Insure to ensure a billion GIG-a-Workers

When India woke-up to life and freedom, after the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world was asleep.

It has a long list challenges before it to address as a nation, which fought for years, now had to plan, provision, account for the population which has dreams and aspirations.

The first was job creation, to spur the economy and be sulf sufficient a focussed industrialisation plan was laid and the government offices were in hiring spree, with thys came the need to provision for welfare of employees, this have birth to Employee State Insurance corporation was incorporated in 1947 to provide Employees State Insurance for people working in Industries and organised employment.

This has been the most attractive lever across industries to attract human resources, this was a social security cover / measure of the government.

This has taken many shapes and forms, today this caters to organisations with more than 10 employees and in scope are employees earning less than Rs. 21,000/- per month. The employer needs to deposit the deducted contribution from employees which is 1.75% of monthly salary and employers contribution is 4.75% of employees monthly salary. The oblivious is in employer to deposit the total amount of eligible employees before 15th day from the amount is deducted.

The salary cut-off is decided by the government, the ESI scheme presently covers the following.

1. Medical benifits through the ESI network hospitals and dispensaries

2. Dependent benifits, in case of an eventuality the dependent children till the age of 25 or are employed, whichever is earlier, they get average wage of the deceased parent who is covered

3. Disablement benifits, daily avarage wage is paid till 2 years in case of any occurrence

4. Maternity cover, daily avarage wage is paid till 12 weeks in case of pregnancy or cold birth

5. Sickness benifits, daily avarage wage is paid till 12 weeks in case of absence due to sickness

The process of ESIC has been automated from enrollment of organisations, employees till making monthly contributions but the delivery mechanism of core health insurance is dependent on the network of ESIC run 144 hospitals, 42 Annexe hospitals and 1393 dispensaries and 1753 empanelled dispensaries.

For a organised workforce in India and the population this number is meagre, given that sizeable portion of population in organised employment are paid less than Rs. 21,000/- , cubbed with the infrastructure and equipments at these hospital is optimal to manage basic health interventions.

While the cost of health care has become 4x after COVID, which anyways in India was up 3x in last one decade before COVID, this is unaffordable for quite a few, who choose to live with illness this pushing them dire circumstances.

The employment framework in India has undergone a sea change in last 5 years, since the advent of quick commerce, ecommerce, cloud kitchen, food on delivery. Seasonality of demand and hyper local demand are driving "Employee on cloud", "On- deman" resources,"Temp staffing" and the term now is GIG worker.

These are two types either contractual or through agency, few cases they are on boarded as partners to circumvent the regulatory guidelines of employment.

The GIG employees will be 2.35 Cr. By 2030 as Nitin Ayogs report of 2022 and will add 110 lakhs by 2025. This calls immediate focus on Insurance as a social security measure to safe guard them, while the government in 2021 has announced the National Policy for Informal sector workers, the government has been grappling with issue of making a framework for ESI being extend to these GIG workers.

The challenges of that are the nature of employment, inconsistency in the duration this impacting the contribution period and benifit period. Importantly the health infrastructure at the ESIC network to cater to this population, which are ta high risk as they are mostly on frontline roles, while organised large organisations are moving to GIG workers for specialised role, there the challenges are of continuity and need based work.

The possible anwers lie in creating a sustainable framework where the employer pays for contribution for the entire cycle of ESIC irrespective of the employee working with him or her, have dynamic reimbursement to previous employer in case of new employer on-boards the GIG worker. Enabling employee contribution through the year. Governance of these policies being implemented need to be introduced.

On the infrastructure side, the government needs to use the successful Ayushman Bharat scheme framework and buy these covers through all insurance players on bid model, so that they service these GIG workers through network of hospitals. Since India Today has 31 private insurance players and 5 PSU insurance players, their expertise of managing risk needs to be leveraged.

GIG is here to grow and Insurance is the safetynet it hinges on, imagine a day, if GIG workers decide to go on strike pan India, there will be No instamart, No Blinkit, No Zomoto. No Uber, No swiggy, No Bai.