The Half-built Ladder of India’s Labour Codes

India loves grand reforms the way it loves grand weddings—loud, glittering, photo-ready, and utterly confusing.

- Anand Neelakantan

The new labour codes, stitched together from 29 older laws and unveiled as the biggest labour reform since Independence, fit perfectly into this tradition. They promise a new social contract for workers in the world’s fastest-changing labour market. But the more one reads, the more it feels like a contract written in invisible ink. The government hails them as the dawn of a modern India: universal minimum wages, simplified compliance, social security for gig workers, and broader formalisation. All true. All admirable. And yet, something about the whole structure feels like a house built on uneven ground—impressive from outside, unstable once you step in.

Let’s begin with the good news, for there is some. The most striking reform is the statutory recognition of gig and platform workers. For years, these delivery riders, app-based drivers, freelance technicians and digital pieceworkers lived in a legal no-man’s land, invisible to the welfare net. Now, aggregators must contribute a portion of their turnover towards social security funds intended to insure and protect them.

The second major win is the National Floor Wage—a baseline below which no state may go. Unlike the old system that covered only “scheduled employments,” this establishes a universal floor, theoretically protecting even workers in sectors the old laws forgot. Together with mandatory appointment letters and strengthened rules for timely wage payment, the codes do bring seriousness to labour rights, at least on paper.