Spare a thought for our food delivery personnel

An NCAER survey confirms the raw deal they're saddled with. Glaringly, their real wages shrank over a three-year span after 2019. Intervene or not, only a jobs boom can sort this out

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In the gig economy spawned by the internet, which allowed small tasks to be farmed out smoothly, the plight of India’s food delivery agents has been a long-running concern. A study released this week by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), based on a survey done last year of 924 workers dropping off packets across 28 cities for a delivery platform, sheds some light on their biodata profiles and work lives. Almost entirely male, most of those who hot-wheel their way to homes with food boxes are a young lot, with almost two-thirds of the sample aged under 30. But their levels of education are not as modest as their roles would suggest. Over 45% of them are either college graduates or have technical training, even though the majority are less educated. That data point may not be terribly precise in its representation of this sector’s reality, but the stark under-employment it reveals does reflect poorly on the state of India’s labour market. It lends credence to stories of desperation driving youngsters to such laborious gig work. These are not jo