A NITI Aayog projection puts India’s gig and platform workforce at 23.5 million people by 2029-30, up from 7.7 million in 2020-21. That trajectory tells you why the country’s employment law is straining at the seams. The statutes that govern most Indian workplaces were built for a factory-and-office economy with clear employers, fixed hours, and a sharp line between work and home, and the workforce those laws were meant to protect no longer looks like that.
Several reforms meant to close that gap are stuck in various states of incompletion: private members’ bills with little chance of passage, a statute in force but barely operational, and an area where legislation is needed but does not yet exist.
Reform 1: The Right to Disconnect
India moved closer to a statutory right to disconnect on 5 December 2025, when NCP MP Supriya Sule introduced the Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025 in the Lok Sabha. The proposal would give employees a legal right to ignore work-related calls, emails, and messages outside official working hours and on holidays, and it would bar employers from disciplining those who exercise that right. Whether it becomes law is a separate question, and the odds are not in its favour.
A right-to-disconnect regime would land hardest on exactly the sectors India competes in, which is why the question of law versus policy is not academic. Shivaprasad Mundakana, CHRO of AscentHR Technologies, argues that the intent is sound but a blanket statute is the wrong instrument for now.
“India isn’t quite ready for a one-size-fits-all statutory mandate yet — but that doesn’t mean employers should wait. The nature of work varies too widely across sectors (a BPO night shift, a client-facing consulting role, and a manufacturing floor all have very different “after-hours” realities) for a single law to work cleanly without creating compliance friction or unintended loopholes,” says Mundakana.
The Bill is built around enforceable boundaries rather than voluntary goodwill, which is what separates it from the wellbeing policies many employers already run. It sets out an institutional mechanism to give the right teeth and attaches financial consequences to after-hours work. Its key provisions run as follows:
- An Employees’ Welfare Authority to oversee implementation and help companies with more than 10 workers negotiate terms on after-hours engagement.
- Protection from disciplinary action for employees who decline to respond to work communication outside fixed hours.
- Overtime wages where work is assigned beyond agreed hours.
- Counselling services and digital detox provisions to address the mental-health effects of constant connectivity.
Mundakana poses an alternative that is not inaction but ownership, with culture leading and legislation following.
“The intent behind the Right to Disconnect is sound, and organisations don’t need a law to act on it. At Ascent, we believe this is squarely an internal policy and culture issue first — clear norms on meeting hours, escalation protocols for genuine emergencies, and leadership modelling the behaviour they want to see,” he explains.
Reform 2: Paid Paternity Leave
There is no statutory paternity leave for private sector employees in India, and as of 2026, that remains the case. Central government employees get 15 days under Rule 43A of the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, but for everyone else it depends entirely on the employer.
The most substantive attempt to change that is the Paternity and Parental Benefit Bill, 2025, another Sule private member’s bill, which proposes eight weeks of paid paternity leave alongside eight weeks of shared parental leave divisible within 18 months of the birth. Like the disconnect bill, it has not been taken up for discussion.
The argument for statutory paternity leave is usually framed around fathers, but its sharpest effects fall on women’s careers. When caregiving leave attaches only to mothers, employers price that cost into hiring and promotion decisions about women, and the imbalance compounds across a career.
Namrata Krishna, an HR Business Partner at Bik.ai, ties the reform directly to fair evaluation and retention rather than to fathers alone. “Paternity leave has brought a new direction to workplace equality and talent retention. With DEI, it’s necessary to promote paternity leave so that there is fairness and unbiased evaluation when picking the talent. Irrespective of gender, it will help in retaining talent where such paid benefits are promoted, leading to better culture development at the workplace,” she notes.
The detail that decides whether any of this works is non-transferability. Leave that can be shared tends to default back to mothers in practice, which leaves the imbalance intact; a reserved father’s quota, paid well enough that lower-income workers can afford to take it, is what changes behaviour. India’s maternity framework is already among the most demanding in Asia at 26 weeks of fully paid leave under the Code on Social Security, 2020, but the paternity side has not kept pace.
Reform 3: Legal Recognition of Gig and Platform Workers
This is the reform that has actually moved, and also the one where the gap between the statute book and lived experience is widest. The Code on Social Security, 2020 gave gig and platform workers formal legal recognition for the first time, defining the categories and providing for life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits, and old-age protection.
The architecture on paper is genuinely substantial, which is what makes the implementation gap so consequential. The Code shifts a real share of the welfare burden onto aggregators while preserving the independent-contractor model, and it builds portability so benefits follow the worker rather than the platform.
Mundakana, whose own company works in the workforce solutions space, regards this as the most urgent gap of all the reforms. “This is the more urgent gap. The Code on Social Security, 2020 was a landmark step in formally recognising gig and platform workers as a category — but recognition hasn’t yet translated into enforceable protection,” he says.
In particular, Mundakana highlights three major gaps in the existing framework for gig workers:
- Portable social security in practice, not just on paper: The framework for aggregator-funded welfare contributions exists conceptually, but implementation rules, contribution mechanisms, and enforcement are still not operational at scale.
