India has granted legal status to hundreds of thousands of gig and platform employees under its newly implemented labor laws, marking a milestone for the country’s delivery, ride-hailing and e-commerce workforce — yet with advantages still unclear and platforms starting to evaluate their obligations, access to social security stays out of reach.
The popularity stems from the Code on Social Security — one among 4 labor laws the Indian government brought into effect on Friday — greater than five years after the parliament first passed them in 2020. It’s the only a part of the brand new framework that addresses gig and platform employees, because the remaining three codes — covering wages, industrial relations, and workplace safety — don’t extend minimum earnings, employment protections or working-condition guarantees to this rapidly expanding workforce.
India has one among the world’s largest and fastest-growing gig economies, with industry estimates suggesting that greater than 12 million people deliver food, drive ride-hailing cabs, sort e-commerce packages, and perform other on-demand services for digital platforms. The sector has turn into a critical source of employment, especially for young and migrant employees shut out of formal job markets, and is projected to expand further as firms scale logistics, retail, and hyperlocal delivery.
Corporations from Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart to Indian quick-delivery apps akin to Swiggy, Everlasting’s Blinkit, and Zepto, in addition to ride-hailing firms including Uber, Ola, and Rapido, depend on gig employees to run their businesses within the South Asian nation — the world’s second-largest web and smartphone market after China. Yet despite powering a few of India’s most dear tech businesses, most gig employees operate outside traditional labor protections and lack access to basic social security.
The newly implemented labor laws are intended to alter that, by defining gig and platform employees in statute and requiring aggregators, akin to food-delivery and ride-hailing platforms, to contribute 1–2% of their annual revenue (capped at 5% of payments made to such employees) to a government-managed social security fund. But the small print remain murky: what exact advantages will actually be offered, how employees will access them, and the way contributions might be tracked across multiple platforms, and when payouts will begin all remain unclear, raising concerns that meaningful protections may take years to materialize.
The Code on Social Security creates a legal framework for gig employees to be covered under schemes akin to the Employees’ State Insurance, provident fund, and government-backed insurance. Nevertheless, the extent of those advantages — including eligibility, contribution levels, and delivery mechanisms — stays unclear and can rely upon future rules and scheme notifications.
A key a part of the framework is the creation of Social Security Boards at each the central and state levels, tasked with designing and overseeing welfare schemes for gig and platform employees. The central board must include five representatives of gig and platform employees and five representatives of aggregators, all nominated by the federal government, alongside senior officials, experts, and state representatives, per the Code. But there’s little clarity on how decisions might be made, how much influence employee representatives will even have, or who will ultimately control decisions on funding and profit delivery.
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“We want to attend and see what exactly is in the federal government’s mind in terms of implementing the 4 Codes, and what it hopes to do for gig employees,” said Balaji Parthasarathy, a professor at IIIT Bangalore and principal investigator of the Fairwork India project. “After which we also need to see what the states translate on the bottom.”
Parthasarathy noted that because labor policy in India is shared between the federal and state governments — listed within the “concurrent list” of the Indian Structure — state governments are accountable for designing, notifying, and administering most of the schemes needed to make the Code on Social Security operational for gig employees.
That raises the potential for uneven access, as some states move quickly to ascertain social security boards and roll out mechanisms, while others delay or deprioritize the trouble resulting from political or fiscal constraints. Recent examples — akin to Rajasthan’s stalled laws after it was passed in 2023, and Karnataka’s Gig Employees Act, which was implemented soon after clearing the state assembly — underscore how employees’ protections may ultimately rely upon where they live relatively than the law itself.
Platform firms have publicly welcomed the reform, but are still largely evaluating what it’s going to require of them. An Amazon India spokesperson told TechCrunch the corporate supports the Indian government’s intent behind the labor overhaul and is evaluating the changes it’s going to must introduce. A spokesperson for Zepto said the corporate welcomes the brand new labor codes as “a giant step toward clearer, simpler rules that protect employees while supporting ease of doing business,” adding that the changes will help strengthen social security for its delivery partners without undermining the flexibleness that quick-commerce operations depend on.
Food delivery firm Everlasting, formerly generally known as Zomato, said in a stock exchange filing that the Social Security Code is a step toward more uniform rules and that it doesn’t expect the financial impact to threaten its long-term business.
Nonetheless, Aprajita Rana, a partner at corporate law firm AZB & Partners, said the change “will naturally have a financial impact” on India’s e-commerce sector, as employee contributions are actually being formalized. It’ll also create latest compliance obligations, requiring firms to make sure all employees of their networks are registered with the government-managed fund, determine whether individuals are related to multiple aggregators and learn how to avoid duplicative advantages, and arrange internal grievance mechanisms.
“While the law has the fitting intent, gig employee structures in India are quite novel, and practical challenges in compliance will emerge because the law takes force,” Rana told TechCrunch.
One in all the largest hurdles for gig employees looking for advantages under the newly implemented law might be registering on the Indian government’s E-Shram portal, launched in 2021 as a national database of unorganized employees. The portal had registered greater than 300,000 platform employees as of the top of August, regardless that the federal government estimates India’s gig workforce at around 10 million. Trade unions, including the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Employees (IFAT), which has greater than 70,000 members, are working to assist gig employees enroll in order that they can access the advantages.
Ambika Tandon, a PhD candidate on the University of Cambridge and an affiliate of the national trade union Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), said registering on the portal could mean lost wages for gig employees, since they’d need to take day without work to fill in required details.
“These employees work for 16 hours a day,” she told TechCrunch. “They don’t have time to go and register themselves on the federal government portal.”
CITU can also be among the many ten major Indian trade unions calling for the withdrawal of the brand new labor laws, ahead of nationwide protests planned for Wednesday.
The advantages of registering on the E-Shram portal usually are not compelling for a lot of gig employees, Tandon noted, since the law doesn’t address more immediate concerns akin to fluctuating earnings, account suspensions, and sudden termination of accounts — issues that employees say matter way more at once than access to insurance or provident fund advantages.
Trade unions often organize strikes to push platforms to handle these concerns directly. Nevertheless, such actions can disrupt everyone involved, including consumers, and put employees at further risk, as they usually are not paid while striking and should even face termination for participating.
“While the social security rules have now been put in place, we demand a minimum wage and an employer–worker relationship for gig and platform employees, that are yet to be set by the federal government,” said Shaik Salauddin, founder president of the Telangana Gig and Platform Employees Union (TGPWU), which has greater than 10,000 members within the southern state of Telangana, and national general secretary of IFAT. “We urge the federal government to acquire data from aggregators and secure their monetary contributions to the fund to start out offering advantages to employees.”
There may be a broader debate over whether gig employees must be treated as employees — an issue the brand new labor laws don’t address. The Social Security Code defines gig and platform employees as a separate category, relatively than extending them the rights and protections that include worker status. In contrast, courts and regulators in markets akin to the U.K., Spain, and Recent Zealand have moved toward recognizing platform employees as employees or “employees,” entitled to minimum wages, paid leave, and other advantages. In some U.S. jurisdictions, regulators and courts have pushed for platform employees to be treated as employees or similarly protected employees, though many ride-hail and delivery drivers remain classified as independent contractors.
“With this law, the Indian government has settled this debate by saying that these gig employees don’t sit inside the ambit of employment or other protections,” Tandon said.
The Indian labor ministry didn’t reply to a request for comment.