The National Social Security Board Is a Start — But It Won’t Fix What’s Broken in India’s Gig Economy

The Centre just announced a National Social Security Board for gig workers. Here’s what my interviews with 50 Zomato delivery workers in Delhi reveal about why this matters — and what it still gets wrong.

On February 28, Maharashtra’s Labour Minister confirmed that the Centre will establish a National Social Security Board for gig workers under the Social Security Code, which came into effect in November 2025. The Board will cover healthcare, insurance, and family welfare, and will override state-level legislation like Rajasthan’s Platform-Based Gig Workers Act (2023) and Karnataka’s Gig Workers Social Security Bill (2024). For India’s roughly 12 million gig workers, this sounds like progress. And in some ways, it is.

But social security — however welcome — treats the symptom while ignoring the disease. The deeper crisis facing gig workers is not the absence of an insurance card. It is the systematic misclassification of workers as “partners” and the unchecked power of algorithms that dictate every aspect of their working lives. Without addressing these, a social security board risks becoming an elaborate band-aid on a structural wound.

What the Data Actually Shows

I spent months embedded with Zomato delivery workers across South Delhi — at battery swap stations, roadside waiting spots, restaurant pickup queues, and union meetings. I conducted in-depth interviews with 50 workers and spoke informally with dozens more. The picture that emerged is not one that social security alone can fix.

The average worker in my sample logged 11.4 hours per day on the app. Not eight. Not ten. Eleven and a half. These are not leisurely hours of “flexible micro-entrepreneurship,” as platforms like to frame it. These are grinding, physically exhausting shifts — navigating Delhi’s traffic, pollution, and extreme weather — covering an average of 150 kilometres per day on a two-wheeler.

For this effort, 70% of workers earned less than ₹1,000 per day after expenses. That’s after fuel, vehicle maintenance, phone recharges, and meals during shifts — all costs that the workers bear entirely. Zomato pays per delivery, not per hour. Time spent waiting for orders — which can be substantial — is completely unpaid. Workers are compensated only when they complete a task. Every other minute of their working day is, in economic terms, donated free to the platform.

And the penalties are relentless. 94% of workers reported experiencing penalties or pay deductions — for rejecting orders deemed too far or too low-paying, for delivery times the algorithm considered too slow, for ratings that dipped below opaque thresholds. Workers described the app as an “invisible manager” that punishes without explanation and offers no avenue for appeal. As one rider put it: “There is no one to negotiate with — the app decides everything.”

The Real Problem: Algorithmic Control

The Economic Survey 2025-26, released on January 29, identified many of these issues. It found that 40% of gig workers earn below ₹15,000 per month and recommended algorithmic transparency, minimum per-task earnings including wait time, and portable social security. These are significant acknowledgements from the government’s own economists. The Survey’s call for algorithmic transparency, in particular, gets closer to the heart of the problem than the Social Security Board announcement does.

Here is what algorithmic control looks like in practice. When Zomato shifted from its older rate-card model to the current “gig system” after 2022, workers lost what little predictability they had. Under the rate-card model, workers knew roughly what each delivery would pay based on distance. Under the new system, pay per order fluctuates opaquely. Workers cannot see the delivery destination before accepting an order. They do not know how the algorithm calculates their pay. They cannot predict or plan their earnings. The platform holds all the information; the worker holds none.

This information asymmetry is not a bug — it is the business model. It allows the platform to continuously optimise its costs while workers absorb the uncertainty. GPS tracking creates a panoptic surveillance architecture. Performance tiers — with names that suggest meritocracy — determine access to orders and incentives, creating a hierarchy among workers that discourages solidarity. The algorithm nudges, penalises, and rewards in ways that are individually tailored and collectively opaque.

If this sounds like an employment relationship, that’s because it functionally is one. Workers use Zomato’s branding, follow its instructions, operate within its zones, meet its performance standards, and face its disciplinary systems. The only thing missing is the legal recognition — and the protections that would come with it.

Social Security Without Labour Rights Is Incomplete

The National Social Security Board is a necessary step. Workers need healthcare coverage. They need accident insurance — the roads of Delhi are unforgiving, and every rider I spoke to had either been in an accident or knew someone who had. They need some form of retirement security. The Social Security Code’s recognition of gig workers as a distinct category is itself a milestone, after decades of these workers existing in a legal vacuum.

But consider what the Board will not do. It will not guarantee a minimum earning per task. It will not mandate paid waiting time. It will not require platforms to disclose how their algorithms calculate pay, assign orders, or impose penalties. It will not reclassify workers as employees — or even as a meaningful intermediate category with genuine labour protections. It will not give workers a seat at the table where the rules of their work are decided.

Rajasthan’s 2023 Act and Karnataka’s 2024 Bill, for all their limitations, attempted to create state-level welfare boards and registration systems. The Centre’s move to override these with a national framework could be positive if it raises the floor. But it could also be a step backward if it replaces imperfect but locally responsive mechanisms with a diluted, one-size-fits-all structure that lacks teeth.

What Would Actually Work

The Economic Survey pointed the way. Algorithmic transparency is not a radical demand — it is a basic condition for any fair labour market. Workers should know how their pay is calculated, why it changes, and what metrics determine their standing on the platform. Minimum per-task earnings, including compensation for wait time, would address the reality that workers currently subsidise the platform’s operations with their unpaid labour. Portable social security — benefits that follow the worker across platforms and gigs — would prevent lock-in and give workers genuine flexibility, not the hollow version that currently means “you’re free to log off and starve.”

Beyond this, the misclassification question cannot be dodged forever. Courts in the UK, Spain, and the Netherlands have found that platform workers are employees or workers, not independent contractors. India’s own labour law tradition recognises the substance of a relationship over its form. The Social Security Code acknowledges gig workers but stops short of granting them the rights that flow from an employment relationship — the right to minimum wages, to collective bargaining, to protection against unfair dismissal.

The 50 workers I interviewed are not entrepreneurs. They are workers — skilled, resilient, and essential to a platform valued at tens of thousands of crores. They deserve more than a welfare board. They deserve rights.

The announcement of the National Social Security Board is a moment to acknowledge how far India has come in recognising gig work as real work. But it is also a moment to ask whether we are willing to go far enough. Social security without labour rights is charity. What gig workers need is justice.

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Abhinav Kumar is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His dissertation is based on fieldwork with 50 Zomato delivery workers in Delhi.