E-Shram Portal: an effort for the welfare of marginalized workers

Introduction

E-Shram portal is a data base for unorganized sector workers developed by Ministry of labour and employment (MOLE) which is linked with Aadhar. Unorganized workers receive an e-Shram card/id on digital form after registration at the portal. They also can update their profiles through portal or mobile app. This app will help in creating awareness about various welfare programmes and entitlements for the workers in the unorganized sector.

Although registration was recommended by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) and made mandatory by Unorganized Workers’ Social Welfare Act 12 years ago, thanks to Narendra Modi Govt’s recent initiatives that the e-Shram portal has been actively to target in the unorganized sector workers. In May 2021 the Supreme Court also issued a ruling for introducing a temporary, comprehensive and universal registration system for informal workers and rotating migrants. In fact, both informal worker and rotating migrants are alternatively known as unorganized sector workers.

As per Periodic Labour Force Survey PLFS (2018-19), nearly 88 per cent of workers are engaged in the unorganized sector while it contributes nearly 52 per cent to our GDP. On the contrary, the organized sector contributes nearly 48 per cent to the GDP while it employs hardly 12 per cent of the entire workforce. This indicates the glaring in equality in the distribution of income. So far it has been impossible to provide any timely relief, forget about providing social security because it is difficult to exactly identify the large number of invisible unorganized sector workers. The NSSO survey which are conducted at different points of time, do not adequately capture their extent and magnitude. E-Sharm Portal is a right step in this direction. 

The Benefits for the Registered Workers

The Universal Account Number on e-Shram card will be acceptable all over the country for obtaining social security benefits such as insurance coverage, maternity benefits, pensions, educational benefits, provident fund benefits, housing schemes etc. For the social security benefits the workers need to add the details of their identification like, name, occupation, address, education qualifications, skill, etc. on the portal. Also, through e-Shram card, the migrant workers can take admission for their children in the nearby school, which is one of the major problems, they are facing now. The e-Shram id will be used as their identity card. Further, the beneficiaries will get benefit Rs 2 lakh on death or permanent disability and Rs. 1 lakh for partial disability under the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY).

The Progress

The e-Shram portal has been made available to states/UTs to register all eligible workers in the unorganized sector including construction workers, migrant workers, gig and platform workers, street vendors, domestic workers, agriculture workers, milkmen, fishermen, truck drivers etc. The eligible workers can register through, over four lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs), which act as access points for delivery of digital services. As on 30^th December 2021, the portal has registered around 162 million workers, 67% which are from five states: Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand. These are the major states as far as the number of registrations on E-Shram portal is concerned (see Fig-1).

Figure 1: Share of Major States (in %) in total registration on E-Shram Portall

As shown in Figure-1, these five states account for around seventy per cent of total registration. From which Uttar Pradesh has the highest enrollment, followed by west Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand.

The portal also collects data of unorganized workers with regards to their occupations. As we know, occupational structure in Indian economy depends upon three different sectors viz., agriculture (primary) industry (secondary) and services (tertiary). In E- shram portal shows that 62 percent of people have enrolled in the primary sector which is higher than the other sectors. Agriculture and construction sectors engage the maximum number of workers in the unorganized sector. The relative distribution of various occupations among the registered workers is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Percentage Distribution of registered workers by major occupations

Apart from agriculture and construction, many more have registered in this portal from different occupations like, domestic and household workers, apparel sector workers, automobile and transport sector workers, electronics and hardware workers, capital goods workers, education, healthcare, retail, tourism and hospitality, food industry. Besides occupation, the portal also collects data on the gender of the workers. Given the number of registration so far, the distribution by gender is presented in figure 3.

Figure 3: Registration of workers by gender (in %)

As shown in figure 3, gender-wise analysis of e-Shram portal registrations shows that more females have registered than the males. For the females it is around 52 per cent while the rest 48 per cent comprise of male workers. Certainly, higher registration of female workers is surprising given their lower participation in labour force. Further the e-Shram portal data suggested that around 94 per cent of workers registered earn an income of Rs. 10,000 or below, per month. Also, the collected data reveals that a large number of workers are young i.e. around 61 per cent of registered workers belong to 18-40 age group. Moreover, the portal also records the migration status. However, the information getting collected is highly inadequate to draw any concrete inference about the status of migrant workers.

Conclusion

The portal is part of digitization process that has assumed a crucial part in prospering the Indian economy. The “make in India” drive has given a gigantic push to digitalization of India, with the help of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), remote sensing, big data, block chain and IoT. Thus, the e-Shram portal: the exceptional drive is a much-needed development as it will bring unorganised laborer’s data under one umbrella which will help the Govt. to address their concerns.