The Employees’ State Insurance Scheme is a unique multidimensional self financing social security scheme in which every contributor is a benefactor and a beneficiary. This integrated scheme of health insurance provides comprehensive medical cover and cash benefits in the contingencies of sickness, maternity, disablement and death due to employment injury to the insured persons and their dependants. The ESI Act, 1948 provide the conceptual break through in the development of a social security scheme that has over the years metamorphosed into the country’s largest worker welfare programme in terms of geographical reach, demographic coverage and multi-faceted services.

The ESI Act is applicable to over two lakh industrial units, across the length and breadth of the country. In the ESI Scheme employer is the only link between the administrative machinery and its service system on one hand and the workers on the other hand.