The Platform Is Not the Payroll — India’s Gig Workforce and the Protection It Was Promised

Pritiraj BrahmaFounding Partner, Pritiraj & Partners · 2 October 2026

NITI Aayog estimated 77 lakh gig workers in 2020-21 and projected 2.35 crore by 2029-30. The Code on Social Security recognises them. By August 2025 the Ministry of Labour counted over 3.37 lakh registered as gig or platform workers on e-Shram, against a government estimate of more than one crore. For many young Indians the platform is where work exists. The state has written their protection into law and not yet found them.

ProvenanceWorkforce estimates are from NITI Aayog’s report on the gig and platform economy (June 2022, via PIB) and later government estimates for 2024-25 as reported. e-Shram registration figures are from a Ministry of Labour and Employment statement (3 August 2025) and later counts as reported in 2026; the series differ and are stated separately. Legal references are the Code on Social Security, 2020 and the Union Budget 2025-26.

NITI Aayog estimated that 77 lakh people worked in India’s gig economy in 2020-21 and projected 2.35 crore by 2029-30. The Code on Social Security, 2020 was the first Indian law to name gig and platform workers and promise them a social-security scheme. Five years on, the Ministry of Labour’s own count in August 2025 was over 3.37 lakh gig and platform workers registered on the e-Shram portal, against a government estimate of more than one crore in the sector. For a large share of young Indians who cannot wait for a matched job, the platform is where work exists. The state has written their protection into law. It has not yet found most of the people it is meant for.

This Review has argued that graduate unemployment in India is carried by families who can afford to let a child wait. The other half of that argument is what happens to young people whose families cannot. They take the work that is available, and for a fast-growing share of urban youth that work is mediated by an app: delivery, ride-hailing, home services, warehouse shifts. It is counted as employment. It is not a payroll, and the protections attached to a payroll do not follow it.

Six findings anchor this analysis:

1. The workforce is large and growing quickly from a small base. NITI Aayog’s June 2022 report estimated 77 lakh gig workers in 2020-21, 2.6 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce and 1.5 per cent of all workers. It projected 2.35 crore by 2029-30, or 6.7 per cent of the non-agricultural workforce. The share of gig workers in total workers rose from 0.54 per cent in 2011-12 to 1.33 per cent in 2019-20.
2. It is not only low-skilled work. NITI Aayog found about 47 per cent of gig work in medium-skilled jobs, 22 per cent in high-skilled and 31 per cent in low-skilled, with the medium-skilled share falling and both ends rising. The platform economy is absorbing graduates as well as early school-leavers.
3. The law recognises the worker; the scheme depends on rules and registration. The Code on Social Security, 2020 defines gig and platform workers and allows the Union to frame schemes for life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits and old-age protection, funded in part by a contribution from aggregators of 1 to 2 per cent of turnover, capped at 5 per cent of payouts to workers. Access to any such scheme runs through registration.
4. Registration is a fraction of the estimated workforce, and the counts disagree. The Ministry of Labour stated that as of 3 August 2025, more than 30.98 crore unorganised workers had registered on e-Shram, including over 3.37 lakh gig and platform workers. The government’s own estimate for the sector in 2024-25 was more than one crore. Later reporting put gig registrations at about 8.58 lakh by January 2026 against a NITI Aayog estimate of 1.27 crore for 2024-25, and at roughly 12 lakh by mid-2026 after an aggregator registration drive. On every count, most of the workforce is not yet visible to the scheme meant to cover it.
5. The Union Budget moved, but on health cover, not income. The Union Budget 2025-26 announced registration of online platform workers on e-Shram, identity cards, and health cover under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, which provides up to ₹5 lakh per family per year for hospitalisation. That is meaningful protection against one kind of shock. It does nothing for income lost to an account deactivation, an injury that stops work, or a fall in rates.
6. The workers have begun to organise on their own. A nationwide strike by gig workers on New Year’s Eve 2025, following a token strike on 25 December, disrupted deliveries in several cities and drew attention to hours, pay and the absence of grievance channels. When an institution does not exist to hear a collective grievance, it surfaces on the street, as it does in recruitment examinations.

Why the platform is where young people land

The platform offers what the formal labour market does not: immediate work, no interview, no degree requirement, and pay the same week. For a young person whose family cannot finance a long job search, that is decisive. It is also why the headline unemployment rate stays low. A graduate who drives for a ride-hailing app while preparing for an examination is employed in the survey’s terms, and the companion essay explains why that matters.

The trouble is not that the work exists. It is that it carries none of the attachments that let work become a career: no provident fund, no employer health insurance, no maternity cover, no record of experience that another employer recognises, and no route to a grievance officer. The work pays today and accumulates nothing for tomorrow.

The registration problem

India chose to deliver gig-worker protection through a national registry of unorganised workers, e-Shram, launched in August 2021. As a database of the unorganised workforce it has been a large achievement: more than 30 crore registrations. As a route to gig-worker protection it has so far reached a small minority. Self-registration asks a worker to identify as a gig or platform worker, and many do not, or register under another category. Aggregator registration, where platforms upload their workers, is the more reliable route and has started only recently.

The disagreement between counts is itself the finding. When the Ministry’s own figure, the sector estimate and later reported counts differ by factors of three or more, no one can say what share of the workforce is covered. A scheme that cannot count its beneficiaries cannot be held to a coverage target.

The counter-case

There is a serious argument for leaving the platform model largely alone. Flexibility is the point: many workers want hours they control and several apps at once, and a regime that pushed platforms towards treating them as employees could shrink the very work that gives young people an entry. Rajasthan, Karnataka and others have legislated their own welfare frameworks, and the Union has extended health cover. On this view the system is evolving at a sensible pace, and heavier obligations would raise prices and cut jobs.

Flexibility is worth protecting, and nothing here argues for converting gig workers into employees. But portable protection does not require employment status. A contribution from aggregators is already in the law. The question is whether it reaches the worker. Registration is the bottleneck, and it is a delivery problem, not a design one.

What we would do

1. Make aggregator registration the default, and publish the count monthly. Every platform above a size threshold should upload its active workers to e-Shram as a condition of operating, with a single published monthly figure for registered gig and platform workers, by state and by platform category.
2. Collect and publish the aggregator contribution. The Code provides for a contribution of 1 to 2 per cent of turnover, capped at 5 per cent of payouts. Publish how much has been collected, from how many aggregators, and what it has been spent on.
3. Add income protection to health cover. Health insurance under PM-JAY covers hospitalisation. Add an accident and income-loss benefit funded from the aggregator contribution, so that an injury that stops work does not also stop income.
4. Give every platform worker a grievance address. Require each platform to name a grievance officer, publish a response timeline for deactivations and payment disputes, and report the number of grievances received and resolved each quarter.
5. Make gig experience count. Let a worker draw a verified record of hours and ratings from each platform into a portable credential, so that years of work become evidence another employer can recognise. For young workers, that is the difference between a job and a beginning.

India has done the harder intellectual work: it has named the gig worker in law and accepted that protection should follow the worker rather than the employer. What remains is the ordinary work of delivery, which is finding the worker, collecting what the law already provides for, and paying it out. Politics is the promise. Governance is the delivery. For a generation that starts its working life on an app, delivery means the platform is a first job, not the only one.

Companion essay. The same question, approached from the other side: The Unemployment Families Absorb — Why India’s Graduate Jobless Rate Stays Out of Sight.