The Gig Economy’s Festive Paradox

Adecco India expects the 2026 festive season to generate 2.5 lakh to 2.7 lakh temporary and gig jobs, 15 to 20 per cent more than the roughly 2.16 lakh created in 2025. E-commerce, quick commerce, logistics and organised retail will drive much of this hiring. By Diwali on 8 November, these workers will have powered the season’s shopping frenzy, picking, packing and delivering its countless orders.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) valued Navratri-to-Diwali trade in 2025 at Rs. 6.05 lakh crore, up 25 per cent from the previous year. The corresponding figure for 2026 will follow after the festival. Yet there is no equivalent accounting of what the workers behind this commercial bonanza earn, the hours they put in, or how many emerge from the season with even basic insurance.

Thin Earnings

The Economic Survey 2025-26 estimates India’s gig workforce at 1.2 crore in FY25, up 55 per cent from 77 lakh in FY21. Yet growth has not translated into decent earnings: about 40 per cent of gig workers earn below Rs. 15,000 a month, equivalent to nearly 48 lakh people making Rs. 1.8 lakh or less annually.

These are gross earnings. Delivery riders must meet fuel, vehicle maintenance and mobile data costs themselves, while platform payments hinge on orders, distance, waiting time and app-driven incentives. A festive surge brings more orders, but also longer hours and higher expenses. What matters is not the gross payout but what remains after costs, measured against the hours worked — and whether the income lasts once the seasonal rush subsides.

The Survey, prepared under Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran, has recommended minimum per-hour or per-task earnings for gig workers, acknowledging the precarity of the model. Yet festive hiring continues to rely on joining bonuses, attendance rewards and productivity incentives rather than higher fixed wages. Adecco says preparations began up to 12 weeks ahead this year, against 8 to 10 weeks in 2025. Platforms align labour costs with order volumes while workers bear the uncertainty of the lean weeks.

NLB Services reports that freshers, first-time workers and women form a growing share of festive hires, drawn by flexible shifts and jobs close to home. For a college student or a woman returning to paid work, a two-month contract with flexible hours is a genuine entry point. Ending flexible work would remove that option.

But when the season ends, the worker leaves with wages and nothing else: no insurance, no service record, no claim on next year’s work.

The Code on Social Security, 2020, came into force on 21 November 2025 along with the other three labour codes. It defined gig and platform workers in central law for the first time. It provides for schemes covering life and disability, accidents, health and maternity, and old age. Aggregators must pay 1 to 2 per cent of annual turnover into a Social Security Fund, capped at 5 per cent of what they pay gig and platform workers.

The cap matters more than the headline rate. Take a delivery platform with Rs. 5,000 crore in annual turnover that pays Rs. 800 crore to its riders. Two per cent of turnover comes to Rs. 100 crore. The 5 per cent cap cuts the contribution to Rs. 40 crore. Once the cap binds, the contribution follows rider payouts, not sales. A festive season that lifts a platform’s revenue without lifting rider pay adds nothing to the fund.

Registration lags further behind. The e-Shram portal recorded 31.89 crore registrations by August 2026, according to the Labour Ministry. Platform workers account for about 11.5 lakh of them. Set against the Survey’s 1.2 crore gig workers, that is fewer than one in ten. The two counts define the workforce differently: the Survey counts all gig work, while e-Shram counts platform workers who registered themselves. The gap is still too wide to explain by definitions alone. A worker missing from the register has no route to a scheme, no matter how well the Code is drafted.

Urgent Solutions

Three fixes would close most of the distance between the statute and the worker. First, portability. A rider who works on two apps in October and a warehouse floor in November needs one record. The e-Shram Universal Account Number already gives each registered worker a single ID. Every aggregator should report each festive engagement against that number, so that seasonal work counts towards scheme eligibility.

Second, pay transparency. Platforms should show workers the basis of every payment, deduction and incentive, and explain changes before they apply. Workers need a time-bound channel to contest unexplained deductions and account deactivations. The Economic Survey itself flagged algorithmic control as a source of worker vulnerability.

Third, insurance that matches the risk. Accident cover for road-based work should price in peak-week hours, not an annual average.

Household consumption depends on income stability as much as income levels. A worker whose monthly earnings swing with order volumes defers large purchases, borrows informally and saves little. Forty-eight lakh workers below Rs. 15,000 a month form a consumption base that festive sales figures do not capture.

There is a fiscal cost too. When an uninsured rider is injured, the bill lands on his family first and then on public hospitals and state welfare budgets. A functioning social security fund costs less than that sequence.

CAIT will publish its Diwali 2026 trade figure within days of the festival. The Labour Ministry should publish a second number alongside it: how many of this season’s 2.7 lakh temporary and gig workers ended up registered and insured. Until that figure exists, India measures its festive economy by what it sells and not by what reaches the people who deliver it.

(The writer is an independent public policy researcher. Views personal.)