Author: Sridevi Srinivasan
College: Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University
Abstract
Picture this: it is 11 p.m. and a software engineer in Chennai has just put her children to bed. Her phone lights up, her manager in Bengaluru needs a report by midnight. She cannot switch off, and she knows that ignoring the message could hurt her career. This is not an unusual scenario. For millions of Indian workers today, the boundary between work time and personal time has practically ceased to exist.
The philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed a building called the Panopticon, a prison where a single guard could watch every inmate at all times without the inmates knowing exactly when they were being observed. The result was constant self-monitoring by prisoners. Today, employers achieve the same effect through keylogging software, screenshot tools, productivity dashboards, and location trackers installed on the devices of employees who work from home. The home, which the Supreme Court has recognised as a space protected by the fundamental right to privacy in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), has been converted into a round-the-clock surveillance zone.
India’s information technology sector alone employs over five million workers, and tens of millions more work through gig platforms. When the working day has no clear end point, questions about overtime pay, rest periods, mental health protection, and basic human dignity all become legally urgent. A “right to disconnect” meaning a worker’s legal entitlement to ignore work-related communications after contractual hours without facing any professional penalty, is the most direct answer to this problem.
To the Point
Indian labour law was built for a different era. The Factories Act, 1948 is one of the most important worker-protection statutes limits working hours, mandates rest intervals, and regulates overtime. But it applies only to workers inside registered factory premises. A coder working from her apartment in Coimbatore is simply outside its reach.
The four Labour Codes enacted between 2019 and 2020, the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, represent the most ambitious overhaul of Indian labour law in decades. Yet none of them address remote work, digital monitoring, or the right to switch off. The Occupational Safety Code defines “workplace,” but legislative debate and drafting make clear that physical premises were the dominant concern. The result is a significant gap in legal protection that leaves millions of home-based workers with no statutory remedy when an employer demands perpetual availability.
Use of Legal Jargon
The right to disconnect is not a new concept imported wholesale from abroad. Its foundations are already visible within the Indian Constitution, if one looks carefully.
Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court, in Francis Coralie Mullin v. Union Territory of Delhi (1981), held that this right includes the right to live with human dignity not merely physical survival. Chronic sleep deprivation caused by midnight work messages, anxiety produced by constant supervisory monitoring, and the inability to share an uninterrupted meal with one’s family all erode human dignity in concrete, measurable ways. There is therefore a strong argument that forcing an employee to remain digitally available beyond her contractual hours violates Article 21.
The Puttaswamy judgment adds another layer. A nine-judge bench unanimously recognised privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21. The Court held that privacy includes “informational autonomy” meaning the right to control information about oneself and the right to be left alone. When an employer installs software that takes screenshots of a worker’s personal computer every five minutes inside her home, it is not merely inconvenient; it may be constitutionally disproportionate.
The Proof
While no Indian court has yet decided a case directly on the right to disconnect, several landmark decisions build toward that recognition.
In Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India (1984), the Supreme Court held that Articles 21, 23, and 24, read together with the Directive Principles, impose a positive obligation on the State to protect workers from exploitative conditions. The Court’s willingness to read fundamental rights expansively in labour contexts is directly relevant to digital exploitation today.
The Puttaswamy framework is particularly powerful for challenging intrusive surveillance. The Court articulated a three-part test: any interference with privacy must serve a legitimate aim, must be necessary (no less restrictive means available), and must be proportionate to the benefit gained. Screenshot tools that capture images of an employee’s screen every few minutes potentially revealing personal information visible in the background will struggle to satisfy this test when applied in the domestic sphere.
Conclusion
The transformation of the private home into a digital workplace that never closes is not an inevitable feature of modernity. It is a consequence of legislative inaction and an imbalance of power between those who set the terms of digital availability and those who must live with those terms. A right to disconnect is, at its most basic level, a right to be a person not merely an employee for some portion of every day.
India’s Constitution, through Article 21’s guarantee of a dignified life, and the post-Puttaswamy understanding of privacy as a fundamental right, already provides the raw material to construct this protection. The Directive Principles of State Policy make it a duty of the State to act. The courts have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to read labour rights expansively. What remains is legislative will and the recognition that as remote work becomes a permanent feature of the Indian economy, the workers who power that economy deserve the legal protection to close their laptops and rest.
FAQs
Q1. Is the Right to Disconnect explicitly mentioned in the new Indian Labour Codes?
No. While the OSH Code, 2020 updates many workplace safety parameters, it remains completely silent on the specific issue of digital overwork and off-hours communication.
Q2. How have other countries handled this issue?
France became a global pioneer by writing the Loi El Khomri into law in 2017, making it a mandatory statutory requirement for companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate formal agreements setting clear boundaries for digital communication.
Q3. Can an employee be fired for not answering a work call during their annual leave?
No, not legally. Under standard state Shops and Establishments Acts, annual leave is a statutory right that cannot be rendered illusory by mandatory work demands. Firing an employee for disconnecting during approved leave constitutes an arbitrary termination and a colorable exercise of managerial power, allowing the worker to challenge the dismissal before a labor court or tribunal.
