Why India fails to protect its domestic workers despite decades of abuse

Smitha (not her real name), a domestic helper in Delhi for 28 years, can’t forget the day she was beaten in public by one of her employers.

The woman had accused Smitha – a Dalit woman from the most discriminated against caste in Hinduism’s entrenched social hierarchy – of stealing her daughter’s earrings and then refused to pay her.

“After many requests, I confronted her in public. That’s when she started abusing and hitting me. I held her hands to stop the abuse but the guards came and dragged me out of the housing society and locked the gate,” Smitha says.

She was eventually paid – a measly 1,000 rupees [$11; £9] for a month of sweeping, mopping and washing dishes – after a more sympathetic family intervened on her behalf. But she was banned from entering the housing community and did not bother going to the police as she believed they would not take action.

Smitha’s story is one among hundreds of thousands of accounts of mistreatment, abuse and sexual assault reported by India’s domestic workers. Most are women and many are migrants within the country, belonging to castes that are looked down upon.

Last month, India’s Supreme Court raised concerns over their exploitation and asked the federal government to look into creating a law to protect them from abuse.

But this isn’t the first time that an attempt has been made to create such a legal framework. Despite years of advocacy by various groups and federal ministries, no such law has ever been passed.

Separate bills proposed in 2008 and 2016, aimed at registering domestic workers and improving their working conditions, have not yet been passed. A national policy drafted in 2019 aimed at including domestic workers under existing labour laws has not been implemented.

Sonia George of the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), who was part of the task force that formulated the draft policy, calls it one of the “most comprehensive policies for domestic workers” yet, but says that successive governments have failed to implement it.

As a result, India’s vast army of domestic helpers must rely on employer goodwill for basics such as wages or leave or even a baseline of respect. According to official statistics, India has 4.75 million domestic workers, including three million women. But the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates the true numbers to be between 20 and 80 million.

“We have a patronising relationship with the help and not a labour employment relationship,” says Professor Neetha N from the Centre for Women’s Development Studies.

“This maintains the status quo and is one of the biggest hurdles to regulating and legalising domestic work.”

As things stand, private homes are not considered to be an establishment or workplace, so domestic work falls outside the purview of social protections such as minimum wages, the right to safe working conditions, the right to unionise and access to social security schemes.

At least 14 Indian states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, have mandated minimum wages for domestic workers and some federal laws, like India’s anti-sexual harassment and child labour laws, include domestic workers in their scope.

But there is very little awareness among domestic workers that they can take advantage of these provisions, Ms George says, adding that the nature of the profession also poses challenges.

Workers are scattered and there is no mechanism to register or even identify them as they generally don’t sign any kind of contract with their employers.

“We will need to set up systems to register domestic workers – getting over their ‘invisibility’ is a big step towards regularising the profession,” she says.

That applies to employers too. “They are completely invisible in the system and hence escape accountability and responsibility,” Ms George says.

The caste system also poses further complexities – workers from some castes may agree to clean toilets in a home while others from slightly different castes may not.

Ultimately the whole concept of domestic work should be redefined, Ms George says. “Domestic work is considered to be unskilled work but that is not the case in reality. You cannot care for a sick person or cook a meal without being skilled,” she adds.

In addition to failing to pass its own laws or implement its own policy, India has also not yet ratified ILO’s Convention 189 – a landmark international agreement that aims to ensure that domestic workers have the same rights and protections as other workers. Despite voting in favour of the convention in 2011, India does not yet conform to all its provisions.

India has a “moral obligation” to conform to the ILO convention, Ms George says. She adds that having a law will also help regulate private recruitment agencies and prevent the exploitation of domestic workers who go abroad to work.

Last year, the wealthy Hinduja family made headlines after a Swiss court found them guilty of exploiting their domestic workers. The family was accused of trafficking vulnerable Indians to Switzerland and forcing them to work in their mansion for excruciatingly long hours without proper pay. The family’s lawyers said they would appeal against the verdict.

Perhaps the simplest explanation for decades of inaction in the face of a tide of abuses lies in the conflict of interest such regulation poses for India’s decision makers, Ms George suggests.

“At the end of the day, the people at the table who have the power to sign off on a bill or a law are also employers of domestic workers and the ones who benefit from the status quo,” she says. “So, for any real change in the system, we first need a change in our mindset.”

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