The Invisible Employee: Algorithmic Management, Deemed Consent, And The Limits Of The DPDP Act In India's Gig Economy

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Arunima Jha, High Court of Bombay

ABSTRACT

India is home to one of the world's fastest-growing gig economies. The Niti Aayog estimates approximately 7.7 million gig workers were engaged in platform-based work in 2020-21, a figure projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30. These workers operate in a legal interstice: classified neither as employees entitled to labour law protections nor as independent contractors possessed of genuine entrepreneurial autonomy. Their relationship with the platforms that deploy them is mediated almost entirely through algorithmic systems that determine the work they receive, the rates they are paid, the ratings by which their livelihoods are assessed, and the terms under which they may be deactivated with no opportunity to be heard. Each of these functions involves the collection, processing, and application of personal data at scale. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) is the primary legislative framework governing this processing. This article argues that the DPDP Act's deemed consent provisions, as currently drafted, are structurally inadequate to protect gig workers from the privacy harms of algorithmic management. The deemed consent framework was designed with a standard employment relationship in mind. It does not account for the specific vulnerabilities of platform workers, whose data processing occurs in conditions of acute informational asymmetry and without the procedural protections that employment law would otherwise supply. Drawing on Indian constitutional jurisprudence, the Supreme Court's landmark right to privacy decision, international comparative frameworks including the European Union's Platform Work Directive, and the United Kingdom Supreme Court's decision in Uber BV v. Aslam, the article argues for three specific interventions in the DPDP implementing rules: a gig worker-specific deemed consent schedule, a mandatory explainability requirement for automated deactivation decisions, and a data minimisation standard calibrated to the algorithmic management context.

Keywords: DPDP Act 2023, Gig Economy, Algorithmic Management, Deemed Consent, Gig Workers, Right to Privacy, Puttaswamy, Platform Work Directive, Data Fiduciary, Code on Social Security 2020.

856. THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEE- ALGORITHMIC MANAGEMENT, DEEMED CONSENT, AND THE LIMITS OF THE

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