Recent oral observations of the Supreme Court on domestic workers have reopened an old but unresolved constitutional dilemma: can the ‘sanctuary’ of the home place certain workers beyond the reach of fundamental rights?
The judicial anxiety articulated—of intrusive inspections, unmanageable litigation and disruption of the human bond within households—is not unfamiliar. It surfaced when Karnataka became the first state to notify minimum wages for domestic workers in 2004. Experience since then offers a corrective grounded not in theory, but in evidence.
Domestic work remains among the most invisible and yet hazardous forms of labour in India. Performed in isolated, concealed and undocumented workplaces, it is overwhelmingly feminised and structurally vulnerable. Estimates suggest that India has 8-10 crore domestic workers. To exclude such labour from statutory wage protection is not regulatory restraint; it is constitutional abdication.
A central reason this sector continues to be debated in abstraction is the persistent absence of reliable, disaggregated and periodically updated data on domestic work—numbers, wages, hours and conditions. This data vacuum has allowed anecdote, fear and middle-class anxiety to substitute for evidence, demonstrating that credible policy formulation and responsible constitutional debate cannot rest on conjecture but must be grounded in systematic data collection through the Census or a dedicated national survey of domestic work. Without such empirical grounding, judicial and policy discourse risks mistaking exceptional cases for systemic outcomes.
Constitutionally, the terrain is far from unsettled. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that payment below minimum wages amounts to forced labour. In People’s Union for Democratic Rights (the 1982 Asiad workers case), the court ruled that labour rendered for less than the statutory minimum is ‘forced’ within the meaning of Articles 21 and 23. This principle was reinforced in Bandhua Mukti Morcha (1983), where the court held that the right to live with dignity necessarily includes adequate remuneration and humane conditions of work. These holdings are not sector-specific. They articulate a universal constitutional floor rooted in dignity, not in the location of the workplace.
The argument that domestic labour is merely an extension of household responsibilities—and therefore resistant to legal valuation—rests on deeply gendered assumptions. What is unpaid within a family cannot, by constitutional logic, be deemed unworthy of remuneration when performed by another woman for survival. Such reasoning invisibilises skill, effort and risk, and normalises wage theft under the guise of informality. The Constitution does not permit such distinctions.
Karnataka’s experience demonstrates that the supposed conflict between privacy and protection is neither inevitable nor unmanageable. Wage rates were fixed after empirical ‘work and time’ studies that quantified domestic tasks in 45-minute units, allowing for pro rata payment in a sector characterised by fragmented employment. This approach translated invisible labour into legally cognisable units without imposing rigid industrial models unsuited to household work.
Equally significant were the administrative safeguards devised to protect domestic privacy. Drawing from the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, Karnataka instituted a high-threshold enforcement filter: no labour inspector could enter a household without the written authorisation of the labour commissioner, and employers were exempted from routine record-keeping under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Enforcement was complaint-driven, supervised at the highest administrative level and proportionate rather than intrusive. Over two decades, the predicted flood of inspections and litigation never materialised. What did materialise was wage growth—from ₹1,699 per month in 2004 to ₹17,863-20,112 in 2026—largely through voluntary compliance.
This empirical record exposes the fragility of the Inspector Raj argument. Contemporary labour governance has itself shifted towards risk-based, technology-enabled and trust-oriented compliance systems. To resurrect older anxieties selectively for domestic workers—arguably among the most vulnerable segments of the workforce—is neither consistent nor justifiable. Law in this context operates less as coercion and more as a social standard, nudging behaviour and recalibrating expectations.
More troubling than the formal outcome of recent proceedings is the tenor of certain oral observations made from the Bench. While such remarks do not constitute binding precedent, judicial speech has institutional consequences. The Supreme Court itself has cautioned, in Mohammad Naim (1963) and A M Mathur (1990) against unnecessary or sweeping observations not required for deciding the issue at hand. Judicial authority, the court has emphasised, flows from measured reasoning and restraint, not rhetorical force.
In cases involving structurally marginalised groups, dismissive or sceptical remarks risk creating a chilling effect on access to justice. India’s ethical framework for judges—the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life (1997) and the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct (2002)—recognises that propriety, equality and impartiality extend to courtroom speech. Public interest litigation was consciously designed to address power asymmetries and invisibility; constitutional compassion in such cases is not an indulgence but an institutional duty.
The path forward lies beyond minimum wages alone. The Karnataka Domestic Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2025 points towards the next frontier through welfare boards, compulsory registration, healthcare and pension coverage. Internationally, International Labour Organization’s Domestic Workers Convention (No 189) provides a tested blueprint for balancing domestic privacy with labour protection, including reporting and data obligations that help correct precisely the informational deficits that plague this sector in India.
The threshold of the Indian home is undoubtedly sacred, but it cannot become a constitutional blindspot. Where work is performed, rights must follow. Karnataka’s experience demonstrates that administrative imagination, empirical grounding and constitutional fidelity can coexist. In the 21st century, privacy cannot be invoked as a bar to justice, and the Constitution cannot be expected to stop at the doorstep.
Sanjiv Kumar | Member, Central Administrative Tribunal, retired IAS officer
(Views are personal)