The Informal Domestic Workers in India—A Descriptive Mapping of NSSO Data

Abstract

The discourse on domestic workers in India is largely dominated by policy reports from developmental organizations rather than scholarly attempts to understand its dynamics. A regular search in Google Scholar on ‘domestic workers India’ takes us to Indian cases sandwiched amongst many others (Bartolomei in Men Masculinities 13(1):87–110, 2010; Adams and Dickey in Home and hegemony: domestic service and identity politics in South and Southeast Asia University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2000), and bundled up under broad disciplinary umbrella of gender (Ray in Feminist Stud 26(3):691–718, 2000; Raghuram in Gender, Migration and Domestic Service. Routledge, Routledge International Studies of Women and Place, London, UK, 2001), with few instances of stand-alone economic study of Indian domestic workers building its own discourse.