On August 26, 2025, Jharkhand became the fourth state in India to pass a law providing for social security benefits to gig and platform workers in the state. The month of August has brought pleasant and impressive surprises, as three states — Karnataka, Bihar, and Jharkhand—have passed laws that will now ensure registration, social security, and welfare for gig and platform workers. Rajasthan was the first state to pass a social security law for gig and platform workers in July 2023.
A Booming Platform Sector in Need of Regulation
India’s platform sector has continued to grow in recent years. According to NITI Aayog’s estimates, the sector already had 7.7 million workers in 2020, and by now it must have swelled to tens of millions, as young workers take up gig work due to the lack of employment opportunities for the youth.
Workers in this sector have self-organised into various collectives and have consistently emphasised the need for improved regulation and protection of workers’ rights in the sector. The demands for workers’ rights protection and regulation have also found support from the general public and other civil society organisations. Growing international debates on the need to regulate the platform sector, sustained media coverage, and pressure from workers and unions have led to some states in India taking on the task of regulating the sector.
While these state-level laws, which provide a concrete legal framework for social protection for gig and platform workers, are a crucial development, the road to achieving these milestones has been arduous.
The Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, passed in July 2023, laid the foundation for providing social security and welfare benefits to gig and platform workers. The law requires registration of all platform-based workers and aggregators/platforms. Each registered worker is assigned a unique ID, which remains valid across all platforms, enabling the tracking of their work history and entitlements. The Act mandates the creation of the “Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers Welfare Board” to oversee the implementation of the law. It also establishes the “Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers Social Security and Welfare Fund” to finance social security schemes for these workers.
A key feature is the “Platform-Based Gig Workers Welfare Cess,” which is a levy imposed on aggregators. This levy, a percentage of each platform transaction, will be collected and deposited into the welfare fund. The rate of the levy will be between 1% and 2% of the transaction value, as determined by the state government. While specific schemes will be formulated by the Welfare Board, the law outlines potential benefits, including health insurance, accident coverage, and other measures for financial support to workers.
The law provides a mechanism for workers to raise grievances concerning their entitlements, payments, and other benefits under the Act. The Act also establishes a “Central Transaction Information and Management System (CTIMS)” to track and monitor all transactions on aggregator platforms. This system will record details like commissions, payments to workers, and the welfare cess collected, ensuring transparency and accountability. To ensure compliance, the Act includes provisions for penalties against aggregators who fail to adhere to its requirements, including late payment of welfare cess or non-compliance with registration rules.
Unfortunately, two years on, the Rajasthan law, which was passed and approved, remains unfully implemented, as the state government (now led by a different political party) has not yet framed the necessary rules for the Act.
In India, while the Acts are foundational laws that set out the principles and framework, they must rely on a set of detailed rules specifying how their provisions will be put into practice. In fact, the government of India’s Social Security Code, passed by the Parliament in 2020, which for the first time provided a legal framework to extend social security benefits to the unorganised sector, including gig and platform workers, still awaits implementation for the same reason – the Central and state governments have not finalised and notified the necessary rules.
Struggle offers Critical Learnings
The road to ensuring social security and protection for gig and platform workers has been arduous, offering us key lessons. In each of these struggles, the unions, like the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT), engaged with various groups, like the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and other CSOs. MKSS has a long history of working with rural farmers and unorganised workers in Rajasthan and contributed significantly towards bringing forth the very important Right to Information Act in India.
IFAT engaged with MKSS through various meetings and sought their support in engaging with the then-ruling party of Rajasthan state, the Indian National Congress, and in building mass awareness about the issues affecting platform and gig workers. MKSS conducted multiple Jan sunwais (Public Hearings) to spread awareness.
The larger coalition, meanwhile, continuously engaged with the administration and political leadership, ultimately leading to the passage of the Rajasthan Platform-Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act. However, the Congress Party lost the elections to the BJP in December 2023. The existing BJP government is yet to enact the rules to implement the Act.
Inspired by the initial successes, IFAT formed strategic alliances with CSOs, legal agencies and policy-making bodies in the states with upcoming elections like Karnataka and Telangana. The unions challenged the political parties to declare a promise to enact a law ensuring rights for gig and platform workers in their election manifestos. The Congress (INC), engaged with the workers and comfortably won the elections in both states. The Unions followed this up with petitions, representations and a strong advocacy campaign listing core needs and demands of platform workers that the prospective law should contain to ensure decent work conditions.
