India, Jan. 20 -- On New Year's Eve, a planned strike by platform and gig workers across the country reopened an ongoing debate about the conditions of platform work in India. At the heart of this debate is a very simple issue: What is the correct way of understanding the relationship between online platforms (such as Uber, Ola, Blinkit, Zomato, and so on) and their workers? The reason why this is important is because labour laws - not just in India, but across the world - are based on a simple premise: The employer and the worker are not equally powerful parties when it comes to setting the terms and conditions of a work relationship. In capitalist societies, there is an inequality between those who own the means of production, and those who can only sell their labour-power in order to survive. If, therefore, the relationship between these parties was to be governed only by a contract, workers would be left with a very raw deal. For this reason, the State intervenes in this relationship through labour laws. Labour laws may mitigate the imbalance of power between the employer and the worker either by empowering the latter to engage in collective bargaining, and/or guarantee to the latter a set of legally enforceable rights (such as the right to a fair wage, a right against arbitrary dismissal, rights to overtime and bonus pay.) This has been a hard-won experience over centuries. Labour laws, however, do not apply to every contractual relationship for a service. What we have referred to above is a relationship of employment, where a certain kind of control is exercised by the employer over the worker. Where elements of this control are absent - say, for example, if I commission a painting from an artist - the law of contracts will apply, where both parties are free to shape the terms of their relationship, including conditions of work and of remuneration. Across the world, platform companies have attempted to evade their obligations under labour law by classifying their relationship with their workers as simply "contractual", and not as employment relationships. It is no coincidence that Indian platform companies call their workers "delivery partners" instead of "employees": They do so because they can then claim that the labour law framework does not apply to them. However, a scrutiny of the nature of the relationship between platforms and their workers demonstrates that this argument cannot stand. Through the platform's app, the platform retains extensive control over the work that is performed. It is the platform that - through the app - sets the terms and conditions of the work (including remuneration), decides who can access the platform (and on what conditions), conducts surveillance, and also has the unilateral power to remove a worker off the platform. All of this, it may be noted, is opaque and non-transparent, as platforms resist any attempts at disclosure by citing competition law and protection of trade secrets. When we consider the power imbalance between the platform and the worker, it makes for a classic example of the employment relationship, except in the digital space. Platform companies argue that this is not the case, as their "delivery partners" are free to leave any time, and can "log in" to work any time they want; in other words, the work is not "continuing" (as in the case, say, of a factory worker) but episodic, and the workers are paid for every individual task that they accomplish. This is true - but it is also irrelevant to the legal question. In a formal, technical sense, every worker is free to leave a specific employer (restrictions predominantly only include a notice period). However, labour law recognises that economic compulsions make this freedom illusory in the actual world that we live in. A quick conversation with a delivery partner will make this clear: While a small minority take on the job as an opportunity to make extra money on a flexible schedule, for the vast majority, they do not have any genuine choice in the matter. For this reason, courts around the world have pierced the veil of the platform work contract, and have held that platform workers are, indeed, entitled to rights under labour law. These include courts in Latin America and Europe, and - perhaps most famously - the Supreme Court of the UK, which held the same in a landmark case involving Uber drivers. Similarly, academic scholarship from multiple countries has pointed out that the mere flexibility in work arrangements does not mitigate the power imbalance that triggers the need for regulation and labour laws. The strike on New Year's Eve was necessary because Indian law is yet to catch up. The new labour codes provide only some tepid social security to platform workers; certain state laws go a little further, but fall short of explicitly recognising platform workers as employees, and, therefore, entitled to labour law protections. This is not a matter of charity, or generosity, or of consumers leaving large tips, as has been suggested: None of this can substitute for legal protections, and enforceable legal rights. To guarantee these legal rights for platform workers, and to protect them from exploitation, is the task ahead....