Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English en
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Platform Labour and Urban Gig Work: Insights from India

Objective

PLUG-In is a pioneering study of state-supported platform innovations in India that are worker- and local-economy centred, scalable, and effective in challenging monopolistic platforms, with the broader aim of fostering meaningful 'South-North’ knowledge exchange, particularly with European stakeholders. Digital on-demand labour platforms increasingly shape everyday lives worldwide, raising challenges around the regulation of monopolistic actors, the precarious labour relations they engender, and the threats posed to local economies. State-led interventions have often sought to strengthen workers’ bargaining power by extending employment rights, yet recent scholarship highlights that umbrella legislation alone cannot address gig workers’ structural precarity, as dominant platforms continuously exploit regulatory loopholes. Against this backdrop, PLUG-In pursues three interlinked objectives: 1) to develop a platform research agenda attentive to heterogeneous strategies for improving working conditions and reinforcing local economies; 2) to empirically examine the lived experiences of workers and sellers engaged in platform alternatives; 3) to foster South-North innovation exchange. It does so through an in-depth study of two Indian platforms hosted on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a state-funded, digital public infrastructure: Namma Yatri, a ride-hail platform co-conceived with a drivers’ union with 600,000+ drivers, and KiranaPro, a retail platform (operating in 35+ Indian cities) that supports local enterprises increasingly threatened by e-commerce oligopolies. Through qualitative fieldwork with workers, sellers, and key informants, PLUG-In seeks to distil lessons and enable knowledge and innovation exchange to address urgent societal challenges, including in the EU: promoting decent work and social rights in the platform economy, strengthening local and regional innovation ecosystems, and safeguarding micro-enterprises central to urban economies.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 268 568,64
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0