It was 4am, the morning of her wedding when the bride realizes that her nail polish was fading. She panics, because every photographer would be zooming into her hands for the photoshoot. Suddenly, she picks up her phone, and by 4:10 am, after a few frantic taps, she has a brand-new nail polish in her hand. A student, few kilometres away, is studying for his exams and starts feeling hungry in the wee hours of the morning. Within minutes, he has breakfast waiting at his doorstep.
Between the bride’s perfect nails and the student’s hot idlies, stand the porters, drivers, delivery-persons and repair technicians who keep “instant” India running round the clock. These are gig and platform workers, engaged through apps, to perform on-demand tasks. Often logging in 10-12 hours a day on average, their labour is hyper-visible to consumers on screens, yet their working conditions and social security remains largely invisible in law and policy implementation.
A SEAT AT THE TABLE:
The Code on Social Security, 2020 (“Code”), implemented on 21st November 2025, amalgamates nine social security enactments and explicitly extends its objectives to employees and workers in the organized and unorganized sectors. This marks the beginning of the unorganized workforce being formally recognized and brought under the ambit of regular legislation. As part of this inclusion, the code has brought gig-workers and platform workers under its ambit, describing them as persons performing work outside the traditional employer-employee relationship, in exchange for payment .
A textbook analysis of the Code highlights that this is a conceptual leap from the earlier regime, which was designed primarily for standard blue-collar and white-collar employment roles, and that India is now closer to prioritizing minimum wage and social security across board. However, the universality of the benefits remains heavily reliant on the worker’s position in the labour market and from a practical perspective, the regularization of such benefits to the unorganized sector remains precarious.
For the unorganized sector, every entitlement under the Code currently depends on (i) being identified and registered on a central database and (ii) the future framing of schemes and funds by the Appropriate Government, at their discretion on coverage, benefit levels and financing. That is, what appears as a right in text, functions more as a promise contingent on administrative follow-through.
AN EMPTY PLATE:
While the unorganized workforce has been offered a seat at the table of social security, they are currently yet to be served with tangible benefits, mirroring eating off an empty plate. By contrast, the same Code guarantees security, at status-quo with the previous legislations or at better terms for the organized workforce. This is evidenced through the detailed chapters relating to contribution rates, enforcement machinery and penalties demarcated in the Code for ‘traditional employees. The net effect of such differentiation is a layered hierarchy within the very statute that aims to unify labour protection.
Firstly, for the unorganized workforce, most benefits, including the quantum of benefits, eligibility and funding, are left to be determined under future schemes, pending drafting and implementation by the appropriate authorities. Thus, such workers must await the schemes to ascertain if they are even eligible for benefits under the law, placing them in uncertainty.
Secondly, the unorganized workforce, albeit having been recognized, are still classified separately, which allows legislatures and platforms to deny them core employment protections such as guaranteed working hours, collective bargaining rights and standard termination safeguards that formal employers receive as right.
Lastly, all registrations to be made on the unified portal, “e-shram”, are electronic and linked to the Aadhaar card. Based on a report published by the Ministry of Labour & Employment in August 2025 , over thirty-one crore unorganized workers have registered with the portal. At this juncture, it is pertinent to note that, for a workforce with high turnover, multiple concurrent platforms and limited bargaining power, the feasibility of grasping and enforcing rights via the portal is a distant dream. Although help desks and facilitation centres are envisaged, their rollouts are often uneven and not integrated with the actual platform/ app where the workers spend their prime time.
POPULATING THE TABLE:
Altogether, the Code represents an undeniable doctrinal shift. However, if the law aims to reach every workspace, it will have to convert the statutory recognition into concrete, funded schemes. This would require the immediate notification of schemes promised by the law, and their rigid implementation. Further, it may, gradually, introduce minimum standards on working time, mandatory rest and basic protections for workers while also mandating compliance from platforms which exert high control in pricing, allocation of tasks and sanctions. It may also facilitate the recognition of sector-wise unions or negotiating councils to better protect their interests. Lastly, the schemes must ensure that it manages to ease into the practices already being followed by the unorganized sector instead of introducing new procedure and process. That is, the law must be brought to the platform and not the platform worker to the law. This approach would greatly assist the worker in understanding the pathway to claiming their benefits. Thus, by adopting a tripartite model of accountability, involving the state, the platform and the worker, one may hasten the process of populating the table.
It is pertinent to note that these are not utopian demands. For instance, the state of Rajasthan has already introduced separate legislations to facilitate social security to their unorganized workforce. To better protect the interests of the stakeholder, the Rajasthan model has created a “social security fee” levied on each transaction which would ensure that the benefits are portable to the worker, regardless of the app they are engaged on. Attempting to include such practices nation-wide, may indicate better protection to the stakeholders. Accordingly, while the first wave was a first and incomplete step, the second wave could encourage reforms to operationalize and deepen the benefits offered to the unorganized sector.
Thus, for the 4 am bride and the hungry student, the law’s success will not be measured in definitions, but in whether the person at the door can fall ill without destitution, log off at humane hours and grow old without fear. The Code opens the door. The real success lies in whether the unorganized workforce, labouring wild hours in an increasingly competitive app-driven economy, will ever be allowed, and enabled, to walk through it.
i Code on Social Security, No. 36 of 2020, § 2(35), (60)–(61) (India) ii Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Labour & Employment, Welfare Schemes for Gig Economy Workers: Over 31 Crore Unorganised Workers and Over 5 Lakh Gig and Platform Workers Registered on e-Shram Portal (Dec. 1, 2025), (last accessed on 30-04-2026) https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2196927
