LEADING WITHOUT A ROOM: ALGORITHMIC MANAGEMENT AND THE FUTURE OF LABOUR LAW IN INDIA’S GIG ECONOMY

A few minutes before midnight, a food delivery rider in Bengaluru waits outside a restaurant for an order that has not yet been packed. The customer is tracking his location through an application. The platform knows how long he has been waiting. The restaurant can see the delay. If the order reaches late, a poor customer rating may follow. If his ratings decline consistently, his future earnings and access to incentives may be affected. Yet throughout this entire process, there is no supervisor standing beside him, no manager giving instructions, and no traditional workplace where his performance is being evaluated. His work is controlled through a device in his hand. This ordinary moment captures a major transformation taking place in the world of work. The growth of the gig economy has often been discussed as a question of flexibility, innovation, and employment creation. However, beneath these familiar narratives lies a deeper legal and managerial challenge. The platform economy has changed not only the nature of employment but also the manner in which authority is exercised. Work that was once organized through offices, supervisors, and direct human interaction is increasingly being coordinated through digital platforms, automated systems, and algorithmic decisions. India provides one of the most important contexts in which to examine this transformation. The country’s rapidly expanding platform economy has created opportunities for millions of workers in sectors such as food delivery, transportation, logistics, domestic services, and online freelancing. At the same time, it has generated difficult questions regarding worker classification, social security, accountability, and the limits of existing labour law. The central challenge is not merely whether gig workers should receive legal protection. It is whether legal frameworks designed for traditional employment relationships are capable of governing a workplace where managerial authority is increasingly invisible. The expression “leading without a room” captures this changing reality. Traditional management theory has generally assumed that leadership requires some form of human relationship between those who exercise authority and those who follow it. Managers allocate tasks, provide feedback, resolve disputes, and evaluate performance. Platform work challenges this model. A worker may never meet the person who determines his incentives, monitors his productivity, or influences his continued access to the platform. Yet management continues to exist. It simply operates through technology. The question that emerges is therefore both legal and managerial: when an algorithm performs functions traditionally associated with a manager, who is responsible for the consequences of those decisions?