Domestic work constitutes one of the largest categories of employment in India, with an estimated 4.75 million domestic workers, predominantly women, Dalits, and migrants, engaged in households across the country. Despite their indispensable economic contribution, domestic workers remain among the most legally invisible and institutionally unprotected categories of workers in the Indian labour market. They operate in private households, beyond the reach of most labour inspection regimes, without written contracts, without guaranteed minimum wages in most States, and without access to social security. This article presents the findings of a socio-legal empirical study conducted among 600 domestic workers in five cities of Odisha, examining the working conditions, the nature and incidence of human rights violations, the awareness of legal protections, and the barriers to accessing grievance redressal mechanisms. The study situates its findings within the framework of the Indian Constitution, relevant labour legislation, the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act 2008, the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013, and ILO Convention No. 189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers. It documents a pervasive and systematic denial of the most basic labour and human rights and advances a set of rights-based policy recommendations directed at legislators, courts, labour administrators, and civil society organisations.
Girish Ranjan Sahoo (Tue,) studied this question.