Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Is platform-mediated gig work in India a new labour-market phenomenon, or a continuation of pre-existing informal labour under a new technological interface? Using seven rounds of India's Periodic Labour Force Survey (2017-18 to 2023-24) and a nested sequence of weighted logistic regressions on 1,016,911 workers, we find no evidence of sustained platform-driven growth: temporal variation is real once compositional change is held constant, but modest and non-monotonic, concentrated in an unexplained pandemic-year deviation and a partial post-2021 decline. The education gradient declines monotonically, not U-shaped as hypothesised, and the age profile is inverted-U only once composition is held fixed. Conditionally, women are 21.6 percentage points less likely than men to be classified as gig workers, a gap that collapses by 96 percent once unpaid family labour is included, tracing much of it to classification rather than participation. These findings support continuity with, not transformation of, India's informal labour market. JEL Codes: J46, O17, J16, J21, J24</p>