New Delhi: There is a familiar rhythm to India’s urban outrage cycle. A tweet drops, a hashtag trends, and suddenly the social media trial switches on.
This time, the spark was a blunt, characteristically unsentimental tweet from Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal – pushing back against calls for mandated higher wages for gig workers. Predictably, the pitchforks came out.
But before we moralise our way into bad economics, it’s worth pausing and asking a far more uncomfortable question: what is the real problem we are trying to solve?
Because it is not low gig wages. It is urban unemployment.
India’s cities are sitting on a silent crisis – millions of young people, semi-skilled and low-skilled, with limited formal job opportunities. In that context, the gig economy is not exploitation by default. It is absorption. It is a pressure valve. For many, it is not the “worst job in town” but the only job in town.
That is the uncomfortable truth many armchair activists refuse to engage with.
The outrage assumes an imaginary alternative universe where high-quality, well-paying urban jobs are waiting just around the corner, and gig workers are somehow being coerced to choose a bigger evil. That universe does not exist. Opportunity cost matters, and in the case of gig workers, there isn’t a better opportunity. For a large section of India’s urban workforce, the opportunity cost of gig work is not a cushy salaried role—it is joblessness.
This is where Deepinder Goyal’s point – stripped of the online outrage – lands firmly in the real world. Platforms do not manufacture labour demand out of charity. They respond to consumer price sensitivity, unit economics, and razor-thin margins (sometimes negative). You can moralise about “fair pay” all you want, but why will a company pay 2x if the next candidate is willing to do the same job for x/2? Yes, x/2 may be exploitation, but x is what is being paid across the competitive landscape.
And let’s be clear about responsibility. Job creation is a sovereign function.
The burden of generating high-quality, secure employment lies squarely with the government—through manufacturing policy, urban infrastructure, labour reform, skilling, and investment climate. Expecting private platforms to compensate for decades of policy failure by simply “paying more” is not just lazy thinking; it is dangerous.
Private companies are not welfare departments. Nor should they be bullied into becoming one.
The gig economy works precisely because it is flexible — low entry barriers, dynamic pricing, rapid scaling. Over-regulate it, over-legislate it, and you don’t improve worker outcomes; you shrink the ecosystem. We have seen this movie before. More compliance leads to fewer participants, higher consumer prices, and ultimately, fewer earning opportunities for the very people we claim to protect.
Markets, when allowed to function, send signals. If labour is genuinely scarce, wages rise. If platforms underpay consistently, workers exit. That is how demand and supply correct distortions—not through Twitter trials or policy-by-outrage.
This does not mean gig workers don’t deserve dignity or safety. Basic protections, transparency, and grievance mechanisms are reasonable. But conflating that with wage-fixing is economic illiteracy dressed up as empathy.
India does not suffer from too little regulation. It suffers from too little job creation.
Until we fix that, the gig economy remains a lifeline—not a villain. And the loudest outrage, as always, is coming from those who don’t need the job in the first place.
Less regulation. More growth. Let the market breathe.
