Between two orders, a delivery rider in Hyderabad usually has nowhere to go. He waits under a flyover, or on a pavement, phone in hand, watching for the next job. If the scooter skids on a wet road, the hospital bill is his. If the app logs him out for a week, the rent still comes due. On Saturday, the Telangana government said that deal is changing.
Telangana gig workers got a formal safety net on Saturday, when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy launched the Telangana Gig Workers Social Security and Welfare Scheme in Hyderabad. The headline numbers are simple: Rs 5 lakh of accident insurance and Rs 10 lakh of health insurance for registered workers. Behind them sits a funding idea that could matter more than either figure, because it does not depend on the state budget alone.
Gandhi reached the launch the way the workers travel. He rode pillion in a bike rally from Shilparamam to Jayabheri Ground in Madhapur, then addressed a gathering of delivery executives, cab drivers and other platform workers at Hitech City. The event was part of the Bharat Summit, the same gathering that spent the week arguing over visas. This was the other half of the summit: a state government using its home turf to show what it is doing for workers, not just who it invited.
“Government of Telangana is going to give you the guarantee of Rs 5 lakh as accident insurance and Rs 10 lakh as health insurance,” Gandhi told the workers, according to Times Now. “Most importantly, you will get 1% of every transaction for every delivery directly into your bank accounts.”
What Telangana gig workers actually get
The scheme runs under the Telangana Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration, Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2026, passed by the Assembly in March and in force since June 2. Registration gives a worker a unique ID and an identity card. The package announced on Saturday has five parts. One, accident cover of Rs 5 lakh and health cover of Rs 10 lakh. Two, 1% of every transaction, every delivery and every cab ride, set aside for social security, collected from the companies and routed through a Gig Workers Board straight to workers’ bank accounts. Three, Wi-Fi-enabled rest zones where workers can park, sit, and sleep between jobs. Four, the right to see their own work data, rides completed, deliveries done, money paid, on their phones. Five, pension benefits. The law also says an aggregator can end a worker only on valid grounds, in writing, with at least seven days’ notice, and must pay on time.
The state government puts the number at nearly four lakh gig workers in Hyderabad alone. These are the people who keep the city’s food, groceries and parcels moving, and who have worked for years without a payslip, a provident fund, or a hospital card. The promise behind the scheme is older than the law. Gandhi first raised gig workers’ concerns during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, and the Congress repeated the promise in the 2023 Assembly elections, according to state labour minister G. Vivek Venkataswamy.
Why Telangana moved first
Here is the part the wire reports mostly skip. Telangana is not inventing this model from scratch. Karnataka, which passed its own gig workers welfare law in 2025, notified a 1% fee on payouts in February this year. Telangana’s 1% contribution sits at the same level, which tells you the two states are converging on the same answer. The Centre, meanwhile, is still framing its own scheme. The Code on Social Security, 2020, which recognises gig and platform workers in law, came into force on November 21, 2025, and the National Social Security Board for gig and platform workers was notified only on October 30, 2026. Reports say the Centre is weighing a 2% transaction levy, with a possible launch in 2027. Telangana did not wait for that. It built its own board, its own registration, and its own funding line, and it will be judged on whether the money actually lands in bank accounts.
The launch also fits Telangana’s pitch to investors ahead of its December investment summit, and it comes in a week when India posted its best export month ever.
The politics, and the part nobody can dodge
Gandhi did not keep the speech to welfare. He called gig workers the foundation of the economy and partners in progress, and accused the BJP-RSS of an ideology that treats workers like bonded labourers, according to The Telegraph. The charge is political, and the BJP will answer it in its own way. But the scheme itself has a test that no speech can pass for it. The 1% has to be collected from the companies, and aggregators have pushed back against levies in every state that has tried one. Registration has to reach workers who change platforms, phones and cities. And the rest zones have to exist, not just get announced.
For Telangana gig workers, the test is simple: whether a rider waiting under a flyover in Madhapur feels any of it by Christmas. The law is real, the board is real, and the money has a route to bank accounts. Saturday was a launch. What comes next decides whether it was also a beginning.