India will soon be home to the world’s largest workforce. Many young Indians are joining a formal economy via platforms and the rapid growth shows no signs of slowing down.
Today’s discussion was led by CTW community leader, Mark Hannant who is the Co-founder of Magenta , with two special guests, Dr. Sakshi Khurana of NITI Aayog and Lohit Bhatia of Quess Corp Limited.
Topics of discussion:
- Demographics that make India an exciting and important market in the global workforce
- Size of Indian workforce and the transition from informal to formal
- Introduce the idea of Midnight’s Grandchildren
- NITI Aayog report: Download the report here
- ‘platformization’, women into the workforce, social security, skills development and collaboration between platforms and government.
- How workers are categorised? – can they be both employee and gig worker?
- Are there other policies to encourage greater participation of women and minorities. How does gig/platform help in this area?
- How does UPI and other Digital India initiatives support this new economy?
- What can the rest of the world learn from India’s approach?
- And more!
Audio recording can be found here.
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Chat room transcript:
00:01:44 Mark Hannant: Greetings all from Mumbai
00:11:08 Chris “LINK” Duarte: Hello everyone. Link here from beautiful Northern Arizona, USA!
00:12:46 CTW: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/convening-on-the-future-of-work-tickets-380643814897
00:12:52 Isaiah Trotter: linkedin.com/in/isaiah-trotter
00:12:54 Wendy Horng Brawer: Intune Collective https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendyhorngbrawer/
00:13:36 Ashley, UntapSocial: https://freelancebusiness.be/fbd
00:13:54 CTW: https://freelancebusiness.eu/events/freelance-business-month/
00:14:27 CTW: Mark Hannant – Magenta:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhannantteammagenta/
00:16:32 CTW: Dr. Sakshi Khurana of NITI Aayog: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-sakshi-khurana-3bb27223/
00:17:13 CTW: Lohit Bhatia of Quess Corp Limited:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lohitbhatia/
00:19:41 Oshin Dharap: https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-06/25th_June_Final_Report_27062022.pdf
00:20:08 CTW: https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2022-06/25th_June_Final_Report_27062022.pdf
00:23:46 Marta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-rocamora-gonzalez-1240b731
00:29:08 Vijay Jonnalagadda: This is super interesting Sakshi! Haven’t been able to thumb through the entire report yet. What are the policy and tax implications of Gig and Platform economy?
00:29:36 Munni Trivedi: Question to the panel: @Mark Hannant you mentioned that there is much now that the west can learn from India. What are some of those things that India is doing well?
00:29:50 san.rahi: Thank you for the analysis. Are there any systemic incentives (tax, fringe benefits) that favour one form of employment over another? e.g. in US full-time employment is the majority path to health insurance
00:30:36 Bradley Cooper: One thing we are starting to account for are 6 U.S. states that are charging Sales Tax on Labor from Staffing providers. Is there something similar in India or part of the recommendations in the report?
00:32:05 Chris “LINK” Duarte: @Dr Sakshi, I see in the report about the movement and recommendations to improve diversity and inclusion; specifically for people with disabilities and women. Do you see any push or trending regarding inclusion efforts for workers who identify as LGBTQ?
00:35:24 Chris “LINK” Duarte: Very interesting!
00:37:40 Torsten Kriedt – Solesa Venture Services: @Lohit, is the aim of platform workers in India still to “graduate” into permanent roles or do you also see permanent employees going into freelance?
00:37:57 John Healy: fantastic explanation of the cultural difference…
00:38:53 Wendy Horng Brawer: +1 on Torsten’s question
00:39:24 CTW: Balaji Bondili: https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajibondili/
00:39:45 Henry Crabtree – Wazoku: thank you for sharing the report – Dr Khurana and Oshin, this is fascinating research!
00:41:03 Bondili, Balaji: could you talk about the role of the government/ policy in driving up education of these platforms and facilitate payments etc?
00:44:43 James Wright: This is a super interesting session. Thank you! As part of your analysis, have any solutions been proposed to address the growing digital divide ?
00:45:41 tej: one side is of course we have Gig, another side corporate Employers are resorting into “Moonlighting Policy”. what would be the impact
00:46:58 Chris “LINK” Duarte: Great points and ideas Dr. Sakshi. Thank you
00:47:12 CTW: Vijay Jonnalagadda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayjonna/
00:48:01 Alan Korpady: Problem? For whom?
00:48:04 Isaiah Trotter: In the report, do you have a figure for how many freelancers there are in India?
00:52:00 James Wright: I believe self sovereign identity holds the key to multiple challenges that have been raised in this session. For example, education certification verification, customer sat scoring and potentially also helping track tax exposure on the platform economy
00:53:48 jian pang: what you all are talking about is the what is clear of the government regulations which is very easy to set up with the platforms. What was the hash?
00:54:04 Chris “LINK” Duarte: If you have enjoyed today’s CTW conversation, and you are passionate about worker advocacy, please join our monthly CTW Advocacy Community Call. We meet every third Tuesday at 12pm EST. Here is the link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUscuusqj4jH922h0Ad_-BA0aoOcqIQ5X2R
00:54:40 Vijay Jonnalagadda: Thanks Sakshi and Lohit. Fab responses
00:56:29 Vijay Jonnalagadda: I’ll reach out to you offline. We are working with social partners, policy makers and platforms quite intensely in Europe & US. Would like to pick your brain on India.
00:56:44 CTW: San Rahi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanrahi/
00:57:47 Sheila Mahoney-LifeSciHub: Have to jump, great to see everyone, fascinating convo as always. See you in 2w!
00:58:18 Chris “LINK” Duarte: If you are interested in learning more about the CTW Advocacy Community, feel free to connect with me 🙂 https://www.linkedin.com/in/linkdreams/
00:58:55 Siddharth Birla: Very insightful talk! I work with Freelancer.com, one of the platforms in the market. It would be great to connect with you all – https://www.linkedin.com/in/birlasiddharth/
00:59:07 san.rahi: Great conversation today. Thank you everyone!
00:59:21 CTW: Thank Sakshi and Lohit for your time!
00:59:26 Barry Matthews: awesome content, super interesting – thank you so much for sharing
00:59:56 David No: Need to drop. Thank you everyone.
01:00:05 Isaiah Trotter: Yeah, thanks so much. I’m definitely gonna be reading that report from top to bottom.
01:00:32 CTW: THANK YOU!
01:00:32 Wendy Horng Brawer: Thank you very much for organizing and for the excellent presentations.
01:00:34 Bradley Cooper: Thank you everyone this has been great and look forward to reading the report.
01:00:34 Bondili, Balaji: Thank you very much for your thoughts!
01:00:34 Alan Korpady: Thanks, all.
01:00:39 Chris “LINK” Duarte: Amazing conversation! Thank you!
01:00:40 James Wright: Thanks so much Dr Sakshi and Lohit!
01:00:54 Henry Crabtree – Wazoku: Thanks all, have a great rest of your week!
01:00:55 jian pang: thank you all.
