"National disgrace": Shashi Tharoor slams Centre's abstention at ILO gig workers convention

In a post on X, Tharoor said Indian employers and workers had voted in favour of the convention and called the government's decision to abstain a "national disgrace".

"The Indian government's decision to abstain on the @ilo's Convention on "decent work in the Platform Economy", which establishes minimum conditions for gig workers and which Indian employers and workers both voted to support, is a national disgrace," Tharoor said.

He said the government should have supported the standards and should have brought them into Indian law.

"Instead of abstaining, the government should have endorsed the standards the whole world has agreed upon to protect gig workers, and adopted them in domestic legislation," he said.

Tharoor further criticised the government, saying, "This is one more example of the establishment's tone-deafness to the needs of young Indians, in this case the lakhs who earn a bare living through an app."

Meanwhile, on July 21, over 31.78 crore unorganised workers had already registered on the e-Shram portal as of July 14 this year, Minister of State for Labour and Employment Shobha Karandlaje told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

She said fifteen central schemes have so far been integrated and mapped with eShram.

The Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the e-Shram portal (eshram.gov.in) on August 26, 2021 for the creation of a comprehensive National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW), including platform workers, migrant workers.

The e-Shram portal registers the unorganised workers, including gig and platform workers and provides them a Universal Account Number (UAN) on a self-declaration basis.

"As on 14th July 2026, over 31.78 crore unorganised workers have already been registered on the e-Shram portal," she said

Ministry of Labour and Employment launched Microsites for State/UTs on January 29, 2025, to empower them with their own dedicated e-Shram Microsite to address unique local requirements and challenges effectively. These Microsites are designed to tailor services of e-Shram to align with unique State /UTs needs, simplifying worker registration, data updates, verification and providing State-specific analytics.

In keeping with the vision of the Budget Announcement 2024-25 on developing e-Shram as a One-Stop-Solution for unorganized workers to have access to various social security schemes, the Ministry of Labour and Employment launched the eShram-"One-Stop-Solution" on October 21, 2024. eShram- "One-Stop-Solution" entails integration of different social security/ welfare schemes at a single portal, i.e. eShram. This enables unorganised workers registered on eShram to access social security schemes and see benefits availed by them so far, through eShram.

"So far, fifteen schemes of different Central Ministries/ Departments have already been integrated/ mapped with eShram to extend benefits and access to social security schemes to eShram cardholders," the minister said.

eShram also has linkages with National Career Service (NCS) for job opportunities, Skill India Digital Hub (SIDH) for Skill Development, Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM) for pension and the convergence portal of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). (ANI)