Employees’ State Insurance Scheme for Domestic Workers

The recent move of the government to extend the Employees’ State Insurance Scheme for domestic workers clearly shows the callousness of the initiative and the non-committal approach of the state to the concerns of domestic workers. For the first time, a discriminatory approach within the ESI scheme to a specific category of workers is noticeable.

On 14 August 2016 at a meeting in Hyderabad, the Union Minister of Labour and Employment, Bandaru Dattatreya, announced the plan to extend Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) facilities for domestic workers on a pilot basis in Delhi and Hyderabad. This was positioned as a part of the central government’s commitment to provide social security, especially health insurance for all. The news of an extension of ESI benefits to domestic workers has come as a surprise to the largely disappointed group of workers and activists after their experience with the ongoing national policy on domestic work. The fate of this policy, which was drafted in 2012 after much pressure and lobbying from national and international organisations, is still unclear, despite its revision in 2015 and the statement of the labour minister in March 2016, that the matter is “under active consideration.”

Non-committal Approach