As digital labour platforms continue to expand across Asia, debates on the future of work often circle back to a familiar reference point: ride-hailing apps such as Uber. But focusing on one dominant model can obscure more than it reveals—particularly in countries like India, where platform work has taken on diverse forms across sectors such as home-based services, education, logistics, agriculture, and healthcare. This was the central argument of a recent FutureWORKS Asia knowledge-sharing session by Dr. Aditi Surie of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, which examined how different types of labour platforms govern workers’ time, income, and behaviour. Rather than asking whether platform workers are “employees” or “independent contractors,” the session invited participants to look more closely at how platforms exercise control—and how that control shapes workers’ everyday experiences.

Ayesha Zainudeen (with contributions from Anah Cassim, Anish Fonseka and Chanduni Bandara)[†] The Asia Pacific region is home to 60% of the world’s population and an estimated 57% of the world’s labor force.  However, there is great heterogeneity across the region between the countries and their labor market contexts, differing in their stages of structural and demographic transformation, as well as their socio-economic compositions, level of formality in their economies, as well as the level of policy capacity. While global, regional and local changes and disruptions to social and economic systems pervade, this heterogeneity affects how their impacts manifest –particularly on the most vulnerable and marginalized groups.   Notwithstanding the vast sub-regional differences, on average the region’s largest employers are the agriculture sector (30% of the workforce in 2021), manufacturing (16%), and wholesale/retail trade (15%).[1] The agriculture sector is often characterized by high levels of informality; low, if not zero wage levels; low productivity; poor working conditions; but it is a significant employer of women across the region.

On 20th of August 2025, LIRNEasia, together with the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) and the Sri Lanka and Maldives office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)  convened a policy round table discussion titled Bridging Policy Pathways for an Inclusive Future of Work. The round table brought together key stakeholders from the public and private sectors including  policymakers, trade union and corporate representatives and practitioners, together with regional experts through the FutureWORKS Asia network, an initiative funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada.  Regional experts included Selim Raihan (PhD) of SANEM, Cheryll Ruth Soriano (PhD) of De La Salle University (Philippines), Jayvy Gamboa of Manila Observatory (Philippines), Towfiqul Islam Khan of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (Bangladesh), Balwant Mehta (PhD) of the Institute for Human Development (India), and Reiner Lorenzo Tomayo of Women in Global Health Philippines, and  Gayani Hurulle of LIRNEasia. Opening remarks were delivered by Joni Simpson of the International Labor Organisation (Sri Lanka and the Maldives), with sub-themes of the discussion moderated by Helani Galpaya of LIRNEasia, Gayathri Lokuge (PhD) of CEPA, and Sabina Dewan from the JustJobs Network. The objective of the discussion was to explore critical policy themes shaping the future of […]