New Delhi: There is a familiar rhythm to India’s urban outrage cycle. A tweet drops, a hashtag trends, and suddenly the social media trial switches on. This time, the spark was a blunt, characteristically unsentimental tweet from Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal – pushing back against calls for mandated higher wages for gig workers. Predictably, the pitchforks came out.

But before we moralise our way into bad economics, it’s worth pausing and asking a far more uncomfortable question: what is the real problem we are trying to solve?

Because it is not low gig wages. It is urban unemployment.

India’s cities are sitting on a silent crisis – millions of young people, semi-skilled and low-skilled, with limited formal job opportunities. In that context, the gig economy is not exploitation by default. It is absorption. It is a pressure valve. For many, it is not the “worst job in town” but the only job in town.

That is the uncomfortable truth many armchair activists refuse to engage with.

The outrage assumes an imaginary........

© News9Live