Authored by Utkarsh Raj (B.A. LL.B.) & Aaditya Nachiketa (LL.M.)
Students at the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi
A delivery rider is injured in a road accident while rushing to complete an app-assigned order. A cab driver works for prolonged hours to meet incentive targets. A platform worker continues working through extreme heat because logging off means losing income. In each situation, the worker faces an occupational risk. Yet the legal question is surprisingly difficult: who is responsible for keeping a platform worker safe?
India’s gig economy has transformed the traditional idea of employment. Work is increasingly organised through digital platforms rather than conventional workplaces, with algorithms influencing the allocation of tasks, performance ratings, incentives and, in some cases, access to future work. NITI Aayog estimated that 7.7 million workers were engaged in the gig economy in 2020–21 and projected that the number could reach 23.5 million by 2029–30.
This transformation has now entered a new phase of labour regulation. The Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSH Code) came into force on 21 November 2025. At the same time, the Code on Social Security, 2020 (SS Code) formally recognises gig workers and platform workers and creates a framework for social-security schemes for them.
The important question, therefore, is no longer whether India recognises platform work. It is whether the law provides meaningful occupational-safety protection to those who perform it.
When the Workplace Has No Walls
The traditional understanding of occupational safety assumes an identifiable workplace. A factory worker has a factory; a construction worker has a construction site; an office employee has an office. Responsibility can consequently be located within a relatively identifiable establishment. Platform work disrupts this model.
A delivery worker may begin at a restaurant, travel through public roads and finish at a customer’s residence. A ride-hailing driver may spend the entire working day on roads that are not controlled by the platform. The physical location of work therefore does not necessarily belong to the entity organising that work.
The OSH Code defines an “employee” in relation to a person employed on wages by an establishment and defines an “employer” around the person employing employees in an establishment. It also places significant occupational-safety responsibilities upon employers.
This raises a fundamental difficulty. If the platform worker is not regarded as an employee of the platform, and the road or public space on which the work takes place is not its establishment, where exactly does the platform’s occupational-safety responsibility begin and end?
Recognition under Social Security Law, but What About Safety?
The problem becomes more interesting when the OSH Code is read alongside the Code on Social Security, 2020. The Social Security Code expressly recognises both “gig workers” and “platform workers”. Section 113 provides for registration of unorganised workers, gig workers and platform workers, while The Central Government may establish social security schemes relating to issues mentioned in Section 114. Life Cover, Disability Cover, Accident Insurance, Health & Maternity benefits and Old age benefits protection.
These are important recognitions. It proves that Indians statute partakes of work out of the golden rule to contain them. The traditional relationship between employer and employee wastely abstracted from the law. Employer–employee relationship disappeared from the legal framework.
Social security and occupational safety are not one and the same. Accident insurance might be able to give monetary help following a collision. It doesn’t necessarily exclude the accident. Finding the right compensation may lessen the effects of an injury without tackling the circumstances leading to its creation. you must choose an incentive system that gives an incentive to a delivery worker to What would you choose?
The key legal issue that comes into play in this scenario is not simply what, but when? Occurs as a result of an incident. It’s whether the regulatory environment can intrude before the danger arises materializes. Protection is thus post-injury coverage vs. prevention of injury.
The inbuilt algorithm is now the new “Supervisor”. Perhaps the biggest challenge faced when working in platform is the fact that there is no real workspace to give the worker. But managerial control has altered from a workplace and this is what has changed.
Conventional work place, control is typically noticeable. A supervisor takes responsibility for making assignments and observing, enforces good practice and can instruct workers to observe specific practice. In platform work can do many of these functions can be performed by software.
Once an application is configured, it can assign assignments, figure out the incentives, track the performance, provide ratings, and more. Depending on the platform’s system, have an impact on the worker’s potential future income.
This generates a significant legal issue: should all obligations to provide for safety of the individual worker depend on a worker’s occupation? even though a worker may have substantial control, upon the formal contractual status of the worker.
Not exercising via the digital platform? The answer becomes increasingly significant since algorithmic decisions can result in whether or not they are in themselves generation safety risks. Set unrealistic deadlines, which can lead to rushing. Incentive structures may allow employees to work excessively long hours on-line. Automated ratings can induce pressure for the accept and/or perform tasks despite unsafe conditions.
The European Union has responded to precisely this problem. Its Platform Work Directive 2024/2831 requires digital labour platforms to evaluate the risks posed by automated monitoring and decision-making systems to workers’ safety and health, including risks of work-related accidents and psychosocial and ergonomic harm. It further requires preventive and protective measures and safeguards against automated systems creating undue pressure or endangering workers’ health.
India need not simply reproduce the European model. But the comparison demonstrates an important principle: algorithmic management can create occupational risks and therefore cannot be treated as legally irrelevant to occupational safety.
Who Bears the Risk?
The central weakness of the present framework is therefore not simply that platform workers are difficult to classify. It is that risk and responsibility can become disconnected.
The platform may control the terms on which work is offered, while the worker owns the vehicle, bears fuel costs and physically encounters the risk. The customer may determine the destination, but has no general responsibility for the worker’s occupational safety. The road authority controls the public road but does not control the economic conditions under which the worker uses it.
The result is a fragmented responsibility structure.
Traditional occupational-safety law is largely built upon identifying the entity capable of controlling the workplace. Platform work requires a broader approach: identifying the entity capable of controlling or influencing the risk. That distinction is crucial.
A platform should not necessarily become liable for every accident suffered by a worker. But neither should contractual independence automatically eliminate responsibility where the platform’s own systems materially contribute to the risk.
Way Forward
The solution is not to impose every conventional employer obligation upon every platform worker. Instead, India needs a risk-based occupational-safety framework specifically adapted to platform work.
First, the government should clarify the occupational-safety responsibilities of digital labour platforms through appropriate rules or regulatory standards. The existence of an independent-contractor arrangement should not, by itself, determine whether a platform has any safety responsibility.
Second, the concept of the workplace should be interpreted functionally in platform work. Where a worker is performing a task assigned through a platform, the relevant work environment should extend beyond a fixed establishment to the locations where the platform-directed task is actually performed.
Third, platforms should be required to assess whether their algorithmic systems create foreseeable safety risks. Delivery deadlines, incentive structures, automated penalties and performance metrics should be designed so that workers are not economically pressured into unsafe conduct.
Fourth, sector-specific safety standards should be developed for high-risk platform work, particularly ride-hailing and delivery services. These standards could address accident reporting, emergency assistance, protective equipment, safety training, fatigue and extreme-weather conditions.
Last but not least, there needs to be clarification of the relation between the OSH Code and the Social Security Code. The role of accident insurance and social-security benefits should not replace preventive duties in occupational safety.
Conclusion
The workplace has morphed in India with the advent of the platform economy. Work is no longer done in a factory gate or office building for millions of workers. It’s take place via cell, in regular places, and underneath an organizational system the place management choices could be made without a traditional supervisor. Whilst the OSH Code is a valuable piece of legislation and has traditionally been based on the setting, the working individual and the owner/employer, it introduces some challenges for platform work.
Discussions of whether a delivery rider or app-based driver is an “employee” is not the main issue. It is a question of responsibility that can be established for an occupational risk in the event that the work is controlled digitally while it is carried out in public and is organised outside of the corporate framework of the employer–employee relationship.
There is a social-security law in India that has already identified gig and platform workers. The next step would be to acknowledge them as the equals to be governed through preventive regulation in the matters of the occupation.
The future place of work could be a highway, smartphone, and computer program. The law must not be restricted to this however because the jobsite has gone.
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