E7: Law’s embrace

The work of driving cars for Uber is not like the work of delivering food on Swiggy or the work of delivering groceries on Dunzo. A provider of beauty services on Urban Company does not do the same work as someone servicing or repairing air conditioners on the same app. They work at different locations, the tools of their work are different, and their work processes are managed differently. In July of 2023 however, the Rajasthan legislative assembly passed a law that would entitle all those workers to welfare benefits and social security.

 

Until quite recently, platforms operated without regulation. In 2022 and 2023, gig and platform worker leaders like Shaik Salauddin and Ashish Singh were speaking directly to the politicians engaged in India’s competitive democratic politics, using the opportunities presented by elections to demand reforms of the law governing gig and platform work in India. This episode looks at this pursuit of legal reforms. 

 

For their demands to be credible, different types of platform workers need to come together as a category of workers that can be decisive in elections. They need to move beyond the identity markers of caste and religion, and the status of some of them as migrants from other parts of the country. Platform work leaders are building a wider tent for gig and platform workers, at least partly to be able to credibly make demands for legal reform. On the other hand, even the law’s recognition of different types of gig and platform workers as a single category can itself provide the impetus for workers organising and mobilising together. The law and platform worker movements are locked in a tight embrace, each leaving its imprint on the other.