The scale of the phenomenon is considerable. India is the region’s largest hub, with a gig workforce of roughly 7.7 million that the government think tank NITI Aayog projects will reach 23.5 million by 2029–30. Bangladesh holds the second-largest gig workforce in South Asia, while in Sri Lanka platform work functions mainly as a supplementary income source within the informal economy. Pakistan’s online gig work accounts for 2.9 percent of total employment, and the overwhelming majority of those workers, 97.1 percent, are engaged in physical, platform-based activities rather than remote digital tasks. According to a 2025 report by the International Labour Organization, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan together account for nearly half of the world’s platform workers. These figures place South Asia at the centre of a global transformation in how work is organised, mediated, and remunerated.

The economics of platform labour reveal a sharp asymmetry between corporate revenue and worker earnings. The review notes that Zomato alone earned Rs 2,604 crores, about 27.2 million US dollars, in the 2019–20 financial year, and that both Zomato and Swiggy roughly doubled their turnover between 2018–19 and 2019–20. Yet after deducting fuel costs, vehicle loan instalments, and other fixed expenses, food delivery partners in India net approximately Rs 275, or about 2.86 US dollars, per day for eight hours of work. Platforms describe themselves as intermediaries or passive matchmakers and classify workers as independent contractors or partners, a terminology the authors identify as a deliberate strategy to negate the employer–employee relationship and thereby avoid the application of labour law. In practice, platforms retain control over terms and conditions, wages, and performance monitoring, exercising the authority of an employer without bearing its legal obligations.

At the technical heart of this control lies algorithmic management. Customer satisfaction metrics, delivery pace, and service quality are continuously monitored by software systems that rank workers, and those rankings are then used to justify dismissing those labelled as underperforming. Researchers cited in the review describe Uber’s reliance on two forms of algorithmic control: gatekeeping, which screens and monitors who may work, and guiding, which directs how drivers perform their tasks. Algorithmic pay determination, surge pricing, and performance rewards generate pronounced income volatility, forcing workers into contingent, task-based remuneration arrangements. Identification deactivation has become a recurrent disciplinary tool across the region, often applied through opaque and discretionary processes that workers find difficult to understand or contest. The platform design encourages competition and isolation among workers, producing what some scholars call a digital cage that discourages solidarity and collective action, even as workers may perceive themselves as free and self-directed entrepreneurs.

The human costs are severe and increasingly visible. In early January 2026, a Zepto delivery worker in Hyderabad died while rushing to pick up an order under the pressure of ten-minute food and grocery delivery promises. The review records that this was neither the first such death nor likely the last, as workers speed to meet deadlines that directly affect their ratings and efficiency. In Pakistan, the Fairwork assessment of seven platforms spanning ride-hailing, food delivery, e-commerce delivery, and personal care highlights risks ranging from road safety to crime and violence. In Bangladesh, a female worker on the hellotask platform reported that despite relatively better salary and flexibility, access to basic facilities such as sanitation during menstruation, meals, medicines, and childcare depended on maintaining a good relationship with the customer. Nepali gig workers, particularly women, cite flexibility as their main reason for entering the sector, yet the country lacks any legal definition of gig workers, leaving their employment status ambiguous. Sri Lankan workers face intense surveillance, harsh climatic conditions, and the absence of social security provisions.

The theoretical framework of precarity gives these observations analytical coherence. The concept originates with Pierre Bourdieu, who described an existence with no regular timetable, no fixed place of work, and a whole life lived under the sign of the provisional. Judith Butler extended the idea, defining precarity as politically induced conditions in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death. The authors argue that gig work exemplifies this politically induced character: the insecurity is not merely a by-product of individual platforms but a structural outcome of neoliberal labour restructuring, in which states have curtailed welfare provisions and normalised casual, short-term, and intermittent labour. Crucially, the review finds that technologically mediated precarity overlaps with and intensifies pre-existing social hierarchies of caste, gender, poverty, and religion, positioning platforms as new digital gatekeepers of inequality.

Against these odds, gig workers have organised. In India, unions such as the United Food Delivery Partners’ Union, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers, and the All India Gig Workers Union have staged protests and collective actions against wage cuts, rising fuel prices, and declining incentives. In Pakistan, groups including the United Platform Workers of Sindh and the Informal Workers Coalition advocate for safety, social security, wage transparency, and an end to algorithmic surveillance. In Bangladesh, traditional unions have supported the Dhaka Ride-sharing Driver Union in demanding an end to police harassment, recognition of app-based riders as workers, a commission reduction from 25 to 10 percent, and tax exemptions. Digital tools are central to this mobilisation: WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, and social media campaigns coordinate strikes, share grievances, and connect workers across geographies. In Hyderabad, personal care workers on the Urban Company platform have built WhatsApp networks that function as whisper networks, warning one another about abusive customers and circulating information about company policies, an informal justice mechanism foregrounding caste, class, and customer–worker power dynamics.

