Indian politician Raghav Chadha has recently made more headlines in correlation to quick-commerce company Blinkit than his own Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The member of parliament in the Rajya Sabha took the alliance to the next level this week, by completely ditching his usual choice of attire and stepping into the shoes of a Blinkit delivery agent.

Raghav Chadha turns Blinkit delivery rider for a day

Taking to his official X account, he proudly shared a major update with hundreds of thousands of his followers online. “Away from boardrooms, at the grassroots. I lived their day,” he wrote on the SNS platform, formerly known as Twitter.

Sending out another message, he raised anticipation among his followers, as he added, “Stay tuned!”

A video was plugged in with the tweet, which showed Chadha putting on the signature yellow Blinkit uniform. Carrying the quick-delivering service’s bag, presumably full of items meant to be dropped off at their destination residences, on his back, he then accompanied another Blinkit rider on a scooter.

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Thereafter, both of them embarked on their day-long journey to accomplish their responsibilities and drop off the deliveries on Chadha’s back. The less-than-a-minute-long clip ends just as Raghav exits an elevator and is about to reach a doorstep alongside the Blinkit rider.

As already mentioned in the video, Chadha is expected to weigh in on the project he teased online soon enough. 

Raghav Chadha’s Blinkit saga

The AAP MP’s major transformation comes about a month after he called out the “exploitative realities of the country’s gig economy” in a social media post, as he shared a screenshot showing a Blinkit agent earning the meagre Rs 762.57 after completing 28 deliveries.

As per the screenshot he shared, the rider earned an average of only Rs 52.01 per hour after finishing nearly 15 hours of duties. The breakdown further showed that the delivery agent got Rs 690.57 from order payments, Rs 72 as incentive, and zero under other earnings.

“Low pay, crushing targets, no job security, no dignity for gig workers. This Blinkit case only confirms what millions live every day. India cannot build a digital economy on the backs of underpaid, overworked human beings. Fair wages, humane hours and social security for gig workers are non-negotiable,” Chadha said in the post.

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Just days after sending shockwaves through social media with the aforementioned post, he shared another video capturing an interaction with the same delivery boy whose wage breakdown had fired up one too many discussions online. The 17-minute-long video caught Chadha hosting Himanshu, a delivery agent, for lunch.

“Through his social media posts, he had recently shared the harsh realities and miseries faced by riders/delivery boys. We spoke at length about the high risks, long hours, low pay, and no safety net. These voices deserve to be heard in Parliament and beyond,” Chadha said at the time.

Himanshu, on the other hand, did his bit in highlighting the impact made by delivery workers, as he said, “Sir, in the government’s language, they are called gig workers. But I call them the invisible wheels of the Indian economy. For a 10-minute delivery, he does over-speeding, jumps the red light and puts his life at risk. These people are not robots, they are also the fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons of someone.”