e-Shram began as a registration exercise: for the first time, India tried to put its unorganised workforce - agricultural labour, construction workers, domestic workers, street vendors, migrants, the self-employed, and gig and platform workers - into a single Aadhaar-seeded database, so that welfare could be targeted and benefits made portable across States. The second phase changed what the portal is for. The e-Shram One-Stop Solution, launched on 21 October 2024, turned it from a register into a gateway: a worker signing in can see which of 15 integrated schemes they are eligible for and which benefits they have already drawn. The portal also connects to the National Career Service for job matching, the Skill India Digital Hub for skilling and apprenticeship, and myScheme for discovering other government entitlements. Data is shared with departments through secure APIs, which is what makes cross-scheme targeting possible.

The unorganised sector accounts for the overwhelming majority of India's workforce, and its defining problem for policy has never been the absence of schemes but the absence of an addressable list of beneficiaries. e-Shram is the attempt to build that list, and 31.89 crore registrations make it one of the largest worker databases anywhere. The demographic split is the part worth carrying into an exam answer: 54.28% women and 55.21% aged 18-40 tells you the registered base is young and female-majority, which is the opposite of the formal-sector profile. The gig and platform workers count - about 11.5 lakh - is small against the total, and is the number to watch, because bringing platform workers under social security is the live policy question the Code on Social Security, 2020 was written to answer.