Dr Ujjwal Kumar Pathak
Assistant Professor
The government of India announced the implementation of all the four labor codes with effect from 21st November 2025. These labor codes include Social Security Code 2020 too. The social security code inter alia talks about provisions of social security for Gig Workers, Platform Workers and Unorganized workers. These groups of workers were hitherto deprived of social security benefits. As per different estimates they constitute around 93% of workforce in India.
The code talks about establishing National Social Security Board for advising govt for formulating and monitoring schemes for these types of workers and state unorganized workers social security board to advise state govt for suitable schemes for these workers.
Besides it talks about Creation of a Social Security Fund based on contributions from the Central & State Governments, collected from Corporate Social Responsibility, fines collected due to compounding etc. This fund will be used to provide benefits such as life insurance, disability cover, health and maternity benefits and provident fund schemes for these workers.
The Government will build a National Database of Unorganized Workers to make it easier to design and deliver social security benefits for specific worker groups. All unorganized, gig and platform workers will have to register on a National Portal, post which each worker will receive a Unique Identification Number. Verified through Aadhaar, it will be valid across the entire country.
Though on the face of it there seems to be a feeling that such workers are now going to get all benefits which were available to workers of organized sector but there are still many a slip between the cup and the leap. A few of these are discussed here.
For unorganized workers in different jobs and industries apart from creating an online data base (E Shram Portal) no concrete step has been taken.Though for Gig and Platform workers some provisions have been made with the contribution of aggregators yet for other than these two category of workers rest workers in the unorganized sector do not find a statutory provisions under the Social Security Code. Even in this area only Karnataka and Rajasthan have attempted to make specific acts for Platform Based Gig Workers.
Thus, there are still problems as follows:
No structured mechanism to implement social security benefits for unorganized workers.
No legal recourse is available to this category of workers in case of any grievances through any court or tribunal which are already available to organized workers.
Institutions mentioned in the code have only advisory role.
All state governments are not very keen to make schemes for these workers or even to make rules at all.
Registration of workers does not ensure that they will get social security benefits.
There are some legal hurdles too in the implementation of the Social Security Code. It is pertinent to note that the Social Security Code was passed in the year 2020 itself but it still has not seen the light of the day. The draft rules under the Code will again be pre-published soon in sync with current requirements. After that the government will give 45 days’ time for Public Feedback before issuing final notification. The government intends to enforce the rules for operationalization of the code from April 1, 2026. State governments will also have to notify the rules.
These hurdles need to be removed and a full proof mechanism needs to be developed so that such a huge workforce in India can get at least minimum of Social Security Benefits.
