Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman India’s presented India’s Union Budget 2021 yesterday in which a number of measures were proposed to support the economy amid the Covid-19 pandemic and boost spending.

Among the key proposals within the Budget included a measure to extend social security benefits for the country’s gig and platform economy workers. This means minimum wages will apply to all categories of workers, and they will all be covered by the Employees State Insurance Corporation.

“For the first time globally, social security benefits will extend to gig and platform workers,” Sitharaman said.`

The measures will impact around 15 million gig workers in India, in addition to online platform providers across sectors such as transportation (Uber and Ola), food delivery (Swiggy and Zomato), and the contract workers in IT and software firms.

According to Business Insider India, Sitharaman also said that migrant, construction and gig workers will be registered on a portal and ensure that they receive health and insurance benefits. Women can also take up all jobs including night shifts provided they receive substantial protection.

According to the Economic Times, staffing firms such as Quess Corp and TeamLease Services said that the measures for the gig, platform and temporary workers in this year's budget are welcome but their execution will be key.

“For gig workers, employers need to maintain a corpus for social security and the execution of this will be key,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, executive vice-president of staffing company TeamLease Services.

“The introduction of an online platform which will capture all the data about temporary workers is a big positive,” said Lohit Bhatia, president of workforce management at staffing company Quess Corp. "Now there will be a clear demarcation about how many are working, what benefits they’re getting – medical allowance, pension, etc."

Meanwhile Sitharaman also announced a proposal to revise the definition of a small company under India’s corporate laws.

"Earlier lots of companies had to remain small because of overwhelming compliance burden," said Bhatia. “Now, they would be incentivised to get bigger.”

Ajit Isaac, chairman and managing director at Quess Corp said that as “formalisation of the labour market and as the size of the market grows, the compliance levels will also go up, creating more business for HR management firms. The formalisation of the blue-collar workforce in India could also trigger a massive shift to outsourcing by traditional firms and not just new-age businesses.”

The Budget also included spending and changes on healthcare, railways and highway infrastructure, gas and power, income tax changes for senior citizens and return filing changes, farmer welfare and further changes to startups.