On December 31, while India counted down to a new year with discounted meals and 10-minute deliveries, a section of gig workers prepared for a strike that was the cumulative result of long shifts, uncertain pay, algorithmic pressure and physical risk without institutional protection. Platforms’ response followed a familiar playbook. Incentives were temporarily raised to ensure service continuity. A PR push downplayed the discontent. The striking workers were described as a small minority of “miscreants”.

Markets, after all, do not like disruption, especially when valuations depend on the promise of seamless convenience. Yet, this framing missed the larger point about the structural terms under which India’s fastest-growing labour segment now works.

India has seen this conflict before in mills, mines and manufacturing floors, where efficiency was defended until dignity demanded legal recognition. What is different now is scale and visibility, which platforms recast as inconvenience and mischief, even as consumers confront the truth that their expectation of instant gratification is inseparable from labour precarity.

India’s gig economy occupies an........

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