Domestic Workers In India: Labour Rights, Human Rights And Statutory Exclusion

Abstract

Paid domestic work sustains a large share of urban Indian households, yet the workers who perform it remain outside most of the statutory apparatus that Indian labour law builds around the employment relationship. This article examines why that exclusion has proved so durable and what would be required to end it. It traces the exclusion to three sources: a definition of the establishment that presumes a commercial workplace, an inspection model that cannot cross the threshold of a private dwelling, and a conception of the employer that dissolves when the household is the site of work. The article then tests the claim that a human rights framing rescues the position. It argues that the framing supplies a normative foundation and a set of international benchmarks, but that it converts into an enforceable claim only where the domestic statute supplies a registered employer, a wage floor, a record and a forum. The Code on Social Security 2020 is assessed against that test and found to advance registration while leaving financing and remedy incomplete. Comparative material from the Domestic Workers Convention and from state welfare board legislation is used to identify the design features that make the difference. The article concludes with reform proposals that place a registration obligation on the placement agency and the employing household, attach a wage floor through notification under minimum wage law, and create a district level forum with power to order payment.