Pick. Drop. Repeat: Growing crisis of India’s gig partners

Last week, while the debate around gig worker rights raged on social media, Atharv Singh, a 4th-year design student, sent a direct message on LinkedIn to Eternal CEO Deepinder Goyal, describing his four months as a picker on Blinkit, managing his own college fees after his father had refused to support his education. Now he was joining Zomato’s design team. “Life really comes in full circle,” he wrote. Goyal replied with a heart emoji. Shared the screenshot on X. By morning, the post had thousands of reactions. It was a beautiful story. But also an anomaly.