Social security for unorganised workers

Social security in India was built for the organised minority: employees of government, public enterprises and larger firms are covered by the Employees' Provident Fund for retirement savings, the Employees' State Insurance for health care, gratuity on leaving service, and maternity benefits. The great majority of workers — farm labourers, construction workers, domestic workers, street vendors, gig workers — fell outside these schemes, because they have no single employer to contribute, no fixed workplace, and often no written contract.

The first step toward covering them was identification. The e-Shram portal, launched on 26 August 2021, created a national database of unorganised workers seeded with Aadhaar, giving each registered worker a Universal Account Number. By November 2025, over 31.38 crore unorganised workers had registered, including over 5 lakh gig and platform workers, and the portal was linked to schemes such as pensions, insurance and food security so that a worker could access benefits in one place. Registration, however, is not the same as coverage: being listed does not guarantee a pension or health cover.

The legal framework changed with the Code on Social Security, 2020, which consolidated nine earlier laws and, for the first time, defined gig workers and platform workers in law. The Code came into force on 21 November 2025, alongside the other three labour codes, and provides for schemes covering life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity benefits and old-age protection for gig and platform workers, with contributions envisaged from aggregators. In October 2026 the government notified National Social Security Boards for unorganised workers and for gig and platform workers to recommend and monitor such schemes.

The challenges are funding, portability and enforcement. Contributions must be collected from many small employers and platforms; benefits must follow a migrant worker across states and jobs; and schemes must be simple enough for workers with low literacy and patchy connectivity to use. NITI Aayog estimated 7.7 million gig workers in 2020-21, projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30, which shows how fast the uncovered frontier is growing. Social security for unorganised workers is therefore one of the largest unfinished tasks of Indian welfare policy.