Narrow formalisation: Informal workers, social protection and digital registration in India
Harshita Sinha et al.
What the paper says
Over the last decade, there has been growing global pressure to build digitised social protection systems as a means of enhancing access to welfare. This article explores one such case: ‘e-Shram’, a digital registration platform introduced in India in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging as a direct consequence of the hardships faced by informal workers during the pandemic, the article examines e-Shram in this context. It observes that while e-Shram is increasingly portrayed as the first step towards a comprehensive formalisation programme, it fails to address the main gaps and issues highlighted by the pandemic; it provides some registration but maintains substantial deficiencies in service provision. This case study underscores why formalisation should be understood as a multidimensional process, and consequently, why it is important to separate it from particular instances of ‘narrow formalisation’ – commonly formalisations of governance, but not necessarily of work. This analysis carries broader implications for countries pursuing formalisation through digital platforms, emphasising the need for policies that align state objectives with genuine improvements in social and economic protections for informal workers.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.