How e-Shram portal could transform social security, labour market landscape

The government is working on integrating welfare schemes across ministries into a single portal for unorganised sector workers to access, as well as for private firms to tap into for labour needs

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 around 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 & 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 the 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 because of the Covid19-induced lockdown, the e-Shram portal is a pan-India database of unorganised workers including both skilled and unskilled labour. 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, more than half, or 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 in the portal, 158.6 million are registered as agricultural workers, 28.7 million are domestic workers, 27.3 million are construction workers, while 19.7 million are apparel workers. Among states, Uttar Pradesh 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).   

 

“The government is aiming to transform the e-Shram portal into a unified database of this vast workforce. Since the data is Aadhaar seeded and each worker has their own unique identification number allocated by the portal, the chances of duplication are negligible and beneficiaries could get all the benefits meant for them in a single place,” said a Labour ministry official, on condition of anonymity.  

 

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,” he said. “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.”  

 

Besides coordinating between 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 central government is also working with state governments to incorporate their welfare schemes into the portal.   

 

“By aligning state government systems with the portal, it also allows for state- and district-wise identification of potential beneficiaries, ensuring that no eligible worker is missed. Like 12 central schemes has been added, addition of other schemes will remain an ongoing process with one or the other programme coming on board,” the Labour ministry official quoted earlier added.   

 

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 the lack of skilled workforce. This database will help firms to plan their workforce requirements better," she adds.  

 

Earlier this month, Business Standard reported that the government is in work to integrate 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 to mine it in meaningful ways and gather intelligence regarding the performance of schemes in real time. We will be able to see which schemes are performing better and which are not, which regions are doing better and which are lagging, and suggest timely remedies. Further data sharing with private players will mean that they will also be able to plan their workforce needs better,” the Labour ministry official said. 

 

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 that the creation of 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,” he noted. “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.”  

 

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

 

Echoing his views, Saraswathi Kasturirangan, partner at Deloitte India, said that 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 added.