Protecting unorganised, gig and platform workers

Detail

1. Why unorganised workers need protection

• Unorganised sector: small, scattered units that are mostly outside government control. Rules exist but are often not followed. Jobs are low-paid, irregular and have no paid leave, holidays or security.
• Organised sector: registered firms that must follow labour laws. Jobs are regular, with fixed hours and benefits.
• Why workers get pushed into unorganised work:
• Organised jobs are growing slowly. New workers cannot find formal jobs.
• Firms avoid labour laws. They hire workers informally or on contract to save cost.

• The result: more workers end up in low-paid, insecure and exploitative unorganised jobs.

• Protection is needed on three fronts: wages, safety and health (Class 10, Ex. 22).

• It serves both economic and social development. Many unorganised workers come from SC, ST and backward communities. They face discrimination on top of low income.

2. Rural unorganised workers

• Landless agricultural labourers
• They own no land.
• They depend on landowner-employers for both work and credit (loans).

• This double dependence makes them easy to exploit. The same person controls their wage and their debt.

• Small and marginal farmers

• Small farmer: operates 1-2 hectares (ha) of land.
• Marginal farmer: operates less than 1 ha.
• Class 10 says they make up "nearly 80% of rural households".
• The Agriculture Census 2015-16 put them at about 86% of operational holdings (verify against the 2021-22 census).
  • Operational holding: land farmed as one unit by a person, whether they own it or lease it.

• What they need: timely seeds and inputs, credit, storage, and marketing outlets (places to sell their crop at a fair price).

• Sharecroppers: they farm someone else's land and pay the owner a share of the crop. Their tenancy is usually insecure.

• Artisans: weavers, blacksmiths, carpenters and goldsmiths. Factory-made goods compete with them, and they have little access to credit or markets.

3. Urban unorganised workers

• Workers in small-scale industry

• These firms need government help to buy raw material and to market their output.

• Casual workers: hired day by day with no contract. They work mainly in construction, trade and transport.

• Street vendors, head-load workers (porters who carry goods on their heads), garment makers and rag pickers.
• Common problem: no fixed employer, so no one is clearly responsible for their wages, safety or old-age income.

4. Gig and platform work: the legal definitions

• The Code on Social Security, 2020 defined these groups in law for the first time.

• The Code came into force on 21 November 2025 [2].

• Gig worker: a person who works and earns outside the traditional employer-employee relationship. Example: a freelance designer paid per task.

• Platform worker: a gig worker who finds customers or clients through an online platform. Examples: food-delivery riders, cab drivers on ride-hailing apps.

• Trap: every platform worker is a gig worker, but not every gig worker is a platform worker.

• Aggregator: a digital intermediary or marketplace that connects buyers of a service with the people who provide it. Examples: Zomato, Swiggy, Uber, Ola, Urban Company [2].

5. How big is the gig workforce?

• NITI Aayog report "India's Booming Gig and Platform Economy" (June 2022) [3][4]:
• 77 lakh gig workers in 2020-21 [3][4].
• That was 2.6% of the non-agricultural workforce, or 1.5% of the total workforce (2020-21) [3][4].
• Projected to reach 2.35 crore by 2029-30 [3][4].

• That would be 6.7% of the non-agricultural workforce, or 4.1% of total livelihoods (2029-30) [3][4].

• Skill mix (2020-21) [4]:

• Medium-skilled: about 47%
• Low-skilled: about 31%
• High-skilled: about 22%
• Trend: the medium-skilled share is falling, and the low- and high-skilled shares are rising. This is called job polarisation: jobs grow at the two ends while the middle shrinks.

6. Funding: the Social Security Fund

• Rule: aggregators pay 1-2% of their annual turnover into a Social Security Fund.

• Cap: the payment cannot be more than 5% of the amount the aggregator pays or owes to its gig and platform workers [2].

• Formula:

• Aggregator contribution = the lower of (1-2% × annual turnover) and (5% × payments to gig or platform workers).

• Worked example:

• An app has an annual turnover of ₹1,000 crore. The government notifies a rate of 2%. So 2% × 1,000 = ₹20 crore.
• The app pays its riders ₹300 crore in the year. The cap is 5% × 300 = ₹15 crore.
• The app pays ₹15 crore, because that is the lower of the two figures.

• Why the cap exists: an app with a large turnover but few gig workers is not charged an unfair amount.

• Oversight: a National Social Security Board oversees schemes for gig and platform workers.

• What the schemes cover: life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits, and old-age protection [2].

7. Coverage drives

• e-Shram (2021): a national database of unorganised workers.
• Each registered worker gets an e-Shram UAN (Universal Account Number), a single ID number that goes with them everywhere.
• 30.68 crore+ registrations, with women at 53.68% of them (2025) [6].
• 31.42 crore registrations as of 22 December 2025 [5] (NCERT scaffold: "30 crore+").
• Aggregator module on e-Shram, launched 12 December 2024. Aggregators use it to register themselves and the platform workers who work through them [2].

• 12 major aggregators have been onboarded: Zomato, Blinkit, Uncle Delivery, Urban Company, Uber, Amazon, Ola, Swiggy, Ecom Express, Rapido, Zepto and Porter [2][7].

