E-shram portal

E-shram portal

Part of: GS-Prelims and GS-II – Policies and interventions

In News: More than 3 crore unorganized workers are now registered on E-shram portal.

• By Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE)
• It is the web portal for creating a National Database of Unorganized Workers (NDUW), which will be seeded with Aadhaar. 
• It seeks to register an estimated 398-400 million unorganised workers and to issue an E-Shram card containing a 12-digit unique number.
• Registered workers will be eligible for Rs 2 Lakh on death or permanent disability and Rs 1 lakh on partial disability.

Significance of e-Shram portal – National Database on Unorganized Workers (NDUW)

• Targeted identification of the unorganized workers was a much-needed step and the portal which will be the national database of our nation builders will help take welfare schemes to their doorstep, who are the builders of our Nation.
• Targeted delivery and last mile delivery, has been a major focus of the schemes of government of India and the National Database of Unorganised workers (E-Shram portal) is another key step towards that.

Issues

• Tedious Process: Given the gigantic nature of registering each worker, it will be a long-drawn process. 
• Data Security issues: Given the mega-size of the database, there is potential for its misuses especially in the absence of Data Protection legislation. The Union government would have to share data with State governments whose data security capacities vary. 
• Definitional issues: By excluding workers covered by EPF and ESI, lakhs of contract and fixed-term contract workers will be excluded from the universe of UW. 
• Ever-changing identities: Unorganised may have complex and ever-changing identities where they move between formal and informal sectors.
• Gig workers – Gig workers are included by the Labour ministry while they are excluded by the other three Labour Codes creating legal confusions over the classification of gig/platform workers.
• Federal Challenges: Union chalks out the plan but states have to implement it. Differences in state capacities can create hurdles in the implementation.
• Corruption – Middle service agencies such as Internet providers might charge exorbitant charges to register and print the E-Shram cards.

Way Ahead

• Involvement of surveillance agencies is crucial to address the issues of corruption. 
• Government must publish statistics at the national and regional levels of the registrations to assess the registration system’s efficiency. 
• Triple linkage of One-Nation-One-Ration Card , E-Shram Card (especially bank account seeded) and the Election Commission Card can be done, for efficient and leakage-less delivery,

News Source: PIB