After the wins, the Karnataka lawmakers and some progressive bureaucrats in the Labour Ministry continued to assure the trade unions that the government would fulfil its promise made in the election manifesto. They conducted numerous rounds of acrimonious and inconclusive meetings with unions, the platforms and other CSO groups.
The employers’ organisations and their representative bodies, such as NASSCOM, launched a campaign highlighting flaws in the draft law and even issuing a veiled threat that platforms may leave the state if their business interests are not protected. The Labour department submitted a draft law to the state cabinet ministers’ meeting in July 2024, but it took more than a year for the draft bill to be presented to the state legislature. One can understand the push and pull at play that unfolded during this period.
Finally, in April 2025, the leader of the Congress (INC) party, at a meeting in New Delhi attended by key ministers of Karnataka state, requested that the gig and platform workers’ bill be approved through the ordinance route as soon as possible. As per press reports, as many as six changes were made to the proposed draft legislation to ‘strike a balance’ to accommodate the concerns of the platforms. We presume the changes were made to accommodate the concerns of the platforms, and we do not have information about what these changes included.
The law, as finally passed in the Karnataka legislature in August 2025, incorporates all provisions of the Rajasthan law, which was passed by the Congress government in 2023. Additionally, it improves in many respects. To mention a few key changes, the welfare fee will be a percentage of each transaction between a gig worker and the platform, ranging from 1% to 5% based on different categories of aggregators, the social security benefits will include, but not limited to, health insurance, accident coverage, and financial assistance only, workers will be entitled to a human point of contact for their queries.
The law establishes a two-tiered grievance procedure. A platform worker must first approach an Internal Dispute Resolution Committee set up by the aggregator/platform. Suppose the worker is not satisfied or the committee fails to resolve the issue within 14 days. In that case, the matter can be escalated to the Welfare Board, the Act places a legal obligation on aggregators to provide workers with transparent and fair contracts, it mandates that contracts be in a language the worker understands and that any changes to terms, especially related to pay, be notified with at least 14 days’ notice, a landmark provision is the requirement for platforms to be transparent about their automated monitoring and decision-making systems.
This means that aggregators/platforms must explain how their algorithms affect task allocation, the use of personal data, ratings, earnings, and deactivation. The law provides safeguards against arbitrary termination by requiring aggregators/platforms to give a 14-day prior written notice with a valid reason for deactivation, except in cases of serious misconduct. However, this is currently a grey area: the workers and unions will only know “the list of things” once the law is implemented. The unions have made clear their demand for more clarity.
The Bihar and Jharkhand laws, as well as the yet-to-be-enacted Telangana state law, also mirror the Karnataka law in many ways.
The Beginning of A Larger Process
The recent state-level social security laws for gig and platform workers in India are a positive step, but they represent just the beginning of a larger process. The real challenge lies in their practical implementation and the subsequent expansion of workers’ rights to include income and job security, collective bargaining, and clearer worker status. With the change of ruling party in the State of Rajasthan, the Act is yet to be implemented.
Additionally, current laws primarily focus on social security benefits, which serve as a safety net. However, they don’t address the fundamental issues of the gig economy model. The Unions understand that and have put forth the following demands,
- Establish a floor for wages/income security, such as a minimum wage per hour, to ensure a stable income.
- Regulate per-task rates and incentives, which are currently determined by opaque algorithms.
- Recognise Collective bargaining rights, the absence of which creates a significant power imbalance. While platform worker unions and associations are growing, their legal status and ability to compel platforms to the negotiating table remain stifled.
- Recognise Worker Status: The legal ambiguity surrounding platform workers’ status is at the core of their vulnerability. They are not employees and therefore aren’t protected by traditional labour laws, yet they lack the complete autonomy of an actual independent contractor. A more precise legal classification is needed to determine the responsibilities of platforms and the rights of workers.
The path forward for India’s gig economy will involve not only implementing the social security laws effectively but also pushing for a broader legal framework that addresses unresolved core issues. Only this will ensure a fairer and more equitable future for millions of workers. There is also a big responsibility on the shoulders of the Indian trade Union movement to reach out and organise the nearly 25 million plus gig and platform workers in the country.