• Budget 2025-26 made three promises for online platform workers [7]: 1. registration on e-Shram; 2. identity cards; 3. health cover under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY (Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, the government's hospital-insurance scheme).

• The Standing Finance Committee approved the PM-JAY extension to platform workers on 18 March 2025 [7].

• PM-SYM (Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan, 2019): a contributory pension scheme. The worker pays a monthly amount, and the scheme pays ₹3,000 a month from age 60. It is for unorganised workers.

• Atal Pension Yojana (2015): a second pension option for workers outside formal pension schemes.
• Extension of ESIC coverage: bringing more workers under the Employees' State Insurance Corporation, which gives health and cash benefits to insured workers.
• State laws for platform workers: Rajasthan (2023), Karnataka (2025) and others.

8. Universal social security and portability

• Universal social security: extending social security cover to all workers, including informal, gig and platform workers, and not just the organised sector.
• The NCEUS (National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector) pushed for it.

• The Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008 is now subsumed (absorbed) into the Code on Social Security, 2020.

• Portability of benefits: workers keep their entitlements when they change job, employer or state. Examples:

• UAN for provident fund: one PF account follows the worker from employer to employer.
• e-Shram UAN: one ID for all unorganised-worker schemes.
• One Nation One Ration Card: a migrant worker can draw subsidised rations from any ration shop in India.
• Why it matters: gig and migrant workers change jobs and places often. If benefits do not move with them, they lose them.

9. Debates

• Employee or independent contractor?
• If a gig worker counts as an "employee", the platform must pay minimum wage, leave and PF.
• If the worker counts as an "independent contractor", the platform owes almost nothing.
• The UK Supreme Court's Uber ruling (2021) held that Uber drivers are "workers" with basic rights such as a minimum wage and paid holiday.

• India's Code takes a third path. It creates a separate "gig/platform worker" category with social security, but not full employee rights.

• Algorithmic management: the app, not a human manager, sets pay, targets and ratings.

• It can deactivate (block) a worker without human review or appeal.

• Workers often cannot see how their pay is calculated.

• Minimum earnings and heat-stress protection for delivery riders, who work outdoors for long hours in extreme heat.

• Global standard: ILO Convention No. 193 (2026)
• Adopted at the 114th International Labour Conference, which ended on 12 June 2026. It is the first international labour standard for the platform economy. It comes with a supporting Recommendation [8].
• It says all digital platform workers, whatever their employment status, should have these rights [9]:
  • freedom of association and collective bargaining (the right to form unions and negotiate together);
  • protection from discrimination, child labour and forced labour;
  • a safe and healthy workplace.

Prelims Hooks

• Gig worker, platform worker and aggregator were first defined in law by the Code on Social Security, 2020. The Code came into force on 21 November 2025.
• Aggregator contribution = 1-2% of annual turnover, capped at 5% of the amount paid or payable to gig and platform workers.
• Trap: every platform worker is a gig worker, but not every gig worker is a platform worker. The difference is whether the work comes through an online platform.
• NITI Aayog (2022): 77 lakh gig workers (2020-21), rising to 2.35 crore (2029-30). That is 1.5% → 4.1% of the total workforce.
• e-Shram (2021) gives each worker an e-Shram UAN. It had 31.42 crore registrations by 22 December 2025, and women were the majority (about 53.7%).
• Budget 2025-26: PM-JAY health cover for platform workers registered on e-Shram.
• PM-SYM (2019): ₹3,000 a month pension at age 60, contributory. APY started in 2015.
• The Unorganised Workers' Social Security Act, 2008 is now subsumed in the Code on Social Security, 2020.
• Small farmer operates 1-2 ha. Marginal farmer operates under 1 ha. Together they were about 86% of operational holdings (Agri Census 2015-16).
• ILO Convention No. 193 (2026) is the first global labour standard on decent work in the platform economy.

Mains Points

• Formalisation without full employment status:
• India's Code gives gig workers social security through a fund paid for by aggregators. It does not give them employee rights (minimum wage, the right to be protected from unfair dismissal).
• Compare this with the UK's Uber ruling (2021) and ILO C193 (2026). Both treat rights as applying whatever the worker's status.

• A GS-III answer can weigh the trade-off: flexibility for platforms and jobs against income security for workers.

• The registration-to-benefit gap:

• e-Shram has 31.42 crore registrations (December 2025). But registration alone gives the worker nothing.
• Benefits reach workers only when the ID is linked to schemes: PM-JAY, PM-SYM, APY and ESIC, all portable across states.

• That makes portability (UAN, ONORC) central to protecting migrant workers.

• Algorithmic accountability is a new labour issue:

• Apps can deactivate workers with no appeal and do not explain how pay is set.

• This calls for grievance redressal, human review and transparency rules, as well as heat-stress and minimum-earnings standards (GS-II: governance of platforms).

• The old informal economy remains the bigger challenge:

• Landless labourers, marginal farmers and artisans far outnumber gig workers. Many are SC/ST and face discrimination.
• Universal social security (the NCEUS vision) must reach them. So must credit, inputs and market access. Otherwise policy focuses only on the visible gig workforce.