45-year-old Lakshmi (name changed) who works as part-time domestic help in Lajpat Nagar-III, an urban area of South Delhi does not know what lies ahead. She was expecting the lockdown to end by April 21 and things would go back to normal and now she is hoping after hope for things to go back to normal in the next two days, by May 3. What she is unaware of is that many things have changed since she last ventured out and many things will probably permanently change in the world ahead.
The current situation, the COVID-19 outbreak, presents a huge challenge to domestic workers, and especially part-time domestic workers. Their nature of work and the ‘informality’ is such that they are at the direct disposition of their employers and often have no welfare board to fall back on.
Lakshmi explained how some of her employers are asking her to come despite the lockdown, some are ready to send their government-approved vehicles to get her to work, and some others have asked her to stay at home till they call her (leaving her anxious thinking how long that could be) and many others have permanently asked her to not come for the next six months.
In all the scenarios what we see is disregard towards her because of her nature of work. She does not have any agency and she is often at the receiving end of orders with no real bargaining power since there is no formal contract in outsourced domestic work. If she is asked to come, Lakshmi has to venture out despite the risk it possesses for her and her family, and will have to stay in without work if she is asked not to come.
There are multiple vulnerabilities that domestic workers like Lakshmi face. She is a migrant worker from Kolkata and lives in a slum area in South Delhi. She is the only working member of her family and supports her husband and three children. She stays in a rented place where she has to pay the rent and other bills.
Laksmi has not even collected her dues for the month of March because she is used to collecting the money in cash which then she can readily use to buy her necessities. She is still not used to bank transfers and feels uncomfortable imagining the risk of losing the money. However, she is equally uncomfortable delaying the collection as it would mean collecting for many months together and she fears people might deny everything all together.
I understood her anxiety—she does not do card payments anywhere, and she does not even use an ATM, so for her, at this hour it does not make sense to transfer money in the account because she wants the money for immediate consumption. She is hoping to take the first bus after the lockdown ends to go and collect her money.
There has also been a lot of stress on hygiene and social distancing to avoid Coronavirus, and both hygiene and social distancing are elite concepts. Many part-time workers are unable to ‘social distance’ and therefore there is an exaggeration of their already existing stigma of the unhygienic living conditions.
For part-time domestic workers, it is highly unsafe as well. They have no say in the hygiene conditions of their multiple workspaces, they might even be asked to serve old and sick people and most of the times they have no negotiating powers. Most of them might also take public transport to travel to their place of work and this could be a trigger for larger society as well.
Lakshmi is just one case but in India more than 90% of the working population is in the informal sector, characterised by low wages, long working hours, no social security protection, no emergency assistance schemes or welfare benefits.
While some states like West Bengal and Kerala have most of the informal unorganised sector workers registered many other states are still at a very nascent stage of this process or have not started it altogether. Kerala and West Bengal have unorganised sector workers welfare boards where people working in the informal unorganised sector register themselves and also contribute a minimum monthly/yearly amount. This board is empowered to introduce health insurance, loans, financial assistance, maternity benefits as well as other welfare schemes.
At a time like this when there is so much uncertainty all around, domestic workers across India, the majority of whom are women will face a major brunt of the consequences of COVID-19.