India's domestic workers face abuse, exploitation

An educated and affluent Delhi-based couple was arrested last month on suspicion of assaulting, torturing and sexually harassing their 14-year-old domestic worker in the Delhi suburb of Gurugram.

Authorities managed to rescue the girl after she was allegedly confined to the house for five months. Police claimed the child's injuries were consistent with torture.

"The girl was being tortured and sexually harassed by the couple," assistant police commissioner Preet Pal Sangwan told DW. "She was not given food and assaulted for no reason, and there were injuries on her face and feet."

The recent case prompted comparisons with a separate case last year, when Seema Patra, a senior representative of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was arrested for allegedly physically abusing her domestic help in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

The 29-year-old maid was allegedly beaten with a hot pan and iron rods. Civil society workers say she was tortured, and, at times, forced to lick the urine on the floor and locked in a room without food and water for days.

While these cases prompted public outrage, they are believed to be symptomatic of abuse which happens in metropolitan cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai.

Domestic workers, indispensable but vulnerable

There are widespread reports of domestic workers in India being underpaid, overworked and abused by their employers. During the pandemic, many part-time workers lost their jobs, and some live-in domestic workers found themselves trapped with abusive employers for months.

For years, activists have pressed the government to implement protections for domestic workers. They are not recognized as formal workers under Indian labor laws, which means they do not have access to basic rights such as minimum wages, social security benefits and protection against exploitation and abuse.

"It is extremely frustrating to get the authorities to guarantee benefits and protection for these domestic workers. We run a helpline for them to report abuse, but there are thousands who suffer silently," Anita Juneja of the Delhi Domestic Workers Union told DW.

Juneja estimates there are between 800,000 to 1 million part-time domestic workers in New Delhi alone, together with about 150,000 working full time. The activist says the workers are vulnerable and therefore overworked and exploited in part due to the worker's lack of awareness about their rights as well as insufficient support structures.

In many cases, it has been found that women workers who migrated from India's states of Jharkhand, Odisha and central Chhattisgarh to India's metropolitan cities became victims of exploitation and forced labor. Such incidents were more common among underage workers.

Recruiting agencies contribute to the exploitation by deceiving workers about job conditions as well as binding workers to the employer for lengthy periods of time.

Domestic workers left with almost no protection

Sujata Mody is the president of Penn Thozhilalargal Sangam, a trade union for women workers, and has been advocating for improving working conditions and living standards for over a decade in southern Tamil Nadu.

She believes that domestic workers in Chennai face massive challenges due to evictions and relocations in slum settlements beyond the city.

"Such workers lose their jobs, are unable to travel and manage their families. The city's housing policy saw a complete reversal because of this relocation. It led to a catastrophic fall in wages, living standards and transport-related accidents," Mody told DW.

Rights organizations argue that the country has only two laws that view maids as workers — to a certain degree. Those laws are the Unorganized Workers' Social Security Act of 2008 and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013.

While the first law is a social welfare scheme, the other aims to protect working women in general. Importantly, neither law recognizes domestic workers as having legal rights.

It is for this reason that labor unions, civil society organizations and human rights groups have spared no efforts to advocate for the rights and protection of domestic workers. These efforts resulted in the adoption of the ILO Convention 189, an international document setting standards for domestic workers.

India is a signatory to the document, known as the Convention on Domestic Workers, but has not ratified it yet.

Households still not recognized as workplaces

Most state governments have added domestic work to the list of scheduled employment, but implementation remains an issue.

In 2020, the Indian parliament amended and consolidated old labor laws and passed the Code on Social Security with an aim to extend benefits like insurance, a retirement fund and maternity assistance to laborers in some informal arrangements.

But it has not helped domestic workers because individual households are not recognized as workplaces. Moreover, only a small fraction of domestic workers in the country are unionized or part of organized groups, leaving a huge swathe of workers at the mercy of their employers.

"What needs to be done urgently is an interim code of practice to be made mandatory on employers and a grievance redressal mechanism with involvement of all stakeholders," Geeta Menon, a veteran social activist and joint secretary of Domestic Workers Rights Union, told DW.

"Authorities must activate the defunct welfare boards and quickly act on raising resources for ensuring social security benefits to domestic workers," said Menon.

Edited by: Darko Janjevic