These struggles have begun to yield policy results, though unevenly. India’s Code on Social Security 2020 was the first law in the region to officially recognise gig workers as a distinct category eligible for social security benefits, though critics point to uncertainties in its implementation. At the sub-national level, the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Bill of 2024 aims to institutionalise registration and welfare mechanisms, while the Tamil Nadu Platform Based Gig Workers’ Welfare Board, established in 2023, has subsidised e-scooter purchases for 2,000 registered workers and created an insurance programme offering up to Rs 5 lakh for accidental death or total disability, funded by an annual premium of just Rs 105 per worker. The Karnataka Platform-based Gig Workers Bill of 2025 goes further, proposing a 1 to 5 percent welfare fee on aggregators and a dedicated welfare board covering more than four lakh workers across ride-sharing, delivery, logistics, healthcare, and hospitality. In Pakistan, the Centre for Labour Research, working with the Fairwork project, has drafted a Platform Workers Protection Bill seeking to extend enforceable labour protections beyond the independent contractor classification. Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka still lack dedicated legislation for gig workers.

The review also draws attention to gendered dimensions of exclusion. India has approximately 4.75 million domestic workers on official records, most of them economically vulnerable women, yet no comprehensive national legislation protects them, despite state-level efforts in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Delhi. Women in gig work face distinct challenges balancing unpredictable schedules with childcare and caregiving responsibilities, and the president of the Gig and Platform Service Workers Union reported facing exploitation, threats of police action, and legal notices after raising complaints. Nevertheless, women workers have actively led mobilisations, including nationwide protests demanding fair wages and social security. The authors conclude that collective worker voice, even in constrained institutional environments, can shape regulatory discourse and public accountability, and they call for reframing the legal category of employee to include gig workers, or creating an expanded worker category with a basic range of workplace rights.

The broader significance of the study lies in its demonstration that platform-mediated precarity reproduces cycles of income volatility, debt exposure, and structural dependency that existing labour law was never designed to address. The authors argue that effective legislative reform must be coupled with institutional oversight and accountability mechanisms, portable social security entitlements, and statutorily enforceable labour standards. They note that platforms consistently resist standardised wages and protections by claiming such measures would undermine flexibility, yet their absence entrenches informality and regulatory arbitrage. While platform cooperatives have been proposed as an alternative model, the authors observe that operational costs and technical constraints limit their viability, and that workers are primarily fighting not for a share of the platforms but for rights, recognition, fair treatment, algorithmic transparency, and welfare policy. For South Asia’s rapidly expanding digital workforce, the trajectory from informal exclusion to formal protection, the review suggests, will depend on whether states match the organising energy of workers with substantive law and rigorous enforcement.

Subject of Research: Precarity, informality, and social security policy for gig and platform workers in South Asia

Article Title: Social (in)security and social policy for gig workers in South Asia

Article References: Social (in)security and social policy for gig workers in South Asia. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00579-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00579-0

Keywords: gig economy, platform workers, South Asia, precarity, algorithmic management, social security, informal labour, labour rights, India, unionisation, social policy, digital labour

The answer, according to the data, lies in an uneven landscape of knowledge, skills, and access. Vendors demonstrated moderate awareness of decent work principles, with 55 percent falling into the moderate knowledge category, while 23 percent showed low knowledge and only 22 percent high knowledge. This means that although most vendors have some grasp of concepts such as fair pay, workplace rights, social protection, and safe working conditions, that awareness rarely runs deep enough to be actionable. In practical terms, a vendor may know that labour rights exist without knowing how to claim them, or understand that social protection is important without knowing how to enrol in a programme. The study’s author argues that this shallow but real awareness constrains vendors’ capability to recognise and seize opportunities, leaving them unable to engage effectively with the formal systems that could improve their working lives.

Where the vendors truly shine is in operational competence. A striking 92 percent reported strong practical vending skills, and 87 percent claimed solid customer service abilities, while 66 percent possessed basic financial management skills. These figures reflect a workforce that has learned its trade through experience rather than formal instruction, honing food-handling techniques, market adaptability, and interpersonal finesse through years of daily practice. Yet the skills profile collapses when the focus shifts from the stall to the business. Only 40 percent demonstrated awareness of labour rights, just 38 percent could maintain proper records, and a mere 29 percent reported competence in sustainable business practices. This gap between operational and strategic skills is critical, because record-keeping and regulatory literacy are precisely the capabilities that allow small enterprises to grow, secure credit, and formalise their operations.

Access to enabling services proved to be the weakest link of all. Only 27 percent of vendors had access to formal financial services such as banks or loans, a mere 25 percent had participated in any training or workshops, and just 18 percent were covered by any form of formal social protection. Instead, the dominant source of support was informal: 69 percent of vendors relied on family and friends when they needed help. From the perspective of the Capability Approach, this pattern reveals vendors adapting to inadequate environments by leaning on available social resources rather than formal systems. Such networks provide short-term relief, but they rarely support substantial economic growth, and this reliance can actually extend vulnerability by keeping vendors locked out of scalable financial services and safety nets that could buffer them against illness, theft, weather, or sudden losses of vending space.

