tapas

[IronHeart @iron_heart9]

Official notification from the West Bengal Government regarding age relaxation for upcoming recruitments.
For Group A- 41 Years
For Group A- 44 Years
For Group C and D- 45 Years

[tapas @imtapas99]

@EasternRailway What NFR is doing? Can’t they manage an official page yet, even after many years.

@RailMinIndia

[BJP West Bengal @BJP4Bengal]

GAME OVER for Bengal’s toll syndicates. 🚨
The West Bengal Government has ordered an immediate shutdown of all illegal toll gates, drop gates and extortion checkpoints operating without approval. Districts have been told to identify, demolish and stop the re-emergence of these collection rackets.
No permit. No authority. No collection.
The message is loud and clear, the era of syndicate extortion will end.

[Suvendu Adhikari @SuvenduWB]

An eventful first day at Nabanna as the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Today, we transformed promises into action. Chaired the first Cabinet Meeting and took 6 landmark decisions to reclaim the glory of our State:-
1) Ayushman Bharat: Finally, the people of West Bengal will receive the benefits of the Hon'ble PM’s flagship health care scheme.
2) Securing Borders: Ensured the immediate transfer of land to the BSF for Border Fencing, which is to be completed within 45 days.
3) Empowering Youth: As promised in the Manifesto, increased the age limit for State Government job seekers by 5 years to support those who lost precious time during the previous regime.
4) Re-established the Constitutional Modalities: Officially implemented the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and gave the green light for the Census to ensure proper representation.
5) Justice for Martyrs: Taken steps for the fulfillment of commitment towards the well-being of the 321 families who lost their loved ones while standing for democracy in West Bengal.
6) Removing obstruction for the implementation of Central Government Schemes - Paving way for smooth implementation of Central Government Schemes like PM Vishwakarma, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, PM Ujjwala 3 etc...
From allocating portfolios to my esteemed colleagues Shri @DilipGhoshBJP, Smt. @paulagnimitra1, Shri @NisithPramanik, Shri Ashok Kirtania, Shri Khudiram Tudu to meeting with top Bureaucrats and Administrative Officials, the message is clear - this is a Government "Of the People, By the People, For the People," not For the Party, unlike how the previous Govt operated.
The era of 'Asol Poribortan' has begun.
Jai Hind 🇮🇳

[tapas @imtapas99]

@WBPolice your website urgently needs an upgrade.

Improve UI, add online citizen services that are available under @KolkataPolice, update every PS page with proper details & make grievance redressal clearly visible.

Police portal should reflect transparency and accountability.

[BJP West Bengal @BJP4Bengal]

“যদি তোর ডাক শুনে কেউ না আসে তবে একলা চলো রে”

আজ কবিগুরু রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুরের জন্মজয়ন্তীতে জানাই প্রণাম। তাঁর শব্দ আজও বাঙালির আত্মার আলো, সাহস আর চিরন্তন প্রেরণা।

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Gig workers GET welfare benefits AND long term support. (4/5)

In 2025, Zomato and Blinkit spent over ₹100 crore on insurance coverage for delivery partners. These premiums are borne entirely by us, and the benefits are administered with record speed without any fuss.

Coverage includes:

1. Accident insurance with coverage of up to INR 10 lakh:
2. Medical insurance with coverage of INR 1 lakh plus OPD coverage of INR 5,000
3. Loss of pay insurance of up to INR 50,000
4. Maternity insurance with coverage of up to INR 40,000

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Beyond insurance, we’ve added other forms of support where gaps are most visible. (5/5)

1. Period rest days of 2 days per month for women delivery partner
2. Support in filing income tax returns (95,000 delivery partners leveraged this)
3. Access to a gig-variant of National Pension Scheme (54,000 delivery partners enrolled in PRAN under NPS, enabling long-term retirement savings)
4. SOS Service for immediate support in case of emergencies, including accidents, vehicle breakdown, theft etc.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Now tell me, is this unfair? Especially for an unskilled job, which is largely part time, and has zero barriers to entry.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Quick commerce’s 10-minute promise DOES NOT put pressure on gig workers, and it DOESN’T lead to unsafe driving. Why? (3/5)

The most common concern is that faster delivery promises translate into pressure on delivery partners to drive unsafely. That isn’t how the system operates.

