The Union Labour Ministry on Monday disclosed the broad contents of the policy to formalise the right of domestic workers to equal and minimum wages, social security cover, skill development programme and forming Unions at par with other workers under the existing labour laws. Until not too long ago, the domestic worker, euphemistically called domestic help in the parlance of urban literati, used to be called house-maid or maid servant, admittedly an undignified term. A wit’s observation doing rounds in the digital media says: The Government doesn’t permit employing a domestic help of less than 15 years age; The housewife doesn’t allow maids to be around her territory if older than 15 years; lastly, the husband doesn’t favour employing women above 50 years as domestic help, all for reasons not far to seek. The lowest wage-earning domestic help gets the topmost slot in the morning dialogues of neighbourly housewives, particularly if she fails to turn up at the appointed time. Club-bound urban housewives share their domestic-help-driven woes in the style of breaking news as it were.

Boy scouts are familiar with the proverbial advisory that self help is the best help. The rural households, barring the affluent ones, present women as the family’s backbone, given their back-breaking routine of the entire gamut of daily tasks of cooking, washing clothes and vessels, childcare, carrying food to the field, following time-honoured customs on festive days, working as agri labour and so on.

Domestic workers are often not recognised as workers by society, in the same way as their counterparts working in industries, banks, offices and schools. While several legislations such as the Unorganised Workers’ Social Security Act 2008, Sexual Harassment against Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013 and Minimum Wages Schedules notified in various States across the country refer to domestic workers, there still remains absence of comprehensive, uniformly applicable national legislation that guarantees fair terms of employment and decent working conditions in the country.

Public acceptance of a household as a place of work doesn’t happen as in the cases mentioned above. Policymakers, legislative bodies and other authorities need to recognise dignity of an employment relationship in domestic work. Implementing any law bestowing dignity and decency for the fraternity of domestic help is restricted due to privacy norms that don’t permit Labour Inspectors entering private households. Issues of minimum wages, nature of tasks and others such as enjoyed by workforce in various sectors can be resolved without any hitch.