Delhi minor help torture case: Why does India fail to protect its domestic workers?

Several incidents of mistreatment of domestic workers by their employers have come to light in India recently. On Wednesday (19 July), a video of a pilot and her husband being beaten by a mob for allegedly torturing their 10-year-old domestic worker in the Dwarka area of southwest Delhi went viral on social media. M Harsha Vardhan, the deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka), said the girl was allegedly thrashed by the couple who employed her two months back, reported Hindustan Times (HT). The police were alerted after a relative of the girl spotted injury marks on her arms. “Soon, local residents also heard about the allegations that the couple had tortured the girl and beat her up,” Vardhan said, as per HT. The couple, identified as 36-year-old Kaushik Bagchi and his wife Poornima Bagchi (33), were detained by the police. A case under sections 323, 324 and 342 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Child Labour Act and Juvenile Justice Act has also been filed, the police officer added.

#WATCH | Dwarka DCP M Harsha Vardhan says, "We reached the spot and found that a 10-year-old girl has been kept as domestic help by a couple. Her medical examination was conducted in which some injuries and burn marks have come to the fore. A case has been registered. Both… pic.twitter.com/UQL1URv1Pg

— ANI (@ANI) July 19, 2023

However, this is not the first such case to hit the headlines. But why domestic workers are not safe in India? Let’s take a closer look. Recent incidents of abuse In February, a 17-year-old domestic worker was rescued from a house in Gurgaon after allegations of her being tortured by her employers surfaced. A police official told The Indian Express that “the couple (Manish Khattar and Kamaljeet Kaur) allegedly used to beat her mercilessly for not working properly. She has several cut and burn injuries, suspected to have been inflicted with a blade or hot tongs”. “The girl had injuries on several parts of her body - face, arms, hands and feet,” the officer added. The probe also revealed the couple had not paid any wage to the girl, who hailed from Jharkhand, during the five months she worked for them. The Gurgaon police also apprehended the placement agency owner from where the minor was allegedly hired. Last December, Anita, a 20-year-old domestic worker accused her employer, Shefali Kaul, a resident of the Cleo County Society in Noida, of physically abusing her. The police said Kaul, a lawyer, regularly beat up Anita and when the domestic worker tried to run away, she brought her back forcibly. The victim also had bruises and scratches on her body, NDTV reported citing the police. Kaul had denied the allegations. In 2021, a couple from Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura was arrested for abusing their minor domestic help. The 15-year-old told Bangalore Mirror at the time that her employers “burnt her hands with a hot spatula” after she unsuccessfully tried to flee their house. Soni Kumari, a 15-year-old domestic worker in Delhi’s East of Kailash, was murdered in 2018 for demanding her wage, reported The Wire. The tribal girl had gone missing from Jharkhand and her family was unaware that she was in the National Capital. The Delhi police nabbed a 50-year-old woman in 2013 for assaulting and torturing her 15-year-old domestic worker. The minor girl had a severe head injury and bite marks on her body, as per BBC. Domestic workers in India The country has seen a huge surge in domestic workers, especially in urban areas. As per official data, India has approximately 47 lakh domestic workers, including 30 lakh women.

However, an estimate by International Labour Organisation (ILO) places this number anywhere between 2 crore and 9 crore workers.

