The Political Economy of Gig Work in the Pandemic: Social Hierarchies and Labour Control of Indian Platform Workers

Abstract

This article examines capital–labour relations within location-based gig work in India, with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis of the pandemic exacerbated unemployment and created opportunities for platform services to expand, as consumers relied on digital platforms for their needs. This article assesses conditions across three gig services—food delivery, ride hailing and beauty work—based on interviews with 23 gig workers in the Delhi–National Capital Region in India and five organizers of gig worker collectives. The article discusses how workers’ incomes were cut even as they were exposed to higher risks to health and safety, and was accompanied by higher control exerted over their labour ostensibly for the safety of consumers. This control—both algorithmic and bodily—over workers derived its legitimacy from social hierarchies of caste and class between workers and consumers, and between workers and the platform. The article reveals a remarkable similarity in how workers fared across sectors, despite different classifications as essential or non-essential services. It establishes the significance of the pandemic to amplifying processes of labour commodification and labour control in gig work, ultimately contributing to antagonism between platforms and workers and to an emergent class politics of gig workers.