WUNRN
India:
Domestic Worker Women Call for Rights,
Dignity,
Security, Legislation
By Anuja Agrawal
New Delhi (Women's Feature Service) - There is no
prize for guessing what two middle class women talk
about whenever they meet. Invariably maids and
'servants' saturate their conversation. It will be no
exaggeration to say that the middle class can barely
imagine life without domestic workers.
But is this educated and self-righteous middle class
prepared to give them their due? The home may be a
symbol of nurturance and security, but it can be an
extremely exploitative site of work. With no checks
and controls in place, the domestic workers have no
security of tenure, little bargaining power over
wages, no regulation of working hours or entitlement
to paid leave. In addressing these and many more
issues, the Domestic Workers (Regulation of
Employment, Conditions of Work, Social Security and
Welfare) Bill, 2008, is like a ray of hope for
domestic workers.
The processes of extremely uneven development have
rendered migration for work in the urban informal
economy the only survival option for the vast populace
of rural and tribal hinterlands of India. Domestic
work in urban households is a major avenue for
employment for these migrants. Nirmala Niketan, an NGO
working for migrant workers from the tribal regions of
Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal, has approximated
that 1,00,000 tribal girls from these regions are
engaged in domestic work in Delhi alone.
The only reason that these women get over their fears
of living in a big city is because here they feel that
they at least have some means of earning an income.
Back home there are absolutely no livelihood options,
even in urban centres like Ranchi.
Shantikala, who is around 18, has come to Delhi from
Ranchi with her young child, as there are no
employment opportunities back home. Tara, who is
around 38 years and a mother of five, refused to
return to Bihar even when her husband abandoned her.
"What will I do in the village and how will I feed my
children there?" she asks. Nilima, who works with
Nirmala Niketan, adds, "Most of our families are big.
No one has less than five children. That is why we
have to come here."
However, the women express their resentment at being
referred to as 'servants' by their employers. They are
quite aware that it is they who make it possible for a
large number of middle class women to step out of
their homes to take part in the more lucrative formal
economy. "When their work is treated as a valuable
service, why should domestic work not be treated with
dignity," says an indignant Bibyani, an Oraon woman,
who is around 25 years old. (The Oraon tribal people
inhabit various states across central and eastern
India and traditionally depend on the forest for their
livelihood.)
But there are other far more serious issues at stake.
Many tribal women can recount incidents in which
unscrupulous placement agents separated young children
from their parents and engaged them in domestic work
in urban homes in slave-like conditions. Edna (name
changed), 11, had come to Delhi from Jharkhand with
her siblings and mother to work at the site of the
Akshardham temple before being separated from them.
When rescued by Nirmala Niketan from a house in NOIDA,
she had completely lost touch with her family. In such
cases, the employers are often complicit in
perpetuating and abetting the act of trafficking.
Birna, who also hails from Jharkhand, says, "The
placement agency I worked with took away my two
daughters and sent me to work in Ludhiana (Punjab). I
was not even allowed to talk to them. Finally, they
were rescued with the help of the Domestic Workers'
Forum."
Many placement agencies are no more than a mobile
phone number and are thus extremely difficult to track
down. Even under the best of conditions, the agents
end up depriving migrant women of a substantial
portion of their income. Currently, such agencies are
subject to no regulation.
Ill-treatment at the hands of employers is another
major concern. Bibyani recalls, "I blindly trusted my
employers and asked to hold on to all my wages for
safe keeping. Instead, they kept all my wages and even
accused me of being a thief."
These issues are yet to capture the public
imagination. On the contrary, whenever a domestic
worker is found to have committed a crime, the whole
class ends up being branded as criminals. Few people
pay attention to the root of such cases. In fact, the
Haryana police have even launched a questionable drive
this April to fingerprint all domestic workers,
effectively clubbing them with criminals.
But do the isolated instances of crime committed by
some individuals match the routine exploitation to
which domestic workers are subjected? Proposing a
comprehensive legislation, the Domestic Worker's Bill
is a major attempt to address problems of domestic
workers. The Bill is being drafted by the National
Campaign Committee for the Unorganized Sector Workers
(NCCUSW) and Nirmala Niketan, with the support of the
National Commission for Women.
The major proposal of this bill is to set up
tripartite boards that include representatives of
domestic workers, their employers and the government.
All domestic workers, their employers and placement
agencies will have to register with the board and
contribute a designated amount, annually, which will
be used as a corpus fund to take care of the many
social security needs of workers.
"Tribal women even lose their identities in the
transit process as their names are often changed. The
Board will make sure that there is a complete record
of the workers," says Subhash Bhatnagar, Coordinator,
NCCUSW.
The board will fix the conditions of work and maintain
a record of all domestic workers. It will also evolve
a dispute resolution mechanism, look after the health
needs of workers, create a safe shelter and help them
open bank accounts.
That these proposals are not entirely utopian is
evident from the fact that Nirmala Niketan has been
providing placement services along similar lines to
hundreds of tribal women for eight years now. These
women have been able to fight cases of non-payment of
wages by employers, bring to book exploitative
employers and rescue trafficked children.
Tribal women believe that the legislation will foster
a better understanding and accountability between both
workers and employers. Most importantly, it is being
seen as an important step towards checking the
proliferation of unscrupulous placement agencies. The
registered placement agencies would be obliged to
provide a number of services to both the domestic
workers as well as the employers. "The placement
agencies do nothing more than placement and
replacement of workers for which they charge heavily.
This legislation will force them to provide many more
services to the workers and their employers," adds
Bhatnagar.
The legislation could also check child labour in
domestic work. In the absence of any operational
mechanism, the 2006 prohibition of child labour in
domestic work under the Child Labour Act has been
unable to achieve this.
The Domestic Worker's Bill, if passed, will be an
important step toward securing the rights of the
domestic workers who constitute a large chunk of the
unorganised sector workers. But as with all laws, the
real test of this legislation will be in its
implementation.
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