Karnataka Gig Workers Act promises social security, grievance redressal, and algorithmic transparency.
Fear of corporates by passing the law looms over gig workers
Uncertain jobs, frequent company changes, and exploitative policies highlight ongoing vulnerabilities.
Remesh has been waiting at a busy junction near Koramangala in Bengaluru for nearly an hour. A delivery agent with a food delivery app, he rushed to the spot straight after finishing his five-hour part-time job at a nearby shop. While some of his colleagues managed to pick up orders quickly, he is still waiting, with some others.
“Sometimes it is like that,” he tells Outlook, glancing at his phone for the next alert. “I have to make at least Rs 750 a day, and for that I usually work late into the night. The shop job is only for five hours, so this is where I try to make up the rest.”
For thousands like Remesh, Bengaluru’s gig economy is a daily hustle of long hours, unpredictable earnings and little, if any, social or job security. More than two lakh people are estimated to work in the city for platforms such as Swiggy, Zomato and Urban Company. Now, with the state government passing the Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers’ (Social Security and Welfare) Act, there is hope that their precarious conditions might improve.
The Act aims to provide social security coverage, a unique ID, a welfare fund and a grievance redressal mechanism for platform-based gig workers, also known simply as gig workers. In a city said to have the second-largest gig workforce in India, after only Delhi, the operation of this law is being closely watched not only by delivery workers and their unions, but also by platform companies and labour activists.
The big question workers like Remesh are asking is whether the law can translate into real safety nets for him and other gig workers.
When the Karnataka government was drafting rules for the Act, hundreds of gig workers gathered outside the Bengaluru headquarters of Urban Company, a two-way marketplace that links customers with beauty service providers. At the 'gate meeting', the workers urgently demanded an end to what they called the company’s exploitative practices. Their primary appeal: immediate implementation of the new law.
For many migrant workers, especially from Northeast Indian states, the lack of job security has made life precarious; they see the Act as a lifeline that could bring some stability to their uncertain livelihoods.
According to the Gig and Platform Service Workers Union, some recent changes in their methods of operation have only made life harder for those who work in these platforms. Urban Company’s stricter cancellation policy, under which a single cancellation is now counted as two, is just one instance of this.
“It means workers must complete 100 jobs instead of 50 to make up for it, placing an excessive burden on them,” the union said in a statement.
Chandan Kumar, founding president of the union, told Outlook that women gig workers are the most vulnerable to exploitation. “The new cancellation rules add to their troubles. On top of this, platforms are letting go of experienced women staff and bringing in new recruits. Digital capitalism doesn’t want workers to stay in one company for too long,” he said.
Twenty-six-year-old Sourav, who came to Bengaluru from West Bengal two years ago, is now a Swiggy delivery agent. “I work in two shifts, from seven to eleven in the morning and then from four in the evening till midnight. When I started, I used to make about Rs 1,000 a day working twelve hours, thanks to incentives. But now those incentives are gone, and it has become very difficult,” he says.
Suanina, 24, from Assam, moved to Bengaluru 18 months ago and has already worked with three different platform companies—as a salon assistant, a home cleaning worker and now as a delivery rider. “The problem is not just money,” she says. “If I work longer hours, I can survive and send some [money] home. But we live with the fear of losing our jobs every day. Rules keep changing, often without us knowing. Shifting from one company to another hardly makes a difference to dignity or fair treatment.”
Suanina and Sourav are just two of the lakhs of workers unsure about whether the new law will truly bring them dignity at their workplace. For now, they see the new law as a safeguard they never had before.
Dr. Ashok Kumar, Professor of Political Economy at Birkbeck, University of London, told Outlook that while the legislation is a step in the right direction, it falls short of empowering workers. “In many ways, gig workers are treated like digital slaves—existing in the shadows, reduced to humanoids or robots. What they are demanding are the basic rights already guaranteed by the Constitution,” he said.
Though Kumar was consulted during the drafting of the law, and he says it did introduce some social security measures, but those are "minimal and insufficient" to secure workers’ real rights or dignity.
The welfare fund, for instance, is to be financed by contributions from employers, workers and state government grants. It mandates all aggregators to register with the welfare board, and guarantees workers certain rights. It also requires companies to ensure "algorithmic transparency" and protects workers from arbitrary termination.
Aggregators welcomed the law, passed just last month, but they are already seeking amendments. They want revisions to the "welfare fee" and want the definition of gig workers to align with the one provided in the Code on Social Security, 2020.
That is why, although workers are relieved there is now a law protecting their interests, their scepticism still runs deep. They say big platforms will find ways to bypass the provisions. For this reason, unions say, there is no way around raising the collective bargaining power of workers, without which the law won't become meaningful on the ground.
Renjith Kumar, who moved to Bengaluru from the coastal town of Uduppi to work as a delivery agent and finance his studies, remains cautiously optimistic about the new law. “The powerful will always find ways to circumvent regulations. They can easily exploit poor workers putting in long hours. Until now, we had no laws to protect us. At least now there’s something in place. How the authorities implement it, though, remains the real question,” he says.
For this reason, unions say, there is no way around raising the collective bargaining power of workers, without which the law won't become meaningful to those it is meant to protect
