Another day, another absurdity from the nation’s capital. Delhi’s new gig economy venture, where entrepreneurs employ labourers to carry shopping bags for a fee, has ignited a predictable torrent of debate. The usual suspects are clucking their tongues about exploitation and dignity while the more practically minded point to efficiency and employment. Both miss the point entirely.
Let us step back and consider what this truly signifies. We are witnessing the commodification of the most basic human service, the physical burden of one’s purchases. In Victorian London, a gentleman might have a porter for his luggage; in Mughal Delhi, a khaki-clad bearer for his bazaar goods. But those were acts of service within a hierarchical society that at least acknowledged the existence of class. Today, we have reduced this to a mobile app transaction, a fleeting arrangement between strangers who will never exchange names. It is perfectly efficient. It is also perfectly soulless.
This is not about the dignity of labour; it is about the atrophy of community. The gig economy, that great disruptor, has managed to repackage serfdom as freedom. The freedom to switch between underpaid tasks at the whim of an algorithm. The freedom from benefits, from security, from human connection. We have replaced the steady, if monotonous, rhythm of a regular job with the frantic scramble for the next ‘gig’. We optimise for flexibility and end up with precarity.
But let us not feign surprise. This is the logical endpoint of a society that has elevated transactional efficiency above all other virtues. We have spent decades dismantling labour protections, weakening unions, and worshipping at the altar of the market. Did we expect the result to be anything other than a vast pool of interchangeable workers, each one a ‘micro-entrepreneur’ bearing the full risk of their own employment? The novelty of Delhi’s bag carriers is merely that they make the absurdity visible for a moment, a living illustration of the gig principle.
The proponents will argue that this venture creates income for those who need it, and they are not wrong. But does it create a society worth living in? The metric of mere economic activity is a low bar indeed. We have not solved the problem of poverty; we have simply outsourced it to the private sector. The state retreats, and the market fills the void, but the market offers no loyalty, no solidarity, only the cold logic of supply and demand.
And so, we find ourselves in the terminal phase of intellectual decadence, unable to recognise that a society which can reduce human effort to a downloadable app has lost something fundamental. The Roman Republic devolved into bread and circuses; we have moved on to plastic bags and digital ratings. We should not cheer this innovation. We should mourn the world it represents.
But then, who has time for mourning when there is a shopping bag to be carried?
