The context of development discourse in India of ‘entrepreneurial development’, and the need for ‘enterprising citizens’ has been critical to the emergence and spread of gig work in India. At a time when there was jobless growth, this paper explores what the state's push towards digitised development and its diminishing interventions in the gig economy entails. The use of algorithmic controls to limit flexibility and autonomy of work is documented by what impact does this have on worker subjectivities. This paper also explores this in the context of a reinforcement of ideals such as ‘self-employment’, ‘risk management’, ‘self-governance’ and an assertion of the power of capital over labor in the gig economy. Borrowing from Cross (2010) this paper considers the unexceptionality of neoliberalism for workers in the gig economy, who experience gig work as an extension of informality. As gig workers invest more time on these digitised platforms to survive, this paper explores the tensions around the framing of gig workers as entrepreneurial when the self-employed have always been a significant part of the informal workforce in India.
A new way of living has emerged, services such as transport and food and grocery deliveries are available through digital platforms, giving rise to a large workforce engaged in a distinct form of digitally mediated work. Such work, termed gig work, refers to short term jobs secured over digital platforms that connect service providers with consumers. Platforms characterise the relationship as a partnership with workers who provide services through the platforms, in which there are no guarantees of minimum income or determined hours of work. Instead, platforms suggest, flexibility and autonomy emerges through this arrangement, as workers can choose when to work, and consumers find service providers “on-demand”, and with no binding relation assumed between workers and platforms.
