On December 31, 2025 — a day before gig and platform workers across several Indian cities staged a coordinated flash strike demanding higher pay and better working conditions — the Ministry of Labour and Employment quietly notified draft rules under all four Labour Codes. The timing was not coincidental. The rules, which outline how minimum wages, social security, occupational safety, and basic employment protections will extend to platform workers, represent the most significant formal recognition India has extended to its gig workforce. They also reveal, in precise regulatory detail, how far the protections still fall short of what 12 million workers actually need.

India's gig economy is one of the fastest-growing labour market segments in the world. The Economic Survey 2025–26 recorded 12 million workers engaged in platform-based employment in FY2025 — up from 7.7 million in FY2021, a 55% increase in four years driven by smartphone penetration across 800 million users and the explosion of Q-Commerce, last-mile delivery, and ride-hailing platforms. NITI Aayog projects the workforce will reach 23.5 million by 2029–30. Behind every Blinkit order, every Ola cab, every Swiggy delivery is a worker whose legal status, income security, and access to basic social protection has been, until very recently, entirely undefined.

What Policy Has Delivered

The policy architecture for gig worker protection has advanced significantly since the Code on Social Security 2020 first formally defined "gig worker" and "platform worker" in Indian law — ending the legal vacuum in which millions operated. The Union Budget 2025–26 extended identity cards, e-Shram portal registration, and Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY healthcare coverage to platform workers, providing the first meaningful social protection that the sector's workforce has received. Over 31.2 crore unorganised workers are now registered on the e-Shram portal — though only 3.37 lakh of them are platform and gig workers, revealing the registration gap that the Budget's scale-up initiative is designed to close.

At the state level, the architecture is more advanced. Rajasthan passed the first state-level gig worker welfare law in 2023. Karnataka enacted the Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act 2025 in May 2025 — one of the most detailed state frameworks in the world, including a worker's right to refuse tasks, a welfare fee of 1–5% on each transaction, and a dedicated welfare board with worker representation. Bihar and Jharkhand followed in August 2025. Four states have passed laws; the other 24 have not.

Where the Gaps Remain

The January 2026 draft rules under the Social Security Code introduce an eligibility threshold that reveals the architecture's limitations. To qualify for social security benefits, a gig worker must have been engaged with a single aggregator for at least 90 days in the previous financial year — or 120 days across multiple aggregators. This threshold excludes seasonal workers, part-time platform workers, and those who shift between platforms. A worker who delivers for Blinkit and Zomato across 89 days each in FY2025–26 qualifies under neither aggregator's threshold — and receives no social security in FY2026–27.

The "Prisoners on Wheels" report — a landmark study of delivery workers' conditions — found that approximately 55% work 10–12 hours daily, nearly 20% work 12–14 hours, and earnings fluctuate week to week in ways that make financial planning effectively impossible. The algorithmic management of platform work — where app-based systems determine task allocation, incentives, and deactivation without transparency or appeal — remains entirely unregulated at the central level. Karnataka's Act addresses algorithmic accountability specifically; central rules do not.

The Economic Survey's own framing is instructive: the goal of gig economy policy, it stated, should be to ensure workers exercise real choice rather than being pushed into gigs by the absence of alternatives. India's gig economy has grown partly because it offers genuine flexible employment — and partly because formal employment has not kept pace with the workforce's expansion. Policy that provides a safety net for the latter without undermining the genuine flexibility of the former is the balance India's regulatory architecture has not yet found.

The Road Ahead

Three immediate policy priorities stand out. The first is national rollout of the Karnataka-model state welfare framework — either through central legislation that mandates minimum standards or through a model law that states can adopt. The patchwork of four state laws and twenty-four absences is not a coherent national policy. The second is algorithmic transparency — mandatory disclosure requirements for platforms on how task allocation, incentive calculation, and deactivation decisions are made, as a minimum condition of operating in India. The third is the 90-day threshold's revision — either to a lower threshold, an income-based alternative, or a portable social security model that follows the worker across aggregators regardless of platform tenure.

India's gig economy is a genuine asset — flexible, scalable, and deeply embedded in urban economic life. Its 12 million workers deserve a safety net that reflects that reality.

The Hind covers policy, power, and strategic affairs from India's perspective. Views expressed are analytical and editorial.