The reverse migration that India experienced as the nation went into lockdown mode during the first Covid wave in 2020 brought out an overwhelming overlap between the most vulnerable migrant workers and those that worked in the country’s informal sector.

As such, any policy that aims to alleviate the economic hardships among informal sector workers would also have a significant bearing on India’s most vulnerable migrant workers.

A crucial effort in this regard is the e-Shram portal. It was launched by the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment with a far-reaching mandate of registering millions of unorganised workers across the country and helping them access opportunities and benefits from anywhere in the country where their work may take them.

But how can the e-Shram portal be leveraged to help India’s internal migrants? Can it be used to provide social security to migrant workers? What are the kind of policy enhancements required to get around the issues of bridging the digital divide and gender divide? What can be done to reduce possible exclusions?

The idea behind the eight and final edition of the IE THINC Migration webinar is to probe these questions and reflect on the policy solutions.

Presented by the Omidyar Network India, this series of webinars on the issue of internal migration in India aims to have a solutions-oriented discussion between some of the brightest minds across academia, industry, civil society and, of course, government.