The statistical heart of the study lies in its chi-square analyses of the relationships among knowledge, skills, and service access. Two associations emerged as statistically significant. First, knowledge and skills were linked, with a chi-square value of 6.41, a p-value of 0.041, and a small-to-moderate effect size indicated by Cramér’s V of 0.29. Vendors with high knowledge were disproportionately likely to demonstrate high skills: within the high-knowledge group, 10 of 17 vendors showed high skill levels, whereas in the low-knowledge group only 5 of 18 did. Second, skills and access to formal services were significantly associated, with a chi-square value of 3.92, a p-value of 0.048, and Cramér’s V of 0.23. Among vendors with low to moderate skills, only 34.6 percent accessed formal services, compared with 56.0 percent of highly skilled vendors. The interpretation offered is that skills in financial management and documentation likely reduce transaction costs and foster smoother interactions with formal institutions such as banks and municipal offices.

Intriguingly, the relationship between knowledge and service access, while showing a clear gradient, did not reach statistical significance. Access rose from 33.3 percent among low-knowledge vendors to 38.1 percent among those with moderate knowledge and 58.8 percent among the high-knowledge group, yet the association yielded a p-value of 0.087, just above the conventional significance threshold, with Cramér’s V of 0.25. The author reads this as evidence that awareness alone does not guarantee inclusion. Structural barriers such as high costs, bureaucratic hurdles, and a lack of institutional trust can exclude even well-informed vendors from services they know exist. This distinction between internal capabilities, such as knowledge, and external enabling conditions is a core insight of the Capability Approach: recognising an opportunity is not the same as being able to convert it into a real outcome when the surrounding institutional environment is hostile or unresponsive.

The demographic profile of the surveyed vendors adds important context to these findings. Women made up the majority of respondents at 56 percent, and the largest age bracket was 26 to 35 years, accounting for 42 percent of the sample, followed by 36 to 45 years at 27 percent. Nearly half of the vendors, 48 percent, had completed secondary school, while 31 percent had primary education, 12 percent had tertiary education, and 9 percent had no schooling. Most vendors, 52 percent, had between one and five years of experience, suggesting a steady influx of newcomers into the trade. The author interprets this pattern as a symptom of chronic structural unemployment: as formal jobs fail to materialise for Tanzania’s rapidly growing urban population, food vending becomes a default livelihood for people in their prime working years. New entrants often lack the capital and resilience of established vendors, raising concerns about income stability and long-term security.

The study is careful to acknowledge its own limits. It employed a cross-sectional quantitative design, collecting data at a single point in time from a convenience sample of 77 vendors at one location, which means the findings cannot establish causality and may not generalise to vendors in other municipalities or socio-economic contexts. Self-reported questionnaire data are also susceptible to recall and social desirability biases. The author explicitly cautions that the significant associations between knowledge and skills, and between skills and service access, should be viewed as correlations rather than causal relationships. It is plausible that the two constructs influence each other over time, with knowledge enabling better skill development and practical experience deepening understanding, but longitudinal research would be needed to untangle the direction of these effects.

Even with those caveats, the policy implications are concrete and urgent. The study recommends that municipal authorities prioritise inclusive training programmes covering labour rights, financial education, record-keeping, and business skills, precisely the strategic competencies in which vendors showed the greatest deficits. It further calls for cooperation among local government, banks, and other institutions to expand formal assistance, and for authorities to formally recognise the contributions of informal food vendors to urban economies and food security while working to make their working conditions safer and more secure. Within the ILO framework, the findings expose gaps across multiple pillars at once: rights at work are undermined by shallow legal knowledge, productive employment is weakened by missing managerial skills, and social protection is hollowed out by 18 percent coverage rates. Viewed through the lens of the Capability Approach, the vendors of Kigamboni possess the agency and the craft, but the conversion factors that would turn their efforts into genuine freedoms, from credit to insurance to institutional recognition, remain largely out of reach. Closing that gap, the study argues, is not charity but sound economic policy for cities where the informal sector is not the margin of the economy but its beating heart.

Subject of Research: Decent work capabilities of informal street food vendors in Kigamboni Municipality, Tanzania

Article Title: Capabilities of informal food vendors in achieving decent work in Kigamboni Municipality, Tanzania

Article References: Capabilities of informal food vendors in achieving decent work in Kigamboni Municipality, Tanzania. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-026-00569-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44282-026-00569-2

Keywords: informal economy, decent work, street food vendors, Tanzania, Capability Approach, ILO, social protection, urban livelihoods, financial inclusion, labour rights, Kigamboni, skills training