हम सुनिश्चित करेंगे कि असंगठित क्षेत्र के श्रमिकों के हित सुरक्षित रहें… असंगठित क्षेत्र के श्रमिकों को पहचान पत्र जारी करेंगे और उन्हें अच्छी गुणवत्ता की स्वास्थ्य तथा शिक्षा सेवाएँ देने की व्यवस्था करेंगे… सभी प्रकार के श्रमिकों के लिए पेंशन और स्वास्थ्य बीमा की सुरक्षा-व्यवस्था मज़बूत करेंगे।

The 2014 manifesto's labour section makes four commitments, and the two that can be tested are these: "issue identity cards to the unorganized sector labourers, and arrangements will be made to provide them good quality health and education services", and "strengthen the Pension and Health Insurance safety nets for all kinds of labourers." Above them sits the general undertaking: "We will ensure that the interests of labour in the unorganized sector are protected."

New instruments were created. The Atal Pension Yojana launched in 2015, the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti and Suraksha Bima schemes the same year, the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan pension in 2019 and the e-Shram register of unorganised workers in 2021. On the manifesto's own terms — new safety nets, an identity card — things were built.

The harder question is whether the machinery that already existed to protect these workers was made to work. For construction workers, the largest identifiable group of unorganised labour in India, that machinery is statutory and predates the promise by eighteen years: the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996 requires each state to constitute a welfare board with worker and employer representation, register workers, collect a cess of one per cent of construction cost, and pay welfare benefits — health, education, pension, accident relief — out of it. We hold four CAG performance audits of exactly this, in four states.

Gujarat. From November 2017 to March 2022 the board was one person: "despite lapse of about five years from November 2017, a single member board had been functioning without representatives of the employers and the workers as of March 2022." The State Advisory Committee required by the Act "had not been constituted since 2011". And the money had nowhere lawful to go — the audit found "Board had not constituted the Welfare Fund. In absence of the Welfare Fund, cess collected by the Cess collecting authorities" had no statutory home. Seventy-two per cent of the board's regular posts were vacant.

Goa. The state "notified the State BOCW Rules and commencement of cess collection with a substantial delay of about 12 years", and constituted the advisory committee twelve years late as well. Assessing officers appointed in 2007 "had not done any assessment in their respective zones". Registering authorities "had no information about number of construction works going on in their respective areas", with no data shared between the licence-issuing and cess-collecting arms — meaning neither the workers nor the levy could be found systematically.

Telangana. Of "₹164.25 crore collected by the seven sampled ULBs and one Urban Development Authority (UDA) during the period 2017-18 to 2021-22, an amount of ₹59.86 crore only was remitted into account of the Board" — roughly two-thirds of workers' cess never reached the body meant to spend it on them. The board ran with three members against a minimum of eight. It spent ₹32.43 crore of cess money on advertisements in 2017-19 despite a Supreme Court order of August 2015 against it. Of 1,38,908 welfare claims, 83,736 were paid, 10,125 rejected and 45,047 left pending, with no record that rejections were even communicated to the workers. And ₹431.94 crore owed by the Andhra Pradesh board on bifurcation was still unrealised nine years on.

Karnataka. Cess receipts sat uncashed: "cheques/demand drafts accumulated since 2007-08, amounting to ₹18.12 crore." ₹433.80 crore was released to the state slum development board without utilisation certificates for even ₹76 crore of earlier releases, and ₹258.80 crore was spent on preventive health care with no provision in the Act or Rules permitting it. The plainest number is the last: "Against a budget provision of ₹10,154.45 crore during the period 2018-19 to 2022-23, the expenditure incurred during the above period was ₹6,198.34 crore" — 39 per cent of the workers' own money left unspent over five years.

Four states, four governments, one pattern: the levy is collected unevenly, does not fully reach the board, and what reaches it is under-spent, misspent or stuck behind boards that are not properly constituted.

On the pension side, the CAG's performance audit of the pension sector, tabled on 12 August 2026, gives the national picture for the scheme aimed at precisely these workers. "Till 31 March 2024, 44.92 lakh subscribers had subscribed to PMSYM, against the target of 10 crore subscribers by end of March 2023." The farmers' equivalent stood at 19.49 lakh. Atal Pension Yojana reached its first target of two crore only in 2020, five years late.

Schemes were launched, and that is not nothing — the promise to strengthen the safety nets produced real new instruments, and one of them, e-Shram, is close to the identity card the manifesto described. But the older, legally binding protection for unorganised workers was left to run on boards without members, funds that were never constituted and cess that never arrived. Our verdict is lacks context.