NO CONTRACT, NO COVER: PRECARIOUS LABOUR, FRACTURED IDENTITY, AND THE SOCIAL SECURITY DEFICIT AMONG PLATFORM GIG WORKERS IN VISAKHAPATNAM CITY

Abstract

Background: India's platform economy has grown faster than the labour policy framework designed to govern it. In Visakhapatnam, a city classified as the tenth largest economy in India as of 2025, tens of thousands of workers deliver food, transport passengers, and perform domestic services through aggregator platforms including Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, and Uber. They earn without employment contracts, contribute to no provident fund, and fall outside the coverage of every labour protection built for organised sector workers. This study examines who these workers are, what kind of life the gig economy actually produces for them, and how far recent national and state-level policy reforms have gone toward addressing their situation.

Methods: A qualitative-dominant mixed methods study was conducted in Visakhapatnam between January 2025 and March 2026. Structured interviews were administered to 90 platform gig workers across food delivery, ride-hailing, and domestic services sectors, 25 platform supervisors and aggregator representatives, and 15 labour officials and union representatives, totalling 130 respondents. Purposive and snowball sampling was used. Thematic analysis was applied to qualitative data; frequency distributions were used for closed-question responses.

Results: Sixty-seven per cent of respondents worked across two or more platforms simultaneously to achieve minimum subsistence income. Seventy-eight per cent had no accident insurance at the time of interview, and 84% had no access to any provident fund or pension contribution. Income instability was described by 73% of respondents as their primary source of stress, ahead of road safety and health costs. Self-identified occupational identity was absent among a majority of respondents, with most describing their work in negative terms relative to prior or imagined stable employment. Awareness of the Union Budget 2025 announcement on e-Shram registration for gig workers was low at 21%.

Conclusions: Gig work in Visakhapatnam produces a population that is economically active but socially invisible to the state's welfare architecture. The platform economy's growth has not been accompanied by commensurate expansion of social protection. Guy Standing's precariat framework applies with particular force to this setting: workers lack occupational identity, labour rights, and any stable narrative they can give their working lives. National policy reforms announced in 2025 represent a beginning, not a resolution.