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, didn’t forget the day she was beaten in common by one of her employers.

The girl had accused Smitha of stealing her sister’s earrings after refusing to pay her, a Dalit woman from the most vile caste in Hinduism’s firmly established social hierarchy.

” After several requests, I confronted her in public. When she started abusing and punching me, that’s when. The soldiers dragged me out of the enclosure culture and locked the gate after I held her hands to stop the abuse, according to Smitha.

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. However, because she believed the police did not intervene, she was prevented from entering the housing community and avoided contact with them.

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.

The Indian Supreme Court requested that the federal government investigate the development of a law to protect them from abuse next quarter.

However, this is not the first time like a legal framework has been attempted. No such legislation has ever been passed despite years of advocacy by various organizations and national ministries.

Split costs proposed in 2008 and 2016, aimed at registering home workers and improving their working circumstances, have not yet been passed. Home workers are not currently covered by existing labor laws, according to a federal policy that was developed in 2019.

Sonia George of the Self Employed Women’s Association ( Sewa ), who was a member of the task force that developed the draft policy, calls it one of the “most comprehensive policies for domestic workers” so far, but claims that successive governments have failed to put it into practice.

In order to receive basic necessities like pay, left, or even a baseline of respect, India’s large army of domestic helpers may depend on employer goodwill. According to standard data, India has 4.75 million private employees, including three million people. However, the actual numbers, according to the International Labour Organization ( ILO ), range between 20 and 80 million.

The Center for Women’s Development Studies ‘ Professor Neetha N states,” We have a patronizing connection with the aid, not an employment connection.

This “maintains the status quo” and is one of the biggest obstacles to enforcing and legalizing local work.

As of right now, private homes are not regarded as an establishment or place of employment, but local work falls outside the scope of cultural protections, such as maximum wages, safe working conditions, union access, and access to social security benefits.

At least 14 American states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, have mandated minimum pay for home workers and some national laws, like India’s anti-sexual abuse and child employment laws, include local workers in their range.

Domestic workers are not widely aware that they can use these benefits, according to Ms. George, adding that the nature of the profession also presents challenges.

Because they typically don’t sign any contracts with their employers, workers are scattered and there is no way to register or even identify them.

” Getting over their’invisibility’ is a big step towards regularizing the profession,” she says.” We will need to set up systems to register domestic workers.

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

Further complications are also brought on by the caste system, where some workers may agree to clean bathrooms while others from slightly different castes may not.

Ultimately the whole concept of domestic work should be redefined, Ms George says. Although “domestic work” is regarded as unskilled work, that is not actually the case. You can’t cook a meal or take care of a sick person without having skills,” she says.

India has not yet ratified ILO’s Convention 189, a landmark international agreement that guarantees that domestic workers have the same rights and protections as other workers, along with failing to pass its own laws or implement its own policy. India still adheres to the convention’s terms despite voting in favor in 2011.

India has a “moral obligation” to conform to the ILO convention, Ms George says. She adds that enacting a law will also help to regulate private employment organizations and stop domestic workers from being abused while they are employed abroad.

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.

The conflict of interest such regulation poses for India’s decision-makers is perhaps the simplest explanation for decades of inaction in the face of a wave of abuses, Ms. George suggests.

The people at the table who have the authority to pass a bill or a law are also the ones who are employed by domestic workers and who profit from the status quo, she says. ” So, for any real change in the system, we first need a change in our mindset”.

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.