I n January, the Supreme Court directed the Union government to enact a comprehensive law to stipulate the rights of domestic workers and set up a committee to look into setting up a framework for it. The Court directed the committee to submit a report in six months. Whether this has been done or not remains unclear.

Status of domestic workers

India is estimated to have 4 million-90 million domestic workers. A majority of them are women and girls and most of them are from Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities, rendering them particularly vulnerable to structural power differences.

The Court’s recent directive was issued as part of criminal proceedings involving the confinement and trafficking of a female domestic worker from a ST community from Chhattisgarh to Delhi

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