In the past 50 years, policy makers in India have made precious little progress towards providing a source of income security for the elderly. Will the recent EPFO reforms undertaken by the Indian Government help attain that security?Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) was established in the year 1952, with an objective of providing effective social security to citizens, in case of unemployment, old age and sickness. In the year of its incorporation, it covered around 1.2 million workers and employee fund assets were equal to about 2% of GDP. Now, the number of industries covered by EPF has increased from 6 to 177 and the number of workers covered has grown to more than 21 million. With the growth of the corpus under management, the organization has become too big for management, and in course of time, has become complacent. The various member accounts are being maintained in such a way that it is difficult to trace the relevant information/files. Often, it takes months to retrieve a member's file.

If a person frequently changes his job in ten years time, then, as per the rule governing the EPFO, his provident fund saving should follow him as he moves from one company to another. But in reality, this does not happen. It takes years to be credited to his account or often gets lost in transition. What are the reasons that have flawed/handicapped the EPFO? Why is it that even after 50 years of independence, the EPFO, like any other government run organization, is quite inefficient in delivering services to citizens? How can the organization be restructured to attain the laid objectives? Realizing the importance of restructuring the EPFO, the Indian Government has chalked out an ambitious plan. As part of the plan, currently, EPFO is undergoing a reforms process "Reinventing EPFO" headed by the Central Provident Fund Commissioner, Ajai Singh.