The Union government is set to roll out the National Database for Unorganized Workers (NDUW). This will be a single-point reference to help authorities reach out to and track workers in the informal sector, and offer welfare in times of crisis. Here are the details:

       What is the status of the NDUW?

       The government is expected to roll out the database by the end of August. It comes more than a year after the mass reverse migration of workers following the nationwide lockdown imposed on 25 March 2020 to contain the spread of coronavirus. The exercise has been delayed and the second wave of covid-19 exposed the shortcomings. The Supreme Court criticized the Union labour ministry, saying it showed “unpardonable" apathy towards such workers. Officially, over 11 million people went back home during the first wave. Many had to walk back, highlighting the plight of migrants.

       How is the database going to help?

       The database will help in keeping track of migrant workers and deal better with crisis situations such as the covid-19 pandemic. It can help government authorities in the origin as well as destination state to plan welfare measures, including social security provisions, for the workers. Such a database will also aid the ‘one nation one ration card’ initiative and boost portability schemes that deal with making free food grain available, benefits through the construction workers cess, etc. The Union government is going to spend nearly ？800 crore on preparing this architecture.

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       Who will be allowed to enrol with the database?

       Once the digital backbone is prepared by the labour ministry in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the target is to enrol 380 million workers in the NDUW. All unorganized workers, including construction workers, migrants, gig and platform workers, street vendors, domestic workers, agricultural workers and others will be added to the database.

       When is it going to be rolled out?

       The project is expected to start the registration work later this month after addressing all critical technical issues which are being handled by NIC. Thereafter, the state governments are to populate the data on the portal. The Common Service Centres through their nation-wide network of over 400,000 centres and post offices will act as registration centres, where workers can visit and register themselves free of cost. Everyone will be given a number and their account will be linked to their 12-digit Aadhaar number.

       What could be the challenges?

       The project is delayed. It was supposed by be live by 31 July. Besides, as migrants and informal workers are a floating population, bringing them to registration centres is a tough ask. The Centre and states are responsible for the execution, but the initiative does not fix accountability on anyone. “An informal sector database is a good move, let’s accept it is too late. But there should be a mechanism to enrol them all faster so that they get the government benefits," said K.R. Shyam Sundar, a labour economist.

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