which they’d ask again for in 30–60 days. Ola additionally had a car-leasing scheme the place drivers would take automobiles from the corporate and pay INR 1,100 per day in hire. The settlement was that after three years, the automobile would turn into theirs. Many individuals had been near finishing this time period when Ola known as the automobiles again beneath the pretext of sanitisation, after which bought them off. This occurred throughout the nation.

Removed from offering staff with any reduction, aggregators as an alternative made their woes monumentally worse. And with none assist from the federal government, protesting was the one answer.

By the point the pandemic ended, we had managed to push by way of a handful of adjustments. Earlier staff used to get weekly funds, which was then became 24-hour funds. We additionally advocated for our proper to know a buyer’s drop location earlier than accepting the journey, alongside tax waivers for SUVs.

In March 2024, Zomato introduced separate vegetarian and non-vegetarian supply fleets with distinct uniforms—a transfer broadly criticised for endangering staff from marginalised religions and caste.

WhatsApp and social media grew to become our foremost medium to mobilise staff for these protests.

In March 2024, for instance, Zomato introduced separate vegetarian and non-vegetarian supply fleets with distinct uniforms—a transfer broadly criticised for endangering staff from marginalised religions and caste, amid rising violence and discrimination round meat consumption. Unions shortly mobilised by way of social media, efficiently rallying most people, activists, and staff to stress Zomato into reversing the coverage.

The lengthy street to laws

An enormous problem that we face in our advocacy work is that the federal government is usually hesitant to fulfill our calls for as a result of stress by highly effective aggregator firms. In Rajasthan, Karnataka, and now Telangana, every bit of laws has been a tug of conflict.

Backed by many unions and civil society teams, the primary laws was in Rajasthan. The journey to that draft was lengthy and painstaking. After getting the Congress authorities on our aspect, our first job was to determine the problems that we needed resolved. Supply staff had their very own set of issues, drivers had theirs. Girls staff of City Firm and comparable platforms had one other distinctive set of points, together with security from gendered harassment by purchasers and the appropriate to washrooms. We constructed the case profiles of staff, studied their tales, and drew out the problems they shared in widespread. All the pieces was introduced collectively in a single place, the widespread factors highlighted, and the precise ones examined individually. We acquired large opposition from business our bodies resembling NASSCOM and CII.

However lastly, the laws was handed offering social safety, a grievance mechanism, and insurance coverage to the employees in Rajasthan. We managed to realize one other main win inside a nationwide coverage. Though the Code on Social Safety (offering the authorized definition of a gig and platform employee) was handed in 2020, even after 5 years staff had not been linked to the e-Shram portal by the central authorities. We pushed for gig and platform staff to be included, and known as it e-Shram 2.0.

The legislations in Karnataka and Telangana additionally targeted on wages and social safety. Legislations shaped in every state should be aware of the problems of the state and the sources it has. We wish to intention for full social safety. And as soon as we have now that, our subsequent step shall be to vary the worker and accomplice/consumer relationship that permits these aggregators to bypass giving staff any advantages.

However for large adjustments to the rights of staff on this nation, the Union Authorities and the labour division wants to grasp how collective bargaining works. Listening is one factor, placing it into motion is one other—for that you simply want actual instruments. Aggregator firms are highly effective, and beside them the federal government seems to be small. They threaten to take their enterprise away. The query is whether or not the federal government cares for the corporate, or for the livelihoods of its residents.

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