e-Shram database now a 'One Stop Solution' for unorganised workforce

On October 21, India's labour ministry integrated different social security schemes with the e-Shram portal in a bid to provide seamless access to government welfare programmes to over 300 million unorganised sector workers, who are already registered on the portal.

 

The “One Stop Solution” facility entails consolidating and integrating data from various central ministries and departments into a single repository. The move follows an announcement made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Union Budget speech earlier this year to facilitate delivery of a wide array of services to labourers, including those for employment and skilling, with a comprehensive integration of the e-Shram portal with others.

 

Currently, the portal has integrated data from 12 central welfare schemes such as “One Nation One Ration Card”, “Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act”, “Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Gramin”, “National Social Assistance Programme”, “National Career Service”, and “Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan”, among others. 

   

 

Unified database for easy welfare access

 

Launched in August 2021 in the aftermath of the migrant workers’ crisis during the Covid-induced lockdown, the e-Shram portal is a pan-India database of unorganised workers, including both skilled and unskilled. The portal registers details such as name, occupation, address, educational qualification, and skill type of each worker.

 

According to various estimates, there are roughly 500 million unorganised workers in the country. Of these, 303 million have already been registered on the portal in over 400 different occupations classified under 30 broad occupation sectors. Of the total workers enrolled on the portal, 158.6 million are registered as agricultural workers, 28.7 million as domestic workers, 27.3 million as construction workers, and 19.7 million are apparel workers. These are the top four occupational categories. Among states, Uttar Pradesh (UP) has the highest workers registered (83.7 million), followed by Bihar (29.5 million), West Bengal (26.4 million), and Madhya Pradesh (18.34 million).

 

Labour secretary Sumita Dawra says the Centre is working towards transforming the e-Shram portal into not just a unified database of this vast workforce, but also as a “One Stop Solution” for access to social security schemes of the government.

 

“In this manner, the workers will be able to access health, insurance, pension, housing, and other social security benefits under various schemes of the government at one place. Further, since the database is Aadhaar-seeded, and each worker has a ‘unique identification number’ allocated by the portal, chances of duplication are negligible. Not only central government schemes, we are also bringing on board the welfare schemes run by the state governments,” she added.

 

Sumit Kumar, chief strategy officer, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, says that the launch of the e-Shram “One Stop Solution” creates a template for preparing a unified database through which millions of unorganised sector workers can now access government-run schemes at their own convenience. 

 

 

“This unification will now not only help unorganised workers, it will be equally beneficial for the employers. They will find it much easier to comply with various legal provisions as they will now know which provisions are applicable on the workers working in their establishments and which are the benefits for which they are eligible,” he says.

 

Besides coordinating with diverse ministries such as finance, health, housing, skill development, road transport, and rural development to integrate their welfare scheme databases with the e-Shram portal, the Centre is also working with state governments to incorporate their welfare schemes into the portal.

 

“By aligning state government systems with the portal, e-Shram will also allow for a state/district-wise identification of potential beneficiaries, ensuring saturation under various schemes. During the 100 days agenda, for instance, 12 central schemes have been onboarded on e-Shram, and addition of other schemes will remain an ongoing process,” Dawra adds.

 

Single repository could extend private sector reach

 

Suchita Dutta, executive director, Indian Staffing Federation, says that human resource providers are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of this unified database, as firms often complain about lack of skilled workforce.

 

"The advantage of integrating welfare schemes for unorganised workers with the e-Shram portal is increased accessibility and efficiency in accessing support services. Firms often complain about lack of skilled workforce. This database will help them to plan their workforce requirements better," she says.

 

Earlier this month, Business Standard reported that the government is working on integrating the e-Shram portal with the Gati Shakti portal — a database of India’s social and economic infrastructure — with the stated objective of reducing the skill gap and helping nodal agencies plan their workforce requirements better.

 

“Having this huge database will also help us trace and track the benefits under schemes for unorganised labour in meaningful ways, and gather feedback regarding access to schemes in real time. We will be able to see which schemes are accessed better and which are not, which regions are doing better and which are lagging, and suggest timely remedies,” Dawra further explains. 

 

As history shows, challenges lie ahead

 

Labour economist K R Shyam Sundar, who is currently adjunct professor at the Gurugam-based Management Development Institute, says the creation of the e-Shram portal after Supreme Court’s intervention is not the first instance of the government trying to provide a unique identifier to unorganised sector workers. In 2008 too, when the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act was passed, a similar attempt was made. However, the project was abandoned mid-way.

 

“Currently as well, the creation of this unified database faces challenges. Primary among them is the lack of any incentive for the workers to register themselves. There is no tangible benefit available to them. As a result, it is far away from registering all 500 million unorganised sector workers and becoming a central unified portal,” says Sundar.

 

The lack of incentive to register, he says, is because the government has not yet been able to formulate any credible scheme that it can offer to them. “Also, bringing state government schemes on board is challenging as it involves political biases and costs,” he adds.

 

Echoing his views, Saraswathi Kasturirangan, partner at Deloitte India, says while the portal paves the way for bringing unorganised workforce under the social security system in a structured way, one of the key action points revolves around formulation of social security schemes for gig and platform workers.

 

“Practical issues like mapping with the aggregator, data confidentiality, and sourcing of funds to frame schemes, among others, persist. Moreover, the portal will also require technological upgrades to combine and extend the existing social security systems to unorganised workers in a seamless way,” she says.