Digital health passport helps India’s informal women workers access service
In India’s informal economy, where over 90% of the workforce resides, millions of women face a barrier that’s as invisible as it is consequential: the absence of valid, verifiable identity. For many, the inability to present consistent documentation, whether due to clerical mismatches, lost paper records, or never having had them at all—cuts off access to critical public services.
The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a long-standing trade union representing informal women workers, is addressing this problem not with more paperwork, but with digital infrastructure. SEWA’s new Digital Health Passport initiative leverages blockchain technology to build a secure, scalable system for managing identity and welfare records, anchored in the Algorand blockchain and integrated with India’s Aadhaar and DigiLocker systems.
The goal is to establish a verifiable, tamper-proof layer of trust that enables access to health care, pensions, and other safety-net services for those traditionally left behind by analog bureaucracy.
At the heart of the effort is a blockchain-powered custodial wallet system that allows SEWA’s members to upload and manage essential documents. These wallets are not just storage devices; they are dynamic interfaces that allow for verified claims, such as eligibility for maternal health programs or proof of age for pension benefits, to be shared securely with relevant authorities.
SEWA’s on-the-ground workers, known as Aagewans, play a pivotal role. By conducting household visits across Gujarat, they guide women through the process of digitizing and verifying their information—ensuring technology meets people where they are, not the other way around.
This community-driven approach addresses a systemic flaw in welfare delivery: access is not just about eligibility but about proof. And in India’s fragmented documentation environment, proof is often elusive.
“Digital trust is the real innovation here,” said SEWA Director Mirai Chatterjee. “Technology becomes empowering when it’s co-created with users in mind—especially women who have historically been excluded from both formal systems and digital tools.”
Before implementing the blockchain solution, SEWA could support just a fraction of its 3.5 million members due to administrative constraints. Now, with a decentralized ledger offering immutability, transparency, and easy authentication, the organization is positioned to reach far more women at a fraction of the cost.
The project also changes how blockchain is perceived in India. Often associated with speculative finance or cryptocurrency, blockchain in this context is redefined as a public infrastructure layer, a trust protocol rather than a transaction mechanism.
“Blockchain isn’t just about tokens. It’s about trust at scale,” said Anil Kakani, Vice President at the Algorand Foundation. “SEWA’s work demonstrates how decentralized systems can remove friction from public service delivery and include those who’ve historically been left out.”
The Digital Health Passport is compliant with India’s data privacy laws and is being scaled through SEWA’s Shakti Kendras, local empowerment hubs that will serve as digital access points for the initiative. Future applications are already in the pipeline, including blockchain-backed insurance enrollment, claims processing, and direct benefit transfers.
Category: Community
