A gig worker is someone who takes short-term jobs, often for multiple service providers or aggregators. The gig economy is expanding, offering new jobs in sectors like ridesharing, delivery, logistics, and professional services.
Ministry of Labour and Employment urged the gig workers to register on the e-Shram portal for formal recognition and access to AB-PMJAY benefits. Union Budget 2025-26 announced various benefits for the gig workers, including the issuance of identity cards, and healthcare coverage under Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).
Schemes for gig workers
The Union Budget 2025-26 announcement includes provisions for registering online platform workers on the e-Shram portal, issuing identity cards, and providing healthcare coverage under Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY). The AB-PMJAY health scheme provides Rs 5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation across over 31,000 public and private empanelled hospitals in India.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment is soon launching the scheme to implement these budget provisions early, the ministry said in the statement. Niti Aayog has projected that the gig economy in India will employ over 1 crore workers in 2024-25, subsequently reaching 2.35 crore by 2029-30.
Registration link for gig workers
Gig workers may visit the e-Shram portal — https://register.eshram.gov.in — of the Ministry and complete their registration on as a first towards availing the benefits. For early implementation of these Budget announcements, the Ministry of Labour and Employment will soon launch the scheme.
As a first step, the ministry has requested the platform workers to self-register themselves on the e-Shram portal, so that they may be considered for the benefits under the scheme at the earliest.
The e-Shram portal was launched in August 2021 to register and support workers in unorganised sectors by providing them with a Universal Account Number (UAN) and create a comprehensive National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW).
As of January 27, 2025, over 30.58 crore unorganised workers have already registered on the e-Shram portal. So far, 12 schemes of different central ministries or departments have been integrated/mapped with e-Shram.
As per the Social Security Code 2020, a gig worker means a person who participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of traditional employer-employee relationship. These include people engaged with online platforms like Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato, among others.
(With agency inputs)
