Purvi Singla
I. Introduction
In a world that increasingly boasts of an overwhelming workload and long hours, Kerala has charted a different course to protect its workers. Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in her first speech, quoted ‘Reject the term work-life balance, just work’ and asked citizens to work like a horse. This rhetoric, increasingly echoed by political and corporate elites globally, reflects a deeper cultural shift that treats constant availability as a professional virtue rather than exploitation. Kerala’s Legislative Assembly has embarked to set things right in its territory. The state introduced its Right to Disconnect Bill on September 23, 2025. It is designed to safeguard private sector employees from after-hours work demands. It will allow them to refuse to engage in work-related tasks without any consequences.
Corporate India is already facing a health epidemic. An International Labour Organisation reported Indian workers are one of the most overworked populations in the world, second only to Bhutan. With an already exhausting work week, which clocks in at about 46.7 hours on average and 51% of Indian employees working even beyond 49 hours weekly, it becomes more crucial to protect the little time workers get off work. This blog seeks to examine the bill, possible challenges and offer solutions through the lens of three vital tensions: technology, federalism, and class.
II. Tech and Surveillance
In remote and digitally mediated workplaces, the right to disconnect becomes conceptually and practically fragile. Personal and professional time are more likely to be intertwined and blur. This produces what scholars describe as the “expectation problem.” It comes to the problem of expectation. Research titled “Exhausted, but Unable to Disconnect” reveals that the organisational expectation to be available during non-work hours, rather than email quantity itself, drives emotional exhaustion and inability to detach from work. 88% of employees have reported being contacted outside work in India, with 85% facing work calls even during sick leaves and holidays.
Kerala’s bill addresses this through defining the right as legally valid to refuse work-related contact, including digital communication, without fear of consequences such as dismissal or negative impact on benefits. When examined through the tools now available for workplace surveillance, a hyper-awareness is induced due to constant observation.Monitoring software can now track even keyword patterns and continuous webcams aside. A Dutch court ruled that requiring employees to keep webcams on during working hours was unreasonable, affirming privacy rights against invasive surveillance. Tech surveillance can have a negative impact on the autonomy of workers, and it creates an “always-on” structure where workers are in one way or another connected to their work at all times, regardless of work hours, perpetuating power asymmetry.
We must move towards building digital fences and algorithmic limits to surveillance. First, Kerala must develop technological fences that prevent communication after-hours except in designated emergencies. It can take the form of automated email holds and vacation settings, which are only activated during work hours. France is an apt example as it became one of the first nations to mandate that companies with more than 50 employees negotiate policies preventing after-hours email communication, which might include implementing technological solutions like server shutdowns after work hours and automated email holds that delay message delivery until the recipient’s next working day. Secondly, ESG reporting for listed companies should include employee surveillance practices as a metric, failing to be transparent about which may lead to penalties such as fines; disclosure requirements covering biometric data, keystrokes, data retention, etc. Thirdly, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act must also mandate reporting surveillance statistics as to what data they collect, how long they keep it, who can access it, etc., which is regularly reviewed by an independent tech arm of the Ministry of Labour & Employment. Fourthly, the IT Rules do not explicitly discuss long-term monitoring. Workers’ explicit consent must be required for such continuous monitoring, which is revokable at any time, along with a clear debrief of how this data is collected and could be used in performance reviews. Inspiration can be taken from the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which establishes clear limits on employee monitoring.
III. Federalism and the Future of Labour Reform
Regulation of labour is currently under the authority of both central and state governments, as it is a part of the Concurrent List. This means both governments are legally empowered to make laws in this regard. Although it is to note that the Centre has been making the big moves while states have taken a backseat. The Centre passed four new labour codes, although their implementation is facing procedural issues due to a lack of state-level. A legislative deadlock is formed due to the Centre’s lack of enforcement capacity without state support. This also shows political economy tensions. These steps, while crucial to labour law development, don’t lean much towards employee protection.
