Sharad Raj examines the New Year’s Eve gig workers’ strike to expose how neo-capitalism, privatisation, and algorithm-driven platforms have created a vast underclass of workers stripped of rights, dignity, and state accountability in contemporary India.

The gig economy in India, dominated by platforms such as Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Blinkit, and Zepto, highlights systemic failures of capitalism, labour policy, and privatisation. Gig workers face insecurity, unclear employment status, lack of social security, and algorithmic exploitation, demanding urgent government intervention and labour reform. 

It was that time of the year when Christmas seamlessly blends into the arrival of a new year and the euphoria of New Year Eve! It means pretty much nothing to most around the world, except for the upwardly mobile urban middle class that continues to live off fake positivity and that next year international corporations will make their lives even better than the year that is going away.

No wonder the gig workers associated with e-commerce and fast commerce like Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Blinkit, Zepto and WeFast et al decided to go on a strike on December 31st. The massive media coverage on the impending strike focused largely on how it will paralyze the comfortable celebrations of the privileged. My first question was, how would these workers strike in the absence of a union? There were no answers. Until this morning, while reading the newspapers that had a few articles on the gig workers strike, there was no mention of the fact that there is an All-India Gig Workers Union (AIGWU) affiliated to Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), albeit predominantly in food delivery, in 2020. Good, but it leaves a whole lot of other gig workers out of its purview.

Middle-Class Dependence and Corporate Damage Control

The calling of the strike was frustrating for the middle class. With prices soaring, home parties are the norm, and they almost completely depend on gig workers delivering their favourite food and other items from clothes to cell phones at home. But how effective AIGWU has been needs to be investigated. The e-commerce corporations that apparently determine the working conditions of the workers based on their own evaluations, operational costs, discounts offered etc. immediately hiked the incentive for the New Year Eve for their gig workers and all was well. I ordered food on Zomato and celebrated God only knows why, the eve.

All seemed well, but the truth is nothing really changed. The threat did not and will not change their basic and larger working conditions. A country obsessed with privatisation, where every institution, every organisation is up for sale, has absolved the government of its basic responsibility of providing jobs. Private sector that operates based on profits and the farce of meritocracy employs only those who add to that bottom line and not those who seek rights and security. The workers are dispensable.

Fractured Accountability in Neo-Capitalism

In any case, the ugly face of neo-capitalism is a fractured working system where there is no accountability. Sales, marketing and servicing are not just separate departments within a single umbrella of a particular company, but each have their own umbrellas, and one doesn’t take up or operate in collaboration with the other. They are independent entities hence devoid of any responsibility, not even of their own departments. Customer services are outsourced to BPO operators who care a damn for consumer rights, leave alone workers, for they are all contractual and can be fired without notice.

Some years back I found the ATM of my bank not working. It was the first of a month and salary had to be withdrawn. I went to the branch manager to complain and was told that ATMs have been outsourced to an outside company to operate, and the bank has NO say in its working! Do we see the problem here? We cannot withdraw our own money from our own bank, and the bank just throws up its hands!

Algorithms, Ratings, and Precarity

In the case of gig workers, it is even worse. There is no clarity on the nature of their contracts, hence their rights and risks. Add to that the delivery pressure that their company promises to its consumers, algorithm-based nature of work and customer feedback that determines not only their incentives but whether they remain employed or not. Anything less than a 5-star delivery means curtains for them. Once during “The Great Amazon Sale” there was a big delivery mess up, so I called customer service only to be told that it is peak sale season therefore Amazon has randomly hired people with no investment in their training!!!

Privatisation, over decades, generated mass unemployment. Government is not providing employment, and private companies keep cutting the flab and have adopted contract services where the parent company needn’t invest a penny yet make its services available. This only means more and more exploitation of the working class.

In a country of 1.5 billion it is a huge number of people abandoned by the State and exploited by the corporations. It means no provident fund, no social security, no employment guarantee, no medical benefits etc. This huge mass of millions of people live at the mercy of algorithms, our feedback and whims of its employer, with no strong forum to go for redressal of any sort.

The Legal Grey Area

Professor Himanshu from the Centre of Economic Studies and Planning, Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi writes in Indian Express that one of the key reasons for a weak gig workers association is because there is no clarity on the employer-employee status of these workers and e-commerce companies. Technically they are on contract and not employees but then they serve the companies hence considered employed!

The so-called burgeoning economy has converted the daily manual workers into moped riding workforce with a uniform, apart from this nothing has changed, writes Professor Himanshu. Add to this the grave risk to the lives of these workers contracted by fast-commerce sites like Blinkit. What happens if a rider gets killed or handicapped for life while delivering our favourite ice cream? His family dies in poverty and hunger or maybe begs if no one else is educated enough?

The government used to offer compensatory jobs to the next of kin, old industrial model had safeguards like compensation if a life is lost in the factory or a worker is handicapped. None of it applies any more. Countries like Brazil have come with government intervention and legislations to safeguard gig workers, Mexico is also en route apart from other countries. In India too we need the government to step in before it is too late.

Needless to say, that the treachery of profit mongering, seduction to LED billboards, expressways and bullet trains has come at the cost of massive labour force of our country and we are all complicit.