Kaushiki Sanyal

India’s platform workforce is growing rapidly, but social protection remains inadequate. JustJobs Network’s report examines regulatory gaps, fragmented registration and weak welfare mechanisms that limit gig workers’ access to benefits. It recommends coherent laws, portable protections, accountable welfare boards, transparent platform practices and stronger tripartite dialogue to secure workers’ livelihoods.

How does India’s emerging legal framework for gig and platform workers measure up to new global labour standards? In her latest piece for Tech Law Forum, JustJobs Network’s Kaushiki Sanyal examines India’s evolving approach to platform work in light of the ILO’s new Convention on Decent Work in the Platform Economy. She examines what the Convention means for gig workers and where India’s current framework stands on minimum wages, social security, occupational safety, algorithmic transparency, protection against deactivation, and collective rights.

India’s platform economy is exposing a deeper question about social security: can a welfare system built around occupations protect workers whose jobs, platforms and locations keep changing? JustJobs Network’s Kaushiki Sanyal explores this question in her latest piece for The Policy Edge, examining why India’s welfare-board model is being tested and what a more portable, worker-centred social protection system could look like.

A workday shouldn’t hinge on finding a usable toilet, yet for many women in India, it does. In her article for The Policy Edge, Kaushiki Sanyal, Fellow, JustJobs Network, argues that the focus on menstrual leave in India's policy debates misses a more immediate and pervasive constraint: the absence of functional sanitation. She contends that without addressing this everyday barrier, efforts to improve women’s workforce participation will remain incomplete.

Urban women’s participation in India’s labour market remains limited despite rising overall female labour force participation. This article examines whether platform work can enable women’s economic empowerment. It finds that platforms often reproduce inequalities through unpaid care burdens, unsafe mobility, and weak protections. Without improved infrastructure, childcare, safety, and labour protections, it risks becoming digitised informality rather than a pathway to mobility.

The newly enacted law to reserve one-third seats for women in the Lok Sabha and state legislatures could advance gender equality in India. Certain conditions however need to be met to ensure that numerical representation translates to substantive representation.

The success of UWEI and MUKTA, Odisha’s initiatives to curb pandemic-induced urban employment could well be the blueprint for a National Urban Employment Guarantee Act that emphasizes worker security, community involvement and a gender-inclusive design.