‘The doorbell is not the problem’: Why government regulation is necessary for the gig work sector

As 2025 came to an end, delivery workers across India called for strikes on December 25 and December 31, demanding higher incentives, better working conditions, and more predictable incomes.

While platforms such as Zomato, Swiggy, and Blinkit claimed that it had been business as usual, with record New Year’s Eve orders and negligible disruption, news publications reported that companies had quietly raised incentives for workers in some cities amid mounting pressure.

The strikes may not have paralysed urban consumption, but they did succeed in pushing gig work back into the public debate, once again exposing the fragile foundations on which millions of livelihoods now rest.

As the discussion raged, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal published a series of social media posts to explain his company’s point of view. His central argument was provocative: for centuries, he claimed, the labour of the poor remained invisible to the rich, allowing consumption without moral discomfort.

“Factory workers toiled behind walls, farmers in distant fields, domestic help in backrooms,” he declared. “The wealthy consumed the fruits of that labor without ever seeing the faces or the fatigue behind it.”

The gig economy, he argued, shattered that invisibility by placing delivery workers at the doorsteps of the consuming class. The unease consumers feel, Goyal contended, is not about workers being exploited but about guilt. “We tip awkwardly, or avoid eye contact, because the inequality is no longer abstract,” he claimed. “It’s personal.”

Attempts to regulate or curb gig work, in his telling, are less about dignity for workers and more about restoring their invisibility – returning inequality to abstraction rather than confronting it.

There is something refreshing, even admirable, about the founder of one of India’s largest consumer-tech companies engaging publicly with questions of labour, class, and inequality.

Goyal is right on at least two counts. First, that gig platforms have generated livelihoods for millions in an economy where job creation has lagged behind workforce growth. India’s unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high in recent years, with youth unemployment particularly acute, making platform work an important – if imperfect – source of income.

Second, he is right that banning gig work is neither feasible nor desirable. For many households, delivery work pays school fees, rent, and daily expenses. Removing it without viable alternatives would be devastating.

But Goyal’s argument also collapses under its own contradictions. While he warns against “over-regulation”, he celebrates the role of law enforcement in disciplining striking workers and “miscreants”. However, regulation is not an abstract moral imposition; it is the mechanism through which societies attempt to balance power asymmetries.

The insurance coverage for gig workers that delivery platforms now cite as evidence of their corporate responsibility did not emerge organically from benevolence – it evolved over years of public scrutiny, leading to regulatory pressure in the form of the Code on Social Security framed by the government. As economic forms change, regulatory frameworks must evolve with them. To argue otherwise is to freeze responsibility at the convenience of corporate interests.

It is also important to acknowledge a structural reality that Goyal’s posts elide: delivery companies exist first and foremost to serve their shareholders. Investor pressure to cut costs, improve margins and demonstrate profitability is not incidental – it shapes platform design, incentive structures and algorithmic management. Any social good produced by gig work is a byproduct of this business model, not its animating principle.

This is precisely why government regulation is necessary: not to kill innovation, but to ensure that efficiency does not come at the cost of dignity.

Goyal frames the debate as one of guilt versus visibility, but a more useful lens is recognition. As the framer of India’s Constitution, BR Ambedkar, argued in his writings, dignity does not come from charity, sympathy or moral discomfort felt by the privileged. It comes from institutional recognition – from rights, protections and the assurance that an individual’s labour and life are valued by law and society.

Simply being seen does not guarantee dignity. Without rights, visibility can coexist with deep humiliation.

Feminist scholar Chandra Talpade Mohanty advances this understanding by showing how the labour of the poor is often recognised only for its utility, not for the person performing it. Delivery workers are visible as moving bodies that fulfil tasks – bringing food, groceries, convenience – but not as workers with claims to rest, safety, or social security.

Seeing a delivery worker at the door does not automatically translate into recognising them as a rights-bearing subject. Visibility without recognition risks becoming a spectacle, where inequality is acknowledged but left structurally untouched.

Much of the defence of gig work rests on the language of freedom and choice: workers “choose” to log in, “prefer” platform work, and can “exit” at will. But as philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues, contemporary capitalism fetishises choice while stripping it of substance. Delivery workers are free to choose – but only within structures they did not choose.

When survival depends on logging in for 12 hours in heat, rain, or traffic, freedom becomes a burden rather than a right. Failure is individualised, while systemic constraints remain untouched. Choice, in this sense, becomes a mechanism of control.

None of this is to suggest that private companies must solve society’s deepest inequalities. But it does mean that profitability cannot become a justification for labour exploitation.

Ethnographic work such as Kaveri Medappa’s Chasing Targets, Making Life shows how delivery workers in Bengaluru navigate punishing targets, chronic health issues and relentless competition in the absence of alternatives. Other studies across Indian cities have documented similar patterns: algorithmic opacity, income volatility and the steady transfer of risk from platforms to workers.

A collaborative research project in which I am involved, Just Transitions on Indian Streets, reinforces these findings. In workshops with street-based workers in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Kolkata between September and November, delivery workers consistently highlighted climate exposure, infrastructure deficits, algorithmic pressure, income insecurity, harassment, gendered vulnerabilities and their near-total absence from policy frameworks, despite being central to everyday urban consumption.

If platforms like Zomato genuinely see delivery “partners” as their backbone, the path forward is neither denial nor defensiveness. Small but meaningful steps are possible: transparent algorithms, weather-sensitive timelines, compensation for climate-related risks and accessible grievance redressal.

Most importantly, they need structured dialogue with workers and their unions. Social media interventions cannot serve that purpose.

Finally, none of this absolves the government of its responsibility. Without thoughtful regulation, India risks drifting towards monopolistic or duopolistic platform control, where “market forces” give way to crony capitalism.

The recent disruptions in the aviation sector inconvenienced a relatively privileged few. A similar failure in the gig economy would endanger millions of livelihoods.

Zomato’s Goyal concluded his note by declaring, “The doorbell is not the problem. The question is what we do after opening the door.” He is right. The decisions made by both quick commerce companies and the government will determine whether visibility leads to justice, or merely to better-lit inequality.

Gaurav Mittal is a researcher at the Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford.