e-Shram is India's mega database of informal workers, integrated with the National Career Service (NCS) portal. Both have been managed by the Ministry of Labour and Employment and run on Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.
Launched in August 2021, e-Shram was essentially aimed at giving social security benefits to 400 million informal workers of India, who mostly do not have contracts, regulated work conditions, or insurance. Workers, including street sweepers, daily wage labourers, and house help, were among those who lost jobs during the pandemic.
With the use of e-Shram, workers can now actually visualise benefits accruing to them, which include accident insurance, housing, medical aid, and farming grants. Over 310 million workers have registered on the portal, and the database links to 18 welfare programs.
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AI and technology at work
According to a report by Source Asia, with the integration of NCS, workers are able to search for jobs all over the country and even access training courses. Generative AI tools on NCS, enabled through Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, help workers assess their skill gaps, plan their careers, and even build their resumes. A mock interview feature is in the works for better placement prospects.
Anjali Rawat, deputy director general of employment at the Ministry of Labour and Employment, said, “AI is helping our workers to be part of the formal sector.”
Manoj Kumar Saxena, senior IT director at the National Informatics Centre under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), was responsible for launching the e-Shram platform within just one month. He said, “The government wanted to … take care of these people who suddenly did not have any jobs,” he said. “It thought we should use technology to give these people a digital identity and benefits.”
Explaining the choice of cloud platform, Saxena said, “We wanted to have scalability, reliability and security, and that is why we were looking for MeitY-accredited hyperscale cloud facilities. Hence, we opted for Microsoft Azure.”
The registration process of e-Shram is supported at more than 450,000 common service centres, and the AI-powered Bhashini platform translates information into 22 local languages to make it easier for workers with limited literacy to register.
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Shifting towards the formal sector
The Labour Ministry is promoting the registration of informal workers into jobs in the formal sector, guaranteeing specified working conditions, insurance, and retirement benefits. An estimated 17.8 million e-Shram registrants are currently using NCS, which houses 150 million users.
Future roadmap includes AI chatbots, location-based job searches, and superior skill mapping to prepare the workers for opportunities both in India and abroad. For Kumar, these portals have been a game-changer. “I have to advance my career and increase my salary. I also want to study,” he says. e-Shram and NCS are gradually turning into one-stop solutions, giving the informal workers a clear trajectory toward better jobs and social security.
