Riding in a Maze

As gig workers ride into an uncertain future with little more than a smartphone and a bike, the government is struggling to arrange a socialsafety net. But millions without social security is recipe for disaster

- Parth Singh

In Nandita Das's 2022 film Zwigato, the protagonist Manas, played by stand-up comic Kapil Sharma, a former factory floor manager-turned-food delivery executive, says at one point, "I used to manage 200 people on the factory floor. But this app will kill me.” The character’s journey echoes the life of Kartik Gautam, a gig worker in Delhi.

Twenty-eight-year-old Gautam works two jobs, both in India’s booming gig economy. Mornings, he spends delivering food. Evenings, he turns his bike into a bike-taxi and takes irate passengers returning from work back home through the capital’s congested streets. All this effort earns him around Rs 22,000 a month, after accounting for fuel costs.

Gautam moved from Meerut, Uttar Pradesh to Delhi two years ago. He is among the millions on whom it depends if India will ever realise its demographic dividend. But he is tired, anxious, unhappy and craves a semblance of financial and social security.

A sense of security that is unlikely to be his, at least in the near term. Primarily because Gautam works his gigs with million-dollar food-delivery or ride-hailing firms who don’t think of him as their ‘employee’. They prefer ‘partner’ instead.

Not because they think of Gautam as an equal. But because calling him an ‘employee’ would require them to pay for his provident fund, health insurance and incur other costs that employers are required to by law.

Devil in the Definition

A Niti Aayog report published in 2022 estimated that India had nearly 7.7mn gig workers in 2021. The report, titled India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy, projected that the number of gig workers in India may rise to 23.5mn by 2030. A government source, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells Outlook Business that the current number of gig workers may be around 20mn.