“I did not first encounter the nationwide strike by delivery agents through policy debates or union statements. I encountered it through silence,” a friend of mine wrote to me. He further added, “Orders were not moving. Apps were refreshing endlessly. Messages saying ‘no riders available.’” That silence was definitely instructive. It forced a pause in a system designed to never pause. And in that pause, an uncomfortable truth surfaced: the ease that frames daily life rests on someone else’s constant strain.
Every delivery app promises simplicity. A few taps, a countdown timer, and a meal or package appears at the door. What remains unseen is the person who makes that promise real. The rider navigating traffic. The worker calculating fuel costs against shrinking payouts. The individual who knows that one bad rating or one missed delivery could quietly erase their access to income.
Platforms like Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto, Amazon, and Flipkart have reshaped how cities function. They have also reshaped how responsibility is distributed. What looks like flexibility on a screen often feels like uncertainty on the ground. Earnings fluctuate without explanation. Incentives change without warning. Accounts are suspended without conversation. When work is governed by algorithms, silence replaces dialogue.
The nationwide strike makes visible what routine hides. Delivery agents are not protesting because technology exists. They are protesting because the system asks too much while offering too little security. Many riders speak of working twelve or more hours a day, not to get ahead, but simply to stay afloat. Fatigue is normalised. Risk is internalised. There is rarely space to slow down, because slowing down has consequences.
One of the most troubling features of this work is the constant race against time. Ten-minute or twenty-minute delivery promises sound impressive until one imagines what they demand on the road. Speed is celebrated as efficiency, but the cost of that speed is carried by bodies. When accidents happen, when health deteriorates, when burnout sets in, the app remains unaffected. The system moves on, even if the worker cannot.
It is often said that delivery agents choose this work. That they are free to log in or log out. That no one is forcing them. This argument feels persuasive only if one ignores context. In an economy where stable jobs are scarce and informal labour dominates, choice is rarely clean. For many, platform work is not a preference but a necessity. Flexibility under such conditions is less about freedom and more about survival. The language used to describe delivery agents matters. Calling them partners or independent contractors sounds respectful, but it also absolves platforms of responsibility. There is no guaranteed income. No paid leave. No health coverage. No safety net. Risk is outsourced entirely to the worker, while control remains firmly with the platform. When something goes wrong, there is no one to speak to. Only automated responses and closed doors.
What this strike continues to reveal most sharply is not anger, but exhaustion. A quiet insistence that this cannot continue as it is. These workers are not demanding luxury. They are asking for predictability. For safety. For dignity. For recognition that their labour is not disposable. These are modest demands in any economy that claims progress. Short-term responses, such as surge incentives during high demand periods, do little to change the underlying reality. They treat symptoms, not causes. Once the incentives end, the pressures return. The message becomes clear: endure now, complain later. Over time, this erodes trust. A system that relies on constant strain eventually meets resistance.
There is also a role for those of us who use these services. Every order placed without reflection reinforces a model built on invisibility. The app makes it easy to forget that convenience is not neutral. It is produced. And production always has consequences. This is not about guilt or moral posturing. It is about awareness. Systems respond to what they are rewarded for.
Public policy, too, has lagged behind reality. Laws still struggle to name what platform work truly is. This ambiguity benefits companies far more than workers. Clear standards around pay, safety, grievance redressal, and social security are not radical interventions. They are overdue corrections. Innovation does not lose its value when it is regulated. It gains credibility.
This nationwide strike, then, should not be dismissed as disruption or unrest. It is a signal. A moment when those usually unseen make themselves impossible to ignore. It asks a simple but difficult question: how much strain are we willing to normalise in the name of efficiency? Technology is not the problem. Speed is not the enemy. The problem arises when systems forget the human limits they depend on. When people become interchangeable units rather than lives with bodies, families, and futures. No economy can remain stable if it treats endurance as infinite.
In the end, this strike is not about deliveries failing. It is about a relationship failing. A relationship between labour and technology, between profit and responsibility, between convenience and care. Repairing that relationship requires more than incentives or statements. It requires listening, redesigning, and accepting that progress must include those who carry it forward. If this moment passes without change, the silence will return. Orders will resume. Timers will tick again. But the strain will remain, quietly accumulating. This, therefore, offers a rare chance to pause and reconsider what kind of system we are building. Whether we take that chance will say far more about us than about those who chose, for one day, to stop running.
