RBI Grade B Current Affairs — 29 August 2026

Launched in August 2021, the e-Shram portal completed five years as India's first centralised national database for unorganised workers. It has registered over 300 million workers, assigning each a 12-digit Universal Account Number linked to Aadhaar. The portal is administered by the Ministry of Labour and Employment and enables portability of social security benefits. Workers registered automatically receive ₹2 lakh accidental insurance cover under PM Suraksha Bima Yojana, making it a critical financial inclusion instrument for India's informal labour force.

India's unorganised sector employs roughly 90% of its workforce, yet historically these workers lacked any verifiable identity for welfare delivery. e-Shram addresses this structural gap by creating a single, Aadhaar-seeded registry that cuts across occupational categories — construction workers, agricultural labourers, domestic workers, street vendors, and gig workers alike.

The portal's core mechanism is the Universal Account Number (UAN), a 12-digit identifier that travels with the worker across states and jobs — a portability feature modelled loosely on the EPF UAN for organised sector employees. This portability is the key policy innovation: it allows DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) of scheme benefits to reach migrant workers regardless of where they are working at a given moment.

The embedded insurance linkage is equally significant. Registration automatically triggers coverage under PM Suraksha Bima Yojana, providing ₹2 lakh accidental death and full disability cover and ₹1 lakh for partial disability, with the premium subsidised by the government. This is a convergence model — one registration, multiple scheme benefits — that UPSC examiners test under governance efficiency frameworks.

For RBI and NABARD aspirants, the financial inclusion angle is primary: e-Shram is the demand-side infrastructure that makes last-mile banking and credit delivery to informal workers viable. Without a verified identity and income proxy, banks cannot extend PSL credit or Jan Dhan-linked products to this segment. The portal essentially converts invisible labour into documented economic participants.

The Indian government achieved 78% of its FY2026-27 divestment and asset monetisation target within the first five months of the fiscal year, April to August 2025. This pace is significantly ahead of historical trends, where receipts typically lag in the first half. The strong performance is driven by strategic disinvestment proceeds and monetisation of public assets under the National Monetisation Pipeline, signalling renewed fiscal focus on non-tax capital receipts to manage the deficit.

Divestment and asset monetisation are two distinct but related tools India uses to raise non-tax capital receipts.

Divestment refers to the government reducing its equity stake in public sector undertakings (PSUs). It can be strategic (transfer of management control) or non-strategic (OFS, ETFs like CPSE ETF). Strategic disinvestment typically fetches higher value and changes ownership; non-strategic retains government control while raising funds.

Asset Monetisation, formalized through the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) launched in 2021, involves leasing or transferring operational rights of brownfield infrastructure assets — roads, railways, power transmission lines, pipelines — to private players for a defined period, while the government retains ownership. This is different from privatisation, where ownership itself transfers.

Both contribute to Capital Receipts in the Union Budget and help reduce the fiscal deficit without raising taxes or borrowing. Achieving 78% of the annual target in just five months is significant because: (1) it reduces borrowing pressure mid-year, (2) it may signal large-ticket transactions completed early, and (3) it tests whether the remaining target is realistically achievable — an examiner-favourite tension point.

For RBI aspirants, strong divestment reduces government's market borrowing, which in turn reduces pressure on bond yields and eases the LAF corridor dynamics. For UPSC aspirants, the distinction between divestment, privatisation, and monetisation — and their budget classification — is a recurring conceptual test.