Making G20 Presidency A ‘Gig’ Deal: India to Mobilise Platform Workers, Plug Skill Gaps

Under its G20 presidency this year, India will work on mobilisation of gig and platform workers — a major workforce that has emerged as one of the biggest contributors to economy after the Covid-19 pandemic — through skill integration and creating a framework to assess global skill gaps among participating countries to allow faster and smoother labour mobility across nations.

The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) has been made the nodal ministry to push employment-related agenda under its employment working group (EWG). It will work closely with the Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) to develop these frameworks, as these are the key ministries working in this sector, said government officials.

Several meetings under the G20 presidency have already taken place since India assumed the presidency on December 1, 2022. “Panel discussions, seminars and meetings at the working group level and ministerial level to discuss skill gaps and the way forward will be held from January onwards,” said a senior official, who didn’t wish to be named.

“Under the employment working group, the MSDE is entrusted with developing frameworks for the assessment of skill gap and harmonisation of qualifications across G20 countries,” the official added.

PLUGGING GAPS

The working group aims to come out with a State of the Sector (SOTS) report on demographic, technological and environmental factors, which are fueling the rise of the gig and platform economy as well as exploring policy imperatives, avenues and collaboration opportunities among member countries with regard to mobilisation of gig and platform workers between nations.

The G20 discussions will focus on identifying and integrating skills of gig and platform workers to boost employment and growth. “Through the discussions, we aim to address structural challenges such as accessibility, skill mismatch and income insecurity while mitigating the same through policy regulation and transition to evolved models. Recognizing, skilling, utilizing and protecting gig and platform workers is imperative as we steadily move towards an occupationally digitalized economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the process of digitization world over,” the official said.

The Union government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while launching the Skill India mission, had said that the country must strive to become the “skills capital of the world” and hence having a skilled labour workforce remains on top G20 agenda.

THE CHALLENGES

Among the challenges are that several developed G20 countries have reached slow population growth or are experiencing negative growth. These countries are responding to such shortages by enacting policies to increase workforce participation by attracting migrants from other nations. But there is another challenge to labour mobility across countries, that an individual’s qualifications and competencies may not be recognised in countries other than their own, which is where India, with its large workforce, can supply the gap, if they are equipped with the right skills, said another official.

Varied skill taxonomies used in different countries are another obstacle in skill recognition, which is another key area to be discussed during the working group meetings. According to the agenda document, it is critical to develop a standard nomenclature for qualifications to ease the benchmarking process.

According to experts, skill development is a global challenge, especially after the pandemic, and G20 presents an opportunity for member states to address this concern at every level and come up with an efficient ecosystem for the labour workforce.

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Prateek Kukreja, a development policy specialist-G20 and research fellow at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), in his research paper titled ‘G20 in a Post-Covid-19 World: Bridging the Skills Gaps’ published in 2020, said that the pandemic and its economic consequences have renewed the need for G20 countries to work together to tackle challenges that extend beyond their borders.

“The G20 should work towards building consensus on globally uniform occupation and qualification standards to facilitate skilling at a macro level. Further, given that remote working is the new norm, the G20 must ramp up the global skills development ecosystem to facilitate virtual programmes and digital learning.”

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