India’s new Labour Codes signal a fundamental redesign of labour governance, social protection, and workplace regulation. While legislation establishes a new structural framework, its success will ultimately depend on how effectively digital infrastructure is strengthened to unify compliance, employment records, and access to benefits across the country. The vision of a One Nation - One ‘Employee – Employer’ Portal has the potential to become the digital backbone of India’s labour ecosystem, enabling transparency, efficiency, accountability, and inclusion at an unprecedented scale.
This article uses the phrase ‘One Nation - One ‘Employee – Employer’ Portal’ as a future-oriented conceptual lens, a way to imagine how India’s diverse labour systems could, over time, become more connected, interoperable, and worker-centric through digital architecture. It is a thought framework rather than a programme announcement.
India has already built significant digital foundations in labour and employment, such as EPFO for provident fund, ESIC for medical insurance and benefits, e-Shram for unorganised workers, Shram Suvidha Portal for establishment registration and unified return filing, State labour systems, workers’ welfare boards, safety and inspection databases, industrial dispute mechanisms, and sectoral licensing systems etc.
Each platform plays a critical role within its statutory mandate. However, at present, the labour landscape is fragmented across numerous entities and portals. The opportunity now lies in strengthening interoperability between these systems so that workers and employers experience them as a unified, coherent pathway rather than separate touchpoints. While these systems have grown organically to meet specific needs, they often function independently, leading to duplicate records, drop-offs in worker information, and multiple compliance touchpoints for employers. Workers especially those in the unorganised sector, may find it difficult to track rights and benefits, employers face multi-portal submissions and inconsistent requirements across states, and the policy makers lack a real-time national view of employment, mobility, social security coverage, and safety patterns.
A unified national portal could transform this ecosystem by offering an integrated interface that connects workers, employers, and institutions across India. Rather than replacing existing platforms, such a model would build on existing Central and State systems, linking them through common registries, standards, and APIs. In a federated setup, a portable lifelong digital identity and harmonised compliance environment could support continuity for workers across formal, informal, gig, platform, and self-employed categories, while giving national and state labour authorities a more dynamic and holistic view of the labour landscape. The model is best envisioned as a federated digital layer, where states, statutory bodies, and central agencies retain their mandates while benefiting from shared information and interoperable services.
The platform would enable seamless and continuous access to social security. A universal employee identity linked to various entities and schemes would ensure that no benefit is lost when a worker changes roles, industries, employers or locations. This continuity supports worker dignity, strengthens trust in the system, and fosters a more resilient labour market where mobility is not penalised.
From a regulatory and administrative perspective, the portal could create a single gateway for establishment registration, licensing, renewal, maintenance of digital registers, submission of forms, returns and contributions, accident disclosures, and submission of statutory documents. Cross-verification using digitally linked systems would improve accuracy, reduce duplication and support fairness in regulation. For enforcement agencies, this architecture allows a shift from manual, reactive oversight to near real-time supervision powered by data and analytics.
Return-filing and regulatory reporting, traditionally resource intensive for employers, would shift from fragmented filing cycles to a consolidated digital workflow. Automated integration amongst systems would allow filings to be generated electronically with minimal duplication. A more uniform return filing calendar across states and sectors could reduce administrative burden for industry while enabling stronger compliance tracking for government.
This architecture would be based on strong principles of privacy-by-design, worker consent, role-based access, single sign on and secure data governance aligned with the applicable data protection acts. Safeguards would be essential to ensure trust, transparency, and ethical use of information. The platform could also generate powerful and advanced national level analytics driven by AI/ML providing insights on employment distribution, labour demand patterns, wage behaviour, contribution and coverage levels, accident trends, industrial disputes, inspection outcomes and regional skill shifts. Such data can aid in targeted policy interventions, improved programme design, workforce planning, and sector-specific safety strategies. Digital audit trails would strengthen vigilance mechanisms, supporting integrity and reducing exploitation, evasion or fraud.
Crucially, the platform would not only enhance regulation, but it would also expand employment opportunities. A unified employee registry with verified skills, experience, and certifications can enable more accurate job matching, smoother workforce mobility and stronger fitment between workers and employers. Training, upskilling and certification pathways could be digitally mapped to real time job opportunities, helping India build a future workforce aligned with industry needs. For gig and platform workers, historically invisible within formal records, this framework becomes a gateway to visibility and social protection.
The One Nation - One ‘Employee – Employer’ Portal is therefore far more than an ICT project. It represents a structural evolution in how labour ecosystem is governed, protected, and enabled by integrating and unifying all underlying pillars.
As India moves towards a digitally enabled future defined by competitiveness, fairness and productivity, this framework stands as a foundational opportunity. It embodies the principle that growth and dignity must progress together, and that technology must unify rather than fragment. Through institutional collaboration and architectural vision, India can model a globally benchmarked labour ecosystem built on trust, transparency and digital empowerment, anchored by the transformative promise of a unified labour governance and social protection architecture. This vision illustrates a possible direction for India’s labour-tech evolution, an integrated, secure, and worker-centric digital ecosystem developed through collaboration, phased adoption, and respect for institutional mandates.
(Sanjay Maheshwari and Ramesh Tibrewal are executive director and director respectively at Deloitte India. The views are personal)