The Ministry of Labour and Employment released its Year-End Review for 2025, highlighting landmark achievements in formalising India's unorganised workforce and extending social security to new categories of workers.
The e-Shram portal, launched in 2021 as a national database of unorganised workers, crossed 31.42 crore (314.2 million) registrations in 2025. The portal now supports 22 Indian languages through integration with the Bhashini AI language platform, making it accessible to workers across all linguistic regions of India.
A significant policy development is the ongoing framework development for social security coverage of gig and platform workers, which proposes bringing platform-based and gig workers under the ambit of social protection — including accident insurance, health coverage, and provident fund benefits. This addresses the growing vulnerability of app-based delivery workers, ride-hailing drivers, and freelance platform workers.
Under PM-SURAJ (Pradhan Mantri Samajik Utthan and Rozgar Adharit Jankalyan), credit support is directed to disadvantaged groups such as Scheduled Castes, backward classes and Safai Mitras. PM Vishwakarma, a separate scheme, provides skilling and credit support to traditional artisans and craftspeople.
The ministry's digital integration push — combining e-Shram with Bhashini for multilingual access — represents a major step in bridging the digital divide for India's massive informal labour force, estimated at over 500 million workers.
These initiatives collectively align with the vision of universal social security coverage under the Code on Social Security, 2020, which consolidates nine central labour laws.