What happened to Vijay after his factory accident? Did he get his healthcare and compensation from ESIC? How did his friends and colleagues helped (or not)?
Looking for a little (entertaining) education on the Employee State Insurance (ESI) scheme for Indian workers?
And wondering how you can help lakhs of Indian workers use their ESI healthcare and compensation better?
You might consider streaming these three-minute episodes of Gang of Shramikpur
Gang of Shramikpur is an immersive and intimate account of an injured worker Vijay, and his journey in availing compensatory benefits from ESI after his accident in a factory
The series dramatically unfolds multiple challenges that a worker might face in the process of getting their ESI compensation started.
Vijay’s struggle is presented in the eight episodes of this first season and Raju, an ESI-informed tea-maker (in effect an advisor from Safe in India) can be seen advising him. Vijay’s other friends and foe have their own take on the issue.
Vijay got injured in a power press machine accident, like thousands of industrial workers across India do every year.
In the next set of episodes, due Nov/Dec22, we will add more complexity of ESI processes for both compensation and healthcare processes.
Gang of Shramikpur is our experiment to bring forward and communicate about one of the most pressing issues that the workers' community faces regarding their Employee State Insurance scheme.
We require support from all of you to help us in cascade this communication.
See 1 min trailer here
What can you do? A lot and not too difficult either :-)
On GoS channel please press the like button if you felt it was worth your time. Please don’t forget to subscribe and comment. Your suggestions would help us in improving our upcoming GoS episodes.
Please share it widely with your friends and networks, whom you know would be interested to know more about worker’s issues and the compensation processes of ESIC.
If you know of any business that has more than ten employees, they and their workers should know about and use ESI. Please share with them.
If you know any worker unions, worker collectives, CSOs/NGOs, etc., please ask them to share this with their members. Please note that we are NOT in the business of creating labor unions/collectives, so we need their help to reach out to workers e.g., Aajeevika Bureau and Gram Vaani, who are helping us spread to their worker base nationally.
If you know any media channels (print, electronic) that can/should write about/cascade this series, please share with them and let us know who/how to connect so we can explain our vision of this series, e.g., Worker Unity, who are helping spread it to their worker followers.
If you know any influencers, especially on social media, who can help us get this series to workers and business owners.
Would you like to sponsor the next set of episodes, yourself personally or your company CSR/Foundation, or say in the memory of someone you loved, please get in touch with the amount you have in mind.
Would you like to partner with us in any way - creative, ESIC/work-place safety/content creation/co-branding/etc., please contact us with your ideas.
There are 3.5 crore workers in India, who pay ESI premium every month (and their employers pay their share too). That is 14 crore people in India, including these workers’ families, who should get quality healthcare and compensation from ESI. Yet their awareness of ESI services is poor (we have plenty of data on that) and many feel defeated by the process that has become more sarkaari-babu-centric than worker-centric over several decades. We need these 14-crore people to see these videos and ask questions from us (and ESI), so we can make more content on that and continue assisting them.
So many workers are unaware of the benefits they can and should avail. At our worker-launch of GoS in Gurugram, on 15th August 2022, attended by 300+ injured workers who we have assisted with their ESIC services, how many were aware of their disability benefits from the Labour Fund?
We asked them this question and their response is here:
Stay connected and stay safe!
Let’s join hands to save hands!