While Kerala has proposed this worker-protective bill, many states are moving to increase working hours. In 2025 alone, several states moved to extend working hours: Maharashtra raised private sector limits to 10 hours, and factory shifts to 12, Karnataka and Telangana expanded daily hours to 10, and Rajasthan doubled quarterly overtime ceilings to 100 hours, extendable to 144. This is just a race-to-the-bottom to extract more and more hours. Industries pressure state governments and, under compulsion formed out of electoral promises and fiscal constraints, they give in.These reforms seem to contradict the effort of lowering employees’ time under employer surveillance. In a race to attract investment, states undermine employee well-being. Kerala’s bill thus represents a more work-life balance approach, where it moves to preserve the peacefulness of life after work and aims to grant workers more time to pursue their life interests. This bill asserts state authority in a worker-centric path, breaking away from the Centre-dominated patterns in labour law regulation.
The Centre must work towards similar reforms. A comprehensive central framework to disconnect must be established that provides “ideal” as well as a given range of hours that states can customise within limits, where workers are free to entirely disconnect. It should also define penalties (like an extra paid leave) and exceptions (like emergencies), and aim to be as minimally vague as possible. A city-based council under the oversight of state labour departments, which brings together employers, employees and government in equal representation, should be established to negotiate limits according to various sectors and to define what emergencies and exceptions are valid sector-wise. Any disputes should also first refer to this council before moving to higher authorities. Another suggestion is that an interoperability mechanism could be created where states first test such worker-centric models before considering adopting them at the national level. Successful models could then inform future central labour code amendments or become templates for voluntary adoption by other states.
IV. The Class Divide in Rest
Kerala’s bill will protect private sector employees; this formal demographic represents just about 15% of India’s labour force. Indian workers are mainly engaged in the unorganised sector, which is excluded from many statutory protections. Many provisions only apply to establishments with 10+ workers, effectively bypassing India’s dominant employment. This results in a class divide between the white and blue-collar professionals. According to NITI Aayog, India had 7.7 million gig workers in 2020-21, projected to surge to 23.5 million by 2029-30. Platform workers on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, and Ola are classified as “independent contractors,” making them ineligible for minimum wage, health benefits, or any right to disconnect. Their employment is perpetually unstable, dependent on algorithmic ratings and customer reviews that function as invisible managers exercising total control. A survey by the All India Gig Workers Union found over 60% of gig workers reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, driven by financial instability, excessive hours, and algorithmic surveillance. Work, in this context, becomes a panopticon where visibility is compulsory, and rest is economically punished.
The Code on Social Security 2020 theoretically extends benefits to gig and platform workers, defining them as persons who “perform work or participate in a work arrangement and earn from such activities outside the traditional employer-employee relationship”. Although the Codes were formally brought into force in late November 2025, their protections remain largely illusory due to delayed rule-making, weak institutional capacity, and the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms. Meanwhile, the structural reality of platform work makes “logging off” equivalent to “earning less”.
Tobridge this divide, firstly, amendments are suggested to explicitly extend the right to disconnect to platform workers. It should clearly define its scope and also allow workers to deny working outside hours without fear of a drop in ratings, being ousted unfairly or algorithmic bias. The EU’s Platform Work Directive established a model of an effective rebuttable legal presumption of employment where a worker is presumed to be an employee, and it’s the burden of platforms to prove their status as independent contractors. India should adopt similar provisions. Secondly, legally enforceable caps on daily and weekly working hours for platform labour are essential. It is feasible through the e-Shram portal, which provides the existing infrastructure for the same.
V. Conclusion
Kerala’s Bill is more than a workplace reform, and its success will depend on whether worker autonomy can survive, whether federalism supports this progression and whether discrimination of rest can be defeated. India’s own constitutional jurisprudence, from Kirloskar Brothers to CESC v. Subash Chandra Bose, affirms that the right to life encompasses health and the employer’s duty to enable both, with much more to learn from other jurisdictions. The challenges are ever-growing with fast-moving technology, slow federal pace and marginalising class divides. Yet, this bill marks a change forward, which must be supplemented with solutions suggested. The right to disconnect and the right to rest will need much more than just sympathy, it demands robust legislation and uncompromising enforcement.
Purvi Singla is a 1st year B.A.LL.B (Hons.) student at The Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala.
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