India to push for gig economy's social protection at G20

NEW DELHI: India has identified social protection for the gig and platform economy as well as sustainable financing for social security as one of the key priorities at the G20 under its presidency.

The rapidly growing gig and platform economy has tremendous potential for providing employment, including for women and migrants, but the sector has its own challenges such as incorrect classification as self-employed, patchy social protection, irregular work hours and worries over safety, health, data privacy and security.

Under its presidency, India will ensure that a framework for extending social protection to workers in this sector is drawn up. Authorities in India have been pushing for accident insurance for all delivery partners across ride-hailing and e-commerce platforms. They have also been exploring steps for social protection measures for gig and platform workers in India, drawing on the experience across the world.

Officials said a likely outcome would also balance the need to provide workers with protection, without hurting growth and innovation across platforms. "Effort will be made to have a number of recommendations on ways to expand social protection to a large number of workers," said an official aware of the developments.

"This will facilitate the development of tools for monitoring the social protection policies and also help develop a uniform global portal, which would include employers and job seekers of G20 nations," said the official.

Among the issues that will be discussed is the registration of workers on platforms, which could help in removing the hurdle of providing social protection. Officials said terms of work agreements are largely dictated by the platforms and they affect the working conditions of the platform workers, their performance appraisal, availability of work, among other concerns. A key outcome expected from the discussion is production of statistics on the platform is expected to codify all information of several categories of workers across platforms.