Gig Economy and Platform workers in India: Working Conditions, Social Security and Legal Provisions
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31305/rrjss.2025.v05.n01.046Keywords:
Gig Worker, Gig Economy, Flexibility, Digital Platform, Social Security, Industry 4.0Abstract
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, often referred to as 4.0, is all about automation, digital integration, and flexible work setups. In this new era, humans will shift their focus to creative, strategic, and specialised task, while machines take care of the routine stuff. The gig economy is booming, offering a digitally- driven labour market that thrives on short-term, flexible work arrangements with independent workers and platform organisations. This has sparked some serious discussions about worker classification, job quality, social security, health issue and employment standards. Last two decades, the gig economy has emerged as a form of on-demand work. However, many of these tasks are just fragments of traditional roles, leading to precarious and often poorly paid work in certain sectors. The COVID-19 pandemic really brought gig workers into the spotlight, highlighting issue like job security and lack of sick leave, social security, legal protection. The gig economy is a broad, evolving concept with varying definitions, sometimes conflated with the sharing economy, which lacks a labour relationship. Seeing their working condition gig workers are became ‘Algorithmic labour’ (Moore, 2017). They are controlled and directed by digital platform companies. This paper will examine the gig economy and gig workers, their working condition and legal provisions in Indian labour laws or Codes.
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