Image source: Al Jazeera: File: AP/Aijaz Rahi  

On 24^th March 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a sweeping nationwide lockdown to control the spread of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic. The stated objective for citizens was to abide by the ‘janta curfew’ (society-wide curfew) and stay indoors. There has been much criticism of the tone-deaf and poorly implemented measures taken by this government, especially for society’s economically disadvantaged sections. In this piece, I will unpack domestic workers’ experiences in Gurugram (Haryana) through the lockdown, to understand how they have experienced precarity and marginalisation, exacerbated by COVID-19. Further, I will briefly discuss how some individuals and organisations are attempting to professionalise the sector, improve collective bargaining and conflict resolution between the employers and domestic workers through third-party mediation. Though this presents its own unique challenges given the nature of domestic work and employer-employee relationships.

Domestic work has emerged as one of the fastest-growing sectors of women’s employment in urban India. It enables the crucial first entry to paid work, especially for women from low-income households. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), more than two-thirds of the 67 million domestic workers worldwide have been adversely impacted by the pandemic and the measures taken to contain its spread. About 11 million migrant domestic workers are estimated to have lost their jobs; others live in constant fear of losing income amidst the economic crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. Rizwana, who originally hails from Malda district in West Bengal, has been working in Gurugram for over a decade. When the lockdown was declared, she was mandated by the guidelines to stay home by her employers for more than a month. She considers herself among the luckier ones as she was paid her full salary through this period. However, she did consider going back to the gram (village) with her children and husband who had recently lost his job in the construction sector in the city. Nine months on, her husband has been unable to find employment, leaving the entire household reliant upon Rizwana’s wages. Coping through this period has been uniquely challenging­–from scrounging makeshift equipment to ensure her children could have access to online learning, to postponing plans to refurbish her village home and most troublingly, cutting down on the amount of food consumed daily to make ends meet.

Salwana Bibi wasn’t as lucky with respect to job security and wages during the lockdown. Of the four homes she had been employed at, only one agreed to pay her through the period and of the remaining, one insisted she continue working, putting her health at risk. As she recalls the experience, she says she was compelled to decide to hire a taxi and drive back to her gram with her family–having to borrow a sum of 25,000 rupees for the trip. The cost of living was mounting, and she couldn’t sustain the household on her salary alone. With grave uncertainty regarding her return, job security and most importantly, her health, she felt alone and scared.

The pandemic has brought to light the deeply entrenched class-based discrimination exercised by employers and the Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) in the city. They assumed quasi-authority and influence in dictating terms for movement in and out of spaces. The lockdown may have made visible, the domestic workers – underscoring/highlighting their value in the service economy, often involving informal and precarious work.  However, this increased visibility did not translate to targeted social welfare benefits or regulatory reform in urban India.

Rizwana and Salwana Bibi represent the millions of migrant workers who have built and supported the NCR’s growth. Their long and arduous journeys started with the hope and aspiration for employment in the city, a stable income and the ability to support their families – often those back home in their native towns and villages. Their reproductive labour has sustained households in a city with a per capita monthly income of over INR 4,00,000. Through this process of negotiating life in the city, domestic workers engage with various actors. They forge social contracts with employers, local police authorities, and security guards of buildings who often get them employment through informal social networks. These resident welfare associations require them to have identification cards and these relationships have always been rife with discrimination and exploitation.

Some have argued that the very institution of hired domestic labour is unjust at its core (Duffy, 2005). Between deplorable working conditions and expectations of subservient loyalty, the domestic workers are compelled to deal with ‘the worst aspects of both feudalism and capitalism’ (Menon 2012: 18). The same place that enables a source of income, additional financial remuneration, benefits in kind, is also simultaneously a site of exploitation under the garb of ‘benevolence’ of the employer. The space that gives working women a sense of independence and often a temporary respite from domestic abuse also binds them in relationships of servitude. Class and gender-based exploitation intersect through everyday acts of denial of food, water, access to differing forms of capital as well as indicating the class of the employers through the class of the domestic workers (Harju 2017: 4).

The pandemic has been devastating for informal workers – domestic workers forming a significant percentage (the domestic workers form about 0.6% of the total labour force and is increasingly feminised) of this sector. Several workers, lost employment, weren’t paid to sustain their households and had to fall back on their family networks in their native villages to get by. Some states provided unconditional cash transfers and limited ration while others didn’t. Vulnerability and marginalisation reared its ugly head, as the lack of legal protection, social safety nets and the weak collective bargaining worsened amid a public health crisis. Domestic workers’ essential nature was felt acutely during the pandemic as employers were left with no choice but to do the household work themselves. And yet, the essential nature did not translate into protection from the virus, distribution of masks and hand sanitisers, behavioural change communication or provisions for social distancing in spaces where it is not possible to. Salwana Bibi recalls the anxiety she felt through the lockdown and the constant calls she made to her employers asking them when it was safe to resume work. A daily feeling of dread overcame her as she felt she might lose the jobs she worked so hard to find and retain. ‘Majboori’ (helplessness) worsened when there was a great risk to her health and that of her loved ones. But the helplessness almost pushed her to the brink of continuing to work when one of her employers insisted, she come through the lockdown and work every day. While she didn’t, it brings to bear the dire situation the workers have been in and continue to be in.

However, some groups tried to work towards strengthening social protection for domestic workers in cities such as Gurugram such as the Gharelu Kamgar Sangathan (Domestic Workers Union). It is apparent that class and gender intersect in messy ways when articulating the collective bargaining of domestic workers. The need for employment and a stable wage in a city with rising standards of basic living, the indispensable nature of their work status as well as their gendered vulnerability makes it challenging to assert collective rights. Notwithstanding the challenges, the power of the collective lies in the commonality of purpose and to drive a narrative that has long been one-sided.

Domestic work reproduces social bias and inequalities and legitimises servitude’s exploitative relationships in the absence of stringent regulations and enforcement. The ‘normal’ as we knew it was the problem and resumption of the ‘normal’ will continue to enforce these degrading relationships in society. The pandemic has brought forth the need to rethink who is ‘essential’ and how we ought to treat one another through everyday negotiations at home and the workplace.

References:

• https://www.odi.org/publications/10658-good-gig-rise-demand-domestic-work
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• http://aidwaonline.org/sites/default/files/2020-10/AIDWA%20DOMESTIC%20WORKERS%27%20SURVEY%20REPORT.pdf

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Priyanjali Mitra is a Ph.D student in Sociology at the University of Chicago. Previously, she worked in the development sector for five years with organizations such as Oxford Policy Management (OPM) India, Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), Thailand.