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Good practice Imported

e-Shram — India's National Registry for Informal Workers, and Its Accessibility Gap

India · New Delhi · See the India profile · See the New Delhi profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 31% 84/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Launched in 2021, India's e-Shram portal has registered over 310 million informal workers into a national database, but independent reviews find only a fraction gain real benefits — a cautionary case on the gap between digital registration and inclusive design.

310 million+ registrations
Workers registered (as of August 2025)
80+ %
Registrations via paid intermediaries (ongoing)
5.1 million (~0.16%) enrolments
Registrants enrolled in PM-SYM pension scheme (as of 2024)
e-Shram — India's National Registry for Informal Workers, and Its Accessibility Gap

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India
Period
2021-2025
Keywords
informal labour, social protection, digital ID, government services

Context

India's Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the e-Shram portal on 26 August 2021 to create the country's first unified digital registry of unorganised-sector workers — domestic workers, street vendors, construction labourers, and gig and platform workers who sit outside formal social protection. By August 2025 more than 310 million workers had registered, nominally linked to 20 welfare and employment schemes across 11 ministries.

Results

Independent reviews (WIEGO, 2023; reporting by Scroll.in and ThePrint) found the registration interface hard for its intended users to navigate — a difficult CAPTCHA, confusing address fields, no copy-paste, and a two-step OTP flow that assumes reliable phone and network access. More than 80% of registrations are completed through paid Common Service Centre intermediaries charging roughly Rs 20-30 each. As of 2024, only about 5.1 million registrants (around 0.16% of those registered) had gone on to enrol in the flagship PM-SYM pension scheme.

Conclusions

e-Shram shows that at national scale, registering people in a digital database is not the same as delivering them real benefits — interface design choices and the downstream link from registration to benefit enrolment matter as much as raw reach. Civil-society groups have had to run door-to-door registration drives to close the gap the platform's own design leaves open.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — No published system-build or running-cost figures in the sources reviewed; CSC intermediary fee of roughly Rs 20-30 per registration is the only cost data point.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Launched 26 August 2021; still operating and growing registrations through at least August 2025.
Staffing & skills
Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, Common Service Centre (CSC) operators handling most registrations

Conditions for success

  • Reliable phone/network access for the two-step OTP verification
  • Simplified CAPTCHA and multilingual, offline-first interface design
  • A clear, working linkage from registration to actual scheme enrolment

Common failure modes

  • Hard-to-decipher CAPTCHA and no copy-paste function on address/data fields
  • De facto access tax: 80%+ of registrations routed through CSC intermediaries charging Rs 20-30
  • Weak downstream linkage — only ~0.16% of registrants reached the flagship pension scheme by 2024

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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