Nature of relationships
In contrast to a number of other jurisdictions, India has yet to
witness significant litigation regarding characterisation issues of
ODE workers. In any misclassification disputes based on the classic
employee versus independent contractor question, the focus is on
control by the organisation and the worker's degree of economic
dependence.
The current nature of workforce engagement in the ODE sector in
India has potential for creating co-employment risks. This is
because, in practice, organisations (known as principal employers)
usually engage their ODE workers for their core activities and
continue to exercise material control over them. The use of an ODE
platform may not necessarily change the level of control exercised
by the organisations over their workers. In addition, contract
labourers and independent contractors are frequently economically
reliant on the employers. Consequently, if there is litigation in
these situations, the