Firstly, delivery partners are not shown customer-facing time promises. There is no “10-minute timer” or countdown in the delivery app.

10 mins or faster deliveries are primarily due to our stores being closer to customers and not by higher speeds on the road.

In 2025, the average distance travelled per order on Blinkit was 2.03 km. Average driving time was ~8 minutes, which implies an average speed of ~16 km/h.

On Zomato, where delivery times are longer, average driving speeds in 2025 were ~21 km/h.

As you can see, average driving speeds are broadly similar across Zomato and Blinkit: 10 vs 30 min delivery time is not affected by driving speed.

Road safety, I agree, remains one of the hardest challenges in any logistics ecosystem. Which needs to be solved with shared responsibility across road builders, rule enforcers, customers and delivery partners alike, regardless of the platform they work with.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Delivery partners are not overworked on our platforms. (2/5)

In 2025, the average delivery partner on Zomato worked 38 days in the year and 7 hours per working day, reflecting true gig style participation rather than fixed schedules. Only 2.3% of partners worked more than 250 days in the year. Demanding full-time employee benefits like PF, or guaranteed salaries for gig roles doesn’t align with what the model is built for.

Delivery partners are not assigned shifts or geographies. They determine when to log in and log out, and their area of work in a specific city. Partners also have the freedom to add or remove a desired work area based on their preferences. Once a partner opts into a gig, the only expectation is availability for the duration of that gig; beyond this, there are no participation requirements.

This shows that gig work is a reliable source of secondary income for delivery partners which is available to them all 365 days of the year. It is used as a flexible, stop-gap earning option, not a long-term lock-in.

Flexibility isn't incidental to the gig model, it is the whole point.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Facts below (1/5):

In 2025, average earnings per hour (EPH), excluding tips, for a delivery partner on Zomato were ₹102.
In 2024, this number was ₹92. That’s a ~10.9% year-on-year increase. Over a longer horizon also, EPH has shown steady growth.

Most delivery partners work for a few hours and only a few days in a month. But if someone were to work for 10 hours/day, 26 days/month, this translates to ~₹26,500/month in gross earnings. After accounting for fuel and maintenance (~20%), the net earnings for the partner are ~₹21,000/month.

Note: Earnings per hour are calculated on total hours logged in, including the time when the partner might be waiting to receive an order. Earnings per “busy hour” will be higher but that’s not the right metric to look at.

On top of this - delivery partners earn 100% of tips given by customers. The average tip per hour in 2025 on Zomato was INR 2.6 and in 2024 was INR 2.4 per hour. Tips are transferred instantly, with zero deductions. We absorb the payment gateway processing cost ourselves. About 5% of the orders get tipped on Zomato; 2.5% on Blinkit.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Last one on this topic, and I have been holding this in myself for a while.

For centuries, class divides kept the labor of the poor invisible to the rich. Factory workers toiled behind walls, farmers in distant fields, domestic help in backrooms. The wealthy consumed the fruits of that labor without ever seeing the faces or the fatigue behind it. No direct encounter, no personal guilt.

The gig economy shattered that invisibility, at unprecedented scale.

Suddenly, the poor aren't hidden away. They're at your doorstep: the delivery partner handing over your ₹1000+ biryani, late-night groceries, or quick-commerce essentials. You see them in the rain, heat, traffic, often on borrowed bikes, working 8–10 hours for earnings that give them sustenance. You see their exhaustion, their polite smile masking frustration with life in general.

This is the first time in history at this scale that the working class and consuming class interact face-to-face, transaction after transaction. And that discomfort with our own selves is why we are uncomfortable about the gig economy. We want these people to look our part, so that the guilt we feel while taking orders from them feels less.

We aren't just debating economics. We are confronting guilt. That ₹800 order might equal their entire day's earnings after fuel, bike rent, and app cuts. We tip awkwardly, or avoid eye contact, because the inequality is no longer abstract. It's personal.

Pre-gig era, the rich could enjoy luxury without moral discomfort. Labor was out of sight. Now, every doorbell ring is a reminder of systemic inequality. That's why debates explode. It's not just policy. It's emotional reckoning. Some defend the system (“they choose it”), others demand change (“this isn't progress, its exploitation”).

