From Precarious Work to Perennial Rights? Some Lessons from Dharam Singh

The Precarity Paradox

India’s labour market operates on striking contradiction: millions of workers keep essential services functioning, many as daily wagers, casual workers, and now gig workers, yet they remain excluded from security, benefits, or recognition.  This ranges from Anganwadi workers who anchor India’s nutrition programs but receive ‘honoraria’ instead of wages, and ASHA health-workers who form the backbone of rural healthcare while classified as ‘volunteers’, to platform drivers and delivery workers who power the digital economy without basic protections. This extends to even within our government service, where many have been engaged as ‘temporary’ staff, but languish in such posts for decades.

Over the year’s though labels have changed from ‘temporary’ to ‘gig’, the underlying precarity remains constant. And until recently, the Indian judicial precedent largely reinforced the principle that prolonged temporary employment in government service, however continuous, did not by itself create a right to regularisation.

A Judicial Breakthrough

In August 2025, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dharam Singh & Anr. v. State of UP & Anr. (2025 INSC 998) challenged this settled position with a simple but powerful principle: ‘perennial work deserves perennial posts’. The case involved daily wage workers engaged by the UP Higher Education Services Commission between 1989 and the early 1990s in roles like attendants and drivers who, despite decades of service, were refused regularisation.

The Court found that work which is ‘recurrent and central to the Commission’s functioning’ cannot be perpetuated under temporary labels indefinitely. Such practices, it held, corrode administrative fairness and violate constitutional principles under Articles 14, 16, and 21. The ruling ordered immediate regularisation with full back wages, recalculated pensions, and seniority benefits. Crucially, the Court distinguished this case from previous restrictive judgments by focusing on the nature of the work itself, duties that are recurring, indispensable to institutional functioning and demonstrably continuous over years.

Breaking From Legal Precedent – A Note for the Legal Reader:

Dharam represents a significant shift from earlier Supreme Court positions. Previous landmark cases like State of Haryana v. Piara Singh (1992 AIR 2130), SAIL (2001 (7) SCC 1), Umadevi ((2006) 4 SCC 1) and Kesari (2010(3) S.C.T. 678) had collectively and tightly circumscribed conditions for regularisation, emphasising that temporary government employment, regardless of duration, did not automatically create permanent rights.

Even progressive rulings like Jagjit Singh (2016), which established ‘equal pay for equal work’ for casual workers, stopped short of granting automatic regularisation to temporary staff. The Dharam Singh ruling breaks new ground by making the nature and continuity of work, not just administrative convenience, the determining factor.

Immediate Implications

The most pressing concern is what a ruling like this holds for the future. The most direct impact will be on public sector institutions such as universities, commissions, government offices, PSUs that rely on decades-old temporary workforces. With many reporting multiple vacancies[1], they now face heightened litigation risk and pressure for compliance audits. The judgement may also prompt re-examination of ‘honorary’ roles like ASHA and Anganwadi workers, who have long demanded regularisation but remain classified as volunteers. The Court’s framework could provide legal ground for their claims, potentially pressuring state governments to design absorption frameworks.

Ripple Effects Beyond Government

While Dharam Singh specifically addresses public sector employment, the Court’s broader critique of precarious work practices sends signals beyond government.

NITI Aayog already projects India’s gig workforce will triple from 7.7 million in 2020-21 to 23.5 million by 2030[2], and this rise in gig work has given new form to familiar patterns of precarity. As JustJobs Network’s own research shows, platformisation expands ‘the number of workers that are beyond the purview of regulations, labour and social protections’ by reclassifying them as independent contractors, with ‘the risk of economic volatility (now) borne by the worker alone’[3]. In other words, technology has simply made precarity more sophisticated, not any less pervasive, with algorithms now managing what supervisors once did, but with the worker’s insecurity remaining unchanged.

But by distinguishing the State as a ‘constitutional employer’ rather than mere ‘market actor’, and strongly emphasing that ‘it cannot balance budgets on the backs of those who perform the most basic and recurring public functions’ the ruling establishes higher standards for public institutions, while potentially influencing ongoing gig worker litigation.

That said, it’s crucial here to note that this ruling strengthens judicial scrutiny primarily over public employers and whilst it may be cited in private-sector disputes, the legal mechanisms and remedies differ significantly between public employment and platform arrangements.

Pathways Forward

Legal victories alone cannot dismantle decades of systematic precarity. Based on extensive research into India’s changing workforce, a few priorities emerge:

• Institutionalising transition pathways: States must establish clear frameworks to move long-serving workers in ‘perennial’ roles into permanent positions, following the Court’s guidance on work that is recurrent and indispensable. This includes publishing establishment registers and outsourcing contracts, and standardising rules for regularisation with a fiscal timetable for phased absorption.

• Legislative Potential: The Dharam Singh ruling joins landmark interventions like Vishaka (1997)[4] on workplace harassment, and Sodan Singh[5] and later Gainda Ram[6] on street vendors that sparked broader legislative reform. Its critique of ‘outsourcing as a shield’ and emphasis on constitutional employer obligations should now prompt Parliamentary and State Assembly review of employment regulation; this is particularly important for existing categories that functionally amount to employment such as ASHAs, Anganwadi workers and gig arrangements, all of which are deserving of statutory recognition and protection.

Beyond Individual Justice

For organisations tracking India’s labour transformation, the ruling confirms a troubling reality: informality is not disappearing but evolving. But the ruling’s normative framework also provides groundwork to begin to address such precarity, though the same will require going beyond court orders. It demands institutional reform, policy innovation, and recognition that in a modern economy, work that is truly indispensable deserves more than permanent precarity. The Court has shown us the way; now comes the harder task of systemic change.

[1] Mondal, A. (2025, August 7). Top 10 public sector banks with highest number of vacancies. The Indian Express. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/top-10-public-sector-banks-with-highest-number-of-vacancies-10167729/; Indian Railways to Announce 50,000 vacancies for FY 2025-26. (n.d.). https://www.pw.live/railway/exams/indian-railways-to-announce-50-000-vacancies-for-fy-2025-26

[2] NITI Aayog, Rao, K. R., Kumar, K., Gupta, R., Khurana, S. Verma, K. N., Chandra, S., Singh, R. R., Dharap, O., Sasikumar, S. K., Abraham, V., Padhi, B., Communications Team, NITI Aayog, Dasgupta, I., & Sachdeva, S. (2022). India’s booming gig and platform economy: Perspectives and recommendations on the future of work. In POLICY BRIEF. https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-06/Policy_Brief_India%27s_Booming_Gig_and_Platform_Economy_27062022.pdf

[3] 10 ways to Govern Work in the Platform Economy – JustJobs Network. (2023, August 24). JustJobs Network. https://justjobsnetwork.org/research/factsheets/10-ways-to-govern-work-in-the-platform-economy/;

[4] (1997) 6 SCC 241

[5] (1989) 4 SCC 155

[6] (2010) 10 SCC 715