- Income and working-condition safeguards: There’s no clarity yet on minimum earnings protection, working-hour norms, or grievance redressal mechanisms specific to algorithmic work allocation — which is a very different employment relationship from traditional contracts.
- Classification clarity: The binary of “employee” vs “independent contractor” doesn’t map well onto platform work. Until there’s a clearer third category with defined rights, workers remain in a grey zone that limits access to protections that do exist.
That diagnosis is echoed in legal commentary on the rollout, where unresolved questions include a 90-day eligibility threshold, the methodology for computing contributions, and the classification problem itself. Whether Uber, Zomato, and Swiggy workers have secured the safety net they were promised will turn on administrative execution through 2026, not on the text of the Code.
Reform 4: Flexible Work and the Emerging Legislative Gap
Unlike the first three, this is not a pending bill but an absence, a space in the statute book where legislation will probably be needed but does not yet exist. Remote work, hybrid arrangements, flexible hours, digital surveillance, and the broader question of work-life balance are governed today by a patchwork of company policy, isolated state advisories, and the general provisions of the Labour Codes, none of which was designed for distributed work.
Namrata Krishna sees that generational shift as the force that will reshape the near-term agenda, and she is unequivocal about which reform carries the most weight over the next five years.
“Flexible work and the future of employment look promising with the inclination towards Gen Z as the workforce. It also helps in widening the diversification of the skill set needed to sustain the market, along with supporting work-life balance. Moreover, it promotes trust and accountability between the employees and their employers. Henceforth, flexibility is going to be the buzzword,” says Krishna.
The absence of a framework is becoming harder to ignore because the practice has become mainstream. State governments have begun issuing ad hoc directives that hint at where regulation is heading, from Delhi mandating 50% work-from-home during winter pollution peaks to weather-triggered advisories in Mumbai and Gurugram. These are reactive, event-specific measures that leave employers guessing about their obligations from one crisis to the next.
Digital surveillance is the sharpest edge of the gap. As monitoring tools proliferate across remote and hybrid setups, India has no dedicated statute governing what employers may track, how monitoring data intersects with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or where legitimate oversight ends and intrusion begins.
What the Reforms Reveal When You Read Them Together
When asked to rank the four, Mundakana does not hesitate about where scarce parliamentary attention should go.
“Of the four, I’d prioritise legal recognition and protection for gig and platform workers. The Right to Disconnect and Paternity Leave are important quality-of-life reforms, but they largely refine protections for an already-covered workforce. Gig and platform work, by contrast, is one of the fastest-growing segments of India’s labour market — and it’s currently the least protected,” Mundakana says.
“Getting this right isn’t just a worker-welfare issue; it also gives platforms and businesses the regulatory clarity they need to build sustainable, long-term workforce models rather than operating in ambiguity. Reform here has the widest reach and the highest urgency.”
Taken as a set, these reforms describe a coherent shift in what Indian employment law is starting to protect, even where the individual measures are stalled. Wellbeing is becoming a legal question rather than a voluntary one; employment relationships are becoming flexible enough to pull the definition of “employee” in several directions at once; traditional labour law no longer covers every kind of worker; and the workplace is being asked to value dignity and balance alongside productivity.
The direction of Indian employment law is no longer in doubt, only its timing. The workforce has already moved toward flexibility, distributed work, and a harder line on wellbeing and caregiving. Employers who build toward the anticipated floor, rather than scrambling when a bill finally passes, will treat the next decade of reform as a planning exercise instead of a fire drill.
FAQs
Does India have a Right to Disconnect law?
Not yet. The Right to Disconnect Bill, 2025 was introduced in the Lok Sabha by NCP MP Supriya Sule on 5 December 2025 as a private member’s bill. It would give employees a legal right to ignore work-related calls, emails, and messages outside official working hours and bar employers from disciplining those who exercise that right. It has not been taken up for discussion and is not yet law.
Is paternity leave mandatory in India for private sector employees?
No. There is no statutory paternity leave for private sector employees in India as of 2026. Central government employees receive 15 days under Rule 43A of the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, but for private sector workers it depends entirely on the employer. The Paternity and Parental Benefit Bill, 2025 proposes eight weeks of paid paternity leave, but it has not been taken up for discussion.
Are gig and platform workers legally recognised in India?
Yes. The Code on Social Security, 2020 gave gig and platform workers formal legal recognition for the first time, providing for life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits, and old-age protection. However, implementation rules, contribution mechanisms, and enforcement are still not operational at scale, leaving a wide gap between the statute and lived experience.
How large is India’s gig workforce expected to be by 2029-30?
A NITI Aayog projection puts India’s gig and platform workforce at 23.5 million people by 2029-30, up from 7.7 million in 2020-21.
Is there a law governing remote and flexible work in India?
No dedicated statute exists. Remote work, hybrid arrangements, flexible hours, and digital surveillance are governed by a patchwork of company policy, isolated state advisories, and the general provisions of the Labour Codes, none of which was designed for distributed work.
