Draft labour policy released, focus on women, social security

NEW DELHI: Government on Wednesday released the draft labour policy , with a focus on increasing the share of women in the workforce and universal and portable social security .

The target is to increase women's participation to 35% by 2030, while also expanding entrepreneurship and career guidance initiatives for youth.

The plan is to create a Universal Social Security Account, integrating EPFO, ESIC, PM-JAY, e-SHRAM, and state welfare boards that will help workers navigate through their benefits instead of visiting multiple platforms.

Similarly, Shram Shakti Niti 2025 aims to converge Skill India, National Apprentice Promotion Scheme, and Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana into a single skill-employment continuum supported by National Career Service-Digital Public Infrastructure and industry-run Education to Employment Career lounges.

Through open application programming interface or APIs, multilingual access, and AI-driven innovation, the NCS-DPI will seek to connect opportunity with talent across smaller towns and cities and MSME clusters, making employment facilitation a nationwide public good.

For businesses, the policy has proposed a single-window digital compliance with self-certification and simplified MSME returns.