Gig workers in search of a code as India's IT industry boosts opportunities

India's IT industry has the largest base of independent contractors in the world, but they remain outside the purview of labour regulations

A year ago, a mid-sized services company wanted to conduct an analytics exercise on its exhaustive database for some specific information. Instead of taking on a special team of data analysts, the company did the next best thing; it hired a professor of data science from a reputed engineering institute and a team of four engineers for a fixed period. Once the pro­ject was completed, the team was dismantled. By hiring gig workers, the company saved 20-25 per cent on the cost of hiring a full-time team to do the job.

Of all the major industries in India, the technology