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The Wire reported in 2018 citing data furnished by the Delhi Labour Organisation that India has more than five crore domestic workers, out of which most are women. Most of the girls and women employed as domestic workers in big cities, such as Delhi, are migrants from states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal and Odisha. As per The Hindu report, these girls, especially minors, are forced to drop out of school due to extreme poverty. Amid a lack of jobs and poor literacy rates among rural and tribal communities, these women end up taking domestic work to earn their living, the report added. [caption id=“attachment_12894132” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A general view of a residential area where placement agencies connecting domestic workers with employers are believed to be operating in Delhi in 2012. Reuters File Photo[/caption] In 2016, a study found 75 per cent of domestic workers in Bengaluru were from Scheduled Castes, 15 per cent from OBCs and 8 per cent from Scheduled Tribes, reported The Hindu. With the rising demand for domestic workers over the years, India also saw a growth in private placement agencies that facilitate hiring. As per Indian Express, “While these agencies indicate some sort of push towards formalisation of this segment in the economy, their functioning remains mostly informal in nature. Most of them fail to provide any form of support, financial or otherwise, to these girls and women.” Plight of domestic workers The Wire spoke to several domestic workers employed in Delhi in 2018 who revealed the discrimination and abuse they faced at the hands of their employers. Most of them complained about earning little or no wage, adding that sometimes they have to work at the same salary for years. Ruby, a Muslim domestic worker, told The Wire at the time: “They offer us one cup of tea and in return tell us ten things to do”. “If we demand a raise, they get angry,” the woman, in her 40s, said. “Sometimes they offer us stuff and tell us to ask them what we need instead of asking for money. Perhaps they think that giving away stuff once is better than a raise which they would have to part with every month.” [caption id=“attachment_12893462” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A 16-year-old girl working as a maid in Delhi was rescued by Bachpan Bachao Andolan in 2012. Reuters File Photo[/caption] Due to this being an unorganised sector, domestic workers are both “unpaid and underpaid”, noted The Hindu. The implementation of minimum wage rules for these employees remains unmet across the country. Many workers also have little or no access to proper sanitation facilities at the place of their employment. According to The Wire, many employers do not allow their maids to use toilets. Domestic workers also alleged verbal abuse when seeking leaves. Asha, a domestic worker in Delhi, who originally hails from Bihar, told The Wire in 2018, “Sometimes, relatives visit us, sometimes our kids get sick. But whenever we ask for leave, ‘madam’ tells us we shouldn’t have taken up the work if we needed leaves. If we stop working, how would we feed the family?” Sometimes, domestic workers are also subjected to sexual violence and harassment in India. In 2021, around 3,000 domestic workers mailed postcards to Union women and child development minister Smriti Irani demanding safe workplaces. Why are domestic workers ill-treated in India? Speaking to The Wire, Baby Kumari, associated with Dilli Gharelu Kamgar Sangathan that works for the right of domestic workers, blamed the discrimination faced by maids on class differences. “Class difference is the ugly truth of our society. The answer lies in economic inequality. If you look at the current system in our country, it is mostly capitalistic where one section of the society remains deprived while the other possesses resources, economic facilities and keeps prospering. For this, not only are economic policies to blame but the capitalistic system which is mainly characterised by unequal progress.” After the Gurgaon incident in February this year, Meenakshi Gupta Jain, who runs Helper4U, an online portal that acts as a conduit between workers and employers, told BBC: “What makes domestic helpers so vulnerable to exploitation is that they have no legal contract, there are no minimum guaranteed wages”. Jain said many of these workers who work far away from their homes have no “support system”. “Even if they are hit, they have no one to turn to for help,” she said, adding that “such instances will keep happening until and unless we bring in strict legislation with strict penalties, act against agencies and employers”. Do Indian laws protect domestic workers? As The Hindu noted, India does not have a dedicated law regulating domestic work. India enacted the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act in 2013 to protect both formal and informal sector employees, including domestic workers. However, a 2020 report found the legislation was not properly enforced, as per Scroll.in. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, allows children above 14 years of age to be employed at home, which is considered a “safe” place of work. Helper4U’s Jain pointed to BBC that children are more vulnerable and although “the government says that children can work at home because home is not hazardous, behind closed doors a home can be the most hazardous workplace in the world”.

In June 2019, the Union labour ministry drafted a Domestic Worker Policy aimed at regulating placement agencies and including domestic workers under existing laws. The law will empower domestic workers with the “right to minimum wage, access to social security, protection from abuse and exploitation, pension schemes, health and maternity benefits”, reported The Hindu. However, the policy has not been implemented so far. With inputs from agencies