Dr B K Mukhopadhyay (The author is a Professor of Management and Economics, formerly at IIBM (RBI) Guwahati. He can be contacted at [email protected]) Dr. Boidurjo Rick Mukhopadhyay (The author, international award-winning development and management economist, formerly a Gold Medalist in Economics at Gauhati University) As John McAfee rightly puts it, "The gig economy is empowerment. This new business paradigm empowers individuals to better shape their destiny and leverage their existing assets to their benefit." Broadly, gig work can be classified into: "geographically tethered work," which requires workers to be in a particular place (driving for ride-hailing companies, MFDA – mobile food delivery aggregators), and "cloud work" which refers to work that can be completed remotely via a computer (jobs in teaching, tax analyst, consultants – i.e., knowledge work). For either of these categories, there are several preconditions, A) Adequate and available platform infrastructure (e.g., 4G connectivity, cloud computing, GPS networks, etc). B) It involves the digital legibility of work – i.e., whether or not the work can be mediated via a digital platform. e.g., delivery work for MFDAs or couriers has a high level of digital legibility as it involves a discrete task that can be mapped onto a process with defined steps. C) Combining technological and social aspects - affordable smartphones coupled with regular internet connectivity is important for both workers and consumers of platforms.