Under draft rules notified in early 2026 under the Code on Social Security, a gig or platform worker must be engaged with an aggregator for at least 90 days in a financial year to qualify for the Centre’s social security benefits — rising to 120 days if the worker is engaged with more than one aggregator. Delivery platforms have simultaneously come under scrutiny for aggressive time-bound delivery models, algorithm-driven work allocation, and cases of workers being deactivated from the app without explanation or recourse.
You are the Member-Secretary of a State Gig Workers Welfare Board recently set up to implement these provisions. A delivery rider, injured in a road accident while making a delivery, applies for accident insurance and social security benefits under the scheme. The platform’s official records show he was engaged with them for only 75 days in the financial year — short of the required 90-day threshold — and the platform therefore denies his claim as ineligible.
On investigating further, you find that the rider has, in practice, worked exclusively for this one platform for over eight months. However, the platform’s internal system periodically re-registers such riders under a different “delivery partner” ID through a third-party staffing entity it contracts with, which has the effect of splitting a single continuous engagement into two shorter spells — each falling just under the qualifying threshold.
Based on the above case study, answer the following:
a) What are the ethical issues involved in this situation?
b) How would you handle this particular worker’s claim?
c) What broader steps would you take to address this practice at a systemic level?
Subject Matter
Whether technical, engineered non-compliance with a welfare eligibility threshold should defeat a genuine worker’s claim, and how to address systemic circumvention of labour welfare law.
Facts
- New rule requires 90 days’ engagement with a single aggregator in a financial year to qualify for social security benefits
- An injured rider’s official record shows only 75 days, falling short of the threshold
- The rider has, in substance, worked exclusively for the same platform for over eight months
- The platform’s system periodically re-registers such riders under a different ID via a third-party staffing entity, fragmenting continuous engagement into shorter, sub-threshold spells
Values/Principles Involved
- Substance over form — the law’s intent versus its literal, technical satisfaction
- Distributive justice — protecting the economically weaker party in an asymmetric relationship
- Good faith and prevention of circumvention of beneficial legislation
- Institutional duty to verify, rather than rely solely on self-reported compliance data
- Algorithmic and organisational accountability, even when control is diffused across entities
Stakeholders
- The injured rider and his dependents
- Other gig workers potentially subject to the same practice
- The platform and its contracted staffing entity
- The newly formed State Gig Workers Welfare Board
- Member-Secretary (self)
(a) Ethical Issues Involved
Letter of the rule versus its purpose
The 90-day threshold was designed to distinguish genuinely engaged gig workers from occasional, incidental users. Applying it mechanically to someone who worked continuously for eight months — but whose engagement was administratively fragmented — inverts the rule’s purpose: it excludes precisely the worker the threshold was meant to protect.
Diffused accountability enabling evasion
By routing workers through a third-party staffing entity and re-issuing IDs, the platform creates a structure where no single record shows true continuous engagement. This is a governance problem as much as an individual claim problem — control stays centralised with the platform, but the paper trail is deliberately fragmented.
Information and power asymmetry
The injured worker bears the entire evidentiary burden, with no institutional resources, against a platform that controls all relevant records — an asymmetry the Board’s design should correct for, not reinforce.
(b) Handling This Worker’s Claim
- Do not dismiss the claim on the platform’s self-reported 75-day record alone; independently verify actual work pattern through login/task logs, payment records across both IDs, and available GPS/task-assignment data
- Treat the two fragmented spells as a single continuous engagement for computing the 90-day threshold — the underlying economic relationship, not the administrative label, is what the law tracks
- Grant the accident insurance and social security benefit on this basis, while formally recording the fragmentation practice as a finding requiring separate regulatory action
- Communicate the decision and reasoning transparently to the platform, putting it on notice that future cases will be assessed on actual continuity, not internally generated IDs
(c) Systemic Steps
- Direct the aggregator to submit consolidated engagement records tracked by verifiable identity (Aadhaar-linked or equivalent), not internally assigned partner IDs
- Recommend a rule clarification stating explicitly that engagement through affiliated or contracted sub-entities of the same platform must be aggregated, not treated as separate spells
- Institute periodic, independent audits of aggregator-submitted engagement data, rather than relying on self-certification, given the clear incentive to keep workers under threshold
- Set up a low-friction grievance mechanism specifically for eligibility disputes, so workers are not required to independently reconstruct evidence the platform already holds
- Publish anonymised findings periodically, so similar fragmentation practices across other platforms can be identified proactively, not only case by case
Way Forward
A welfare threshold that can be defeated by administrative relabelling, without any change in the actual economic relationship, protects no one and rewards exactly the kind of structuring the law was meant to prevent. The Board’s task is to read continuity of engagement in substance, not merely in the platform’s own records, and to use its regulatory position to close the gap before it becomes a template other platforms adopt.