CHENNAI: Is a married, unemployed woman ‘just’ a homemaker? Stressing the role that a homemaker plays in the family, the Madras High Court said a woman is at once finance minister, chartered accountant, chef, dutiful wife and affectionate mother in the family.
A division bench of the court said this while rejecting Puducherry electricity department’s petition against paying Rs 4 lakh as compensation to a family after a young woman died of accidental electrocution.
In 2009, Malathi, who had gone to the farm, came into contact with a snapped power cable and was electrocuted. Following her husband Sambath Kumar’s petition, a single bench in 2013 awarded a compensation of Rs 4 lakh by calculating her monthly income as Rs 3,000 and using the standard multiplier formula.
However, the electricity board appealed against this, contending that Malathi was a homemaker with no source of income.
Rejecting this argument, the bench explained why a woman like her is much more than that: “She was a dutiful wife and an affectionate mother of her two children. She was the finance minister of the family. She was the chef. She was the chartered accountant of the family, maintaining the income and expenses. The husband lost the company of his wife. The children lost their mother and her love and affection.”
The actual loss can be estimated only by taking into account the features of a woman’s life over and beyond the routine. “The loss of personal care and individual attention by the deceased to her siblings, as a mother, and as a wife to her husband, are all relevant materials to assess the loss of services consequent to the death of housewife,” the bench observed.
The court rejected the electricity board’s claim that there was no negligence on its part, noting that it was the board, not the common man, which had control over the electrical system.
“As such, in the event of any untoward incident involving the transmission cable, the onus is heavy on the electricity department to absolve themselves from the charge of negligence,” said the bench, upholding the single judge’s order.