The honest answer separates three things usually run together: what the Code recognises, what it enables, and what has actually been brought into force. The first is settled, the second is generous on paper, and the third is the only one that decides what you can claim today.
What the Code recognises
The Code on Social Security, 2020 defines a gig worker as a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from it outside of the traditional employer-employee relationship, and a platform worker as a person undertaking platform work. Social security itself is defined as the measures of protection afforded to employees, unorganised workers, gig workers and platform workers to ensure access to health care and income security, by means of rights conferred on them and schemes framed under this Code. That last phrase is the design of the whole chapter.
Registration is the gateway
Every unorganised worker, gig worker or platform worker is required to be registered, on completing sixteen years of age or such age as the Central Government prescribes, and on filing a self declaration in the prescribed form. The system maintained by the appropriate Government must also allow self registration. Then comes the operative sentence: a registered worker shall be eligible to avail the benefit of the concerned scheme framed under this Chapter. Registration opens the door. It does not by itself confer a benefit.
Registration costs nothing and is a precondition to any scheme benefit. The Code also allows the appropriate Government to set up a toll free call centre, helpline or facilitation centres to spread information on available schemes, help with registration and facilitate enrolment. If the process defeats you, that is the machinery to use.
The heads on which schemes may be framed
For gig workers and platform workers specifically, the Central Government may frame and notify, from time to time, suitable social security schemes on matters relating to life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits, old age protection, creche, and any other benefit it determines. Each scheme is to provide for its own administration, the implementing agency, the role of aggregators and its funding, which may come from the Centre, a State, aggregator contributions, a corporate social responsibility fund, or any other source.
Two neighbouring powers matter too. The Code allows the Central Government to frame a scheme extending the benefits of the employees' state insurance chapter to unorganised, gig and platform workers through the Corporation. And the unorganised workers chapter has its own list, with the Centre framing schemes on life and disability cover, health and maternity benefits and old age protection, and States on provident fund, employment injury benefit and housing.
How it is meant to be paid for
- Aggregator contribution. The contribution payable by aggregators is at a rate not exceeding two per cent and not less than one per cent, as notified by the Central Government, of the annual turnover of an aggregator in a category listed in the Code's Seventh Schedule, and is capped at five per cent of the amount paid or payable by the aggregator to gig workers and platform workers.
- The commencement date is itself notified. The Code says in terms that the date of commencement of contribution from aggregators shall be notified by the Central Government, and the Ministry of Labour and Employment's frequently asked questions repeat that point.
- The Fund. A Social Security Fund is established by the Central Government for the welfare of unorganised, gig and platform workers, with a separate account maintained for each source of funding. States establish their own fund for unorganised workers.
Almost every entitlement in this chapter is expressed as something the Government may frame and notify. Do not plan around accident cover, a pension, health benefits or a creche until you have confirmed that the scheme covering you has actually been notified, what it covers, and whether the aggregator contribution has been brought into force. A confident claim about a benefit that exists only as an enabling power is worse than no claim, because it collapses at the first question.
What this chapter does not give you
It does not make you an employee. The definition places gig work outside the traditional employer-employee relationship, so the gratuity chapter, which applies to employees, does not reach an app based partner on the strength of these provisions; our note on gratuity under the Code on Social Security sets out who that chapter does reach. That said, the label in a platform agreement is not conclusive, and where the platform sets the price, allocates the work and can deactivate at will, the question of control remains a contested question of fact, decided on the evidence set out in our note on whether you count as a worker under the Industrial Relations Code.
Three things worth doing this month, starting with registering
- Check the current scheme notification for the benefit you care about before assuming you are covered.
- Keep your own records. Screenshot earnings statements, task logs, ratings and any deactivation message. Platforms restrict access once an account is closed, and that data is the whole of your case.
- Separate the money claim from the status claim. A claim for unpaid or wrongly withheld earnings stands on its own and is usually faster than any argument about classification.
For where this chapter sits in the wider restructuring of Indian labour law and what else changed when the codes commenced, see our overview of what the four labour codes changed for employees.