And here’s the uncomfortable twist: the unsaid ask of clumsy ‘solutions’ isn’t dignity. It is about returning to invisibility.

Ban gig work and you don’t solve inequality. You remove livelihoods. These jobs don’t magically reappear as formal, protected employment the next day. They disappear, or they get pushed back into the informal economy where there are even fewer protections and even less accountability. Over-regulate it until the model breaks, and you achieve the same outcome through paperwork instead of slogans: the work evaporates, prices rise, demand collapses, and the people we claim to protect are the first to lose income.

And then what happens?

The rich get their old comfort back. Convenience returns without faces. Guilt dissolves. We go back to clean abstractions and moral posturing from a distance. The poor don’t become safer, they become invisible again: back in cash economies, back in backrooms, back in shadows where regulation rarely reaches and dignity isn’t even debated.

The gig economy just exposed the reality of inequality to the people who previously had the luxury of not seeing it. The doorbell is not the problem. The question is what we do after opening the door.

Visibility is the price of progress. We can either use this discomfort to build something better (which we keep doing continuously as delivery partners are our backbone), or we can ban and over-regulate our way back into ignorance. One of those choices improves lives. The other simply helps the consuming class feel virtuous in the dark.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

One more thing. Our 10 minute delivery promise is enabled by the density of stores around your homes. It’s not enabled by asking delivery partners to drive fast. Delivery partners don’t even have a timer on their app to indicate what was the original time promised to the customer.

After you place your order on Blinkit, it is picked and packed within 2.5 minutes. And then the rider drives an average of under 2kms in about 8 minutes. That's an average of 15kmph.

I understand why everybody thinks why 10 minutes must be risking lives, because it is indeed hard to imagine the sheer complexity of the system design which enables quick deliveries.

Also, if you've ever wanted to know why millions of Indians voluntarily take up platform work and sometimes even prefer it to regular jobs, JUST ASK any rider partner when you get your next food or grocery order.

You will be humbled by how rational and honest they will be with you.

Having said that, no system is perfect, and we are all for making it better than today. However, it is far from what it is being portrayed on social media by people who don't understand how our system works and why.

If I were outside the system, I would also believe that gig workers are being exploited, but that's not true.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Agree. And literally everyone who has a job wants to get paid more. Everyone thinks they deserve better. At the end of the day, market forces decide how much does someone get paid.

Companies reliant on gig economy compete very brutally with each other. Demand is more than the supply, which results in gig incomes being more than what many formal entry level jobs in India pay.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

Agree.

I repeat – gig workers is one of the largest organised job creation engines in India. And we provide insurance, fair, timely and predictable wages.

Gig doesn’t need more regulation, it needs less regulation. It will bring more people into the fold, who will be able to earn some money, upskill themselves and later join India’s organised workforce. Not to mention, consistently send their kids to school - which will fundamentally change the fabric of our nation one generation later.

[Deepinder Goyal @deepigoyal]

I am all for peaceful protests against anything and everything. But violent protests and stopping others who want to work from working is not okay (proof attached).

Here’s what we know – a number of these protestors were not even our delivery partners. They were agents of political interests, piggybacking on the narrative to gain political mileage.

[tapas @imtapas99]

@TheOfficialSBI YONO 2.0 update is still not available on iOS as of today, December 15, 2025. Is there any update on the rollout, or could my account be excluded from the latest features due to low balance? 😂

[tapas @imtapas99]

Why is 12577 Superfast halted for 2 hr just to let express trains pass? Yesterday I missed Vande Bharat by 5 mins, no refund. Today there’s delay with zero info to passengers.

What kind of management is this? Railmadad also closing complaints. @RailMinIndia @RailwaySeva

[Nirmala Sitharaman Office @nsitharamanoffc]

Today, in the country's banks, Rs 78,000 crore of our citizens own money is lying unclaimed. We don't know who this money belongs to, it is just lying there.

Insurance companies have Rs14,000 crore, Mutual Funds have Rs 3000 crore. And all this money is lying unclaimed.

This money belongs to the poor and middle-class people and this government is trying to find who this money belongs to, because we want to find the rightful owner of this money.

Till now, special camps have been held in around 500 districts to identify the owners of this money and we have given back several thousands of crores to them. This is not just about the return of asset, this is about trust.

- Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi.