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Paper short abstract

This paper uses evidence from India’s online food delivery sector to examine how algorithmic work management produces “algorithmic despotism,” market concentration, and data opacity, eroding worker autonomy and reinforcing labour precarity in the Global South.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how, in India's online food delivery (OFD) sector, AI-enabled algorithmic management and platform-driven data infrastructures impact employment relations, worker agency, and work precarity. Drawing on a primary survey data collected from 326 workers across three cities in India, the paper explores how duopolistic market concentration, algorithmic governance of work, and platform-mediated entry barriers impact work autonomy. Findings support the "autonomy-control" paradox, with workers reporting long working hours (11.2 hours daily, on average), and extensive unpaid waiting time, alongside average gross monthly earnings of below Rs.24,000. Moreover, implicit platform control mechanisms include- dynamic incentive structures, explicit/implicit penalties, and gamified rewards intensify labour discipline, increase economic dependence, and further reduce effective earnings. High market concentration weakens worker bargaining power, while platform-linked vehicle loans and rental arrangements generate new forms of financial dependency and diffuse accountability across platforms and intermediaries. Algorithmic opacity, fear of deactivation, and rapid workforce replaceability challenge collective bargaining and constrain labour agency. Situating these dynamics within a Global South context, the paper extends debates on algorithmic despotism and the autonomy-control paradox by highlighting mechanism through which AI-mediated governance reproduces historical patterns of exclusion and dependency in postcolonial labour markets. It emphasizes the need for policy interventions addressing algorithmic transparency, data accountability, minimum wage enforcement, social protection, and institutionalised worker representation in platform-mediated economies.