Dwelling upon Nirmala Niketan`s efforts in Delhi in monitoring and reforming the working of placement agencies, Subhash Bhatnagar writes of the realisation of the need to develop a new business model for placement agencies-a cooperative effort in which women workers share in the surplus they generate. He also shares reflections on the usefulness of the lessons learned in organising construction workers, the demands of domestic worker campaigns and the push for legislation.

Nirmala Niketan was formed in 1998 by the tribal girls of Jharkhand, working as full-time, in-house domestic workers in Delhi. Because domestic work was not an acceptable vocation for registration as a co-operative society, it became part of the Apna Nirman Mazdoor Co-operative Society Ltd., a registered cooperative society of construction workers, and an active partner of the National Campaign Committee for Unorganised Sector Workers (NCC-USW). The founders of Nirmala Niketan were well aware that working conditions in domestic work were inhuman. The organisation began placement activities to understand the system of recruitment and to explore viable solutions to humanise domestic work and make it `decent work` because lakhs of families back home depended on the earnings of these migrant domestic workers.

Intervening in Recruitment

Ten years of experience of placing and monitoring the working conditions of over 700 girls-at an average of 100 to 150 girls per yearhas provided insights into domestic work and the working of placement agencies. Nirmala Niketan trains and places tribal girls in different colonies of Delhi. In the weekly meetings at the Nirmala Niketan office, these girls are encouraged to befriend other domestic workers in their colonies, who have found work through other placement agencies, tribal agents, etc. It is easier for domestic workers in a colony, than for outsiders, to mingle, talk to and gather information about each other and the families for which they work. All vulnerable cases are reported in these meetings and help in rescuing a girl in crisis is then provided.

A placement agency usually comprises one or two non-tribal owners and a few tribal girls and boys, who work for the agency as agents and who earn a commission for providing these girls. Only some of the agencies have placement offices, that is, one or two rooms with a dedicated phone number, to which clients in need of domestic workers go, and in which domestic workers are housed when they come from the villages in search of work. Most agencies only have a phone number, usually a mobile phone, and no address.

The main function of these agencies is to receive a tribal girl or boy for placement from the agent and pay his or her commission. The agencies often house the tribal girls in unknown places before they are placed with families for work. They then place the tribal girl or boys with an employer and collect their own commission. Agency owners visit the employers periodically to collect the salary of domestic worker and to change the placement annually. The entire commission collected by such agencies and the full salary collected by the girls `belongs to them`. It is up to the agency owner to give the domestic worker a part of the salary that he/she earns. If domestic workers or employers are in any crisis, the agency owners decide, according to their convenience, whether to meet the domestic worker or the employer. Even the agents are not provided with the address of the families in which the girls are placed. If the agent, who originally brought the tribal girl to the city, or the family members of the domestic worker want to reach the tribal girls placed by them, it is not easy. Neither is it easy for the police or any other authority to trace these girls. There is no law in India that requires that these placement agencies of domestic workers be registered.

In contrast, Nirmala Niketan, as mentioned earlier, is part of a registered cooperative society of construction workers. The project team members of Nirmana help, guide and train the domestic worker to take care of themselves and to take care of other tribal girls in their neighbourhoods. Nirmala Niketan has two MIG flats and an old office in the main city, shared with Nirmana (an organisation constituted for supporting campaigns on construction labour and  unorganised workers) as the office-cum-accommodation space, and a nurse to conduct regular health examinations and provide all medical support from a collective fund. All senior domestic workers have their own bank accounts, in which they deposit their salaries. Nirmala Niketan keeps systematic accounts of all salaries and deposits. Most of the administrative work is managed by the tribal girls themselves.

Two of the most crucial insights of this placement experience are: first, in-house, domestic work cannot be a long-term engagement. Tribal girls join this work just before the marriageable age and they cannot continue after marriage. Therefore, as an alternative and ongoing occupation, they tend to form teams with other tribal and non-tribal girls/boys and become agents or part of an agency. This takes them into a vicious circle, in which either they start exploiting others or they become victim of exploitation by others. Second, unless all the employers are compulsorily registered, all domestic workers and all placement agencies cannot be reached.

The influence of these two insights is clearly visible in the legislation drafted by the Joint Sub Committee for National Commission of Women (NCW), in which Nirmala Niketan representatives were also included.

The Nirmala Niketan experience has opened up the possibility of developing placement work on a cooperative basis, by which tribal girls can share the surplus they generate, instead of either becoming victims of exploitation or exploiting others. Visits to places of origin by the core team of Nirmala Niketan have also created the possibility of opening other earning activities such as in handloom units and in food processing units in the tribal areas. Tribal girls can start earning their livelihoods there after they work for a few years as domestic workers in the metros or cities, and get married and settled in the native places. Similar alternative occupations need to be explored in cities after these girls undergo some additional basic education and training, which Nirmala Niketan has begun providing.

Although Nirmala Niketan has been placing around 100 girls every year for the last ten years, it has not reached the break-even point to share surplus money. Most of the earnings have gone into the running costs and other support activities. However, this has a very positive possibility and a very bright future. When placement agencies are properly regulated, running one of these agencies to misappropriate the income of tribal girls will no longer be a lure or a viable option. The `cooperative model` will then perhaps be the only viable alternative. Once a cooperative starts earning surplus, it will become a model that can be replicated anywhere.

The Need for a National Legislation and the ILO Convention

A law specifically addressing domestic workers is necessary because the working conditions of domestic workers are unique. The place of work is the private house of a family. Unless the house is recognised as a place of work-an establishment-no legislation can be implemented properly to safeguard the interest of domestic workers. The employer-employee relationship in domestic work is a fluid relationship, in which most of the in-house domestic workers are young unmarried girls from tribal and other communities of migrant workers, including children below the age of 14 years (40 per cent). There is no `management` as such in domestic work. Therefore, the legislations that have been drafted for the organised sector such as Employees Provident Fund Act 1952, Employees State Insurance Act 1948 and Inter-State Migrant Labour Act 1979 cannot be implemented in the sector. There is need to enact a special comprehensive legislation with the provision for a sectoral tripartite Board to register all the employers, domestic workers and placement agencies and to regulate working conditions. Domestic workers themselves are `invisible` and placement agencies are, as of now, neither registered nor regulated. The only visible and definite entity is the employer. Therefore, the success of a domestic workers` legislation depends on the compulsory registration of each and every employer as an essential prerequisite. Only through the registration of employers can all the domestic workers and other middleman/placement agencies be reached.

Additionally, as in the construction workers` and other unorganised workers` sectors, child labour cannot be eradicated in isolation. Regulation of the entire industry or occupation is essential to prevent child labour in any segment of employment. The passage of a specific legislation will facilitate the implementation of a ban on child workers in domestic work, the rescue of child workers and the prevention of re-employment of children.

In March 2008, the governing body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) agreed to put `Decent Work for Domestic Workers` on the agenda for the International Labour Conference (ILC) 2010, with the objective of developing an ILO instrument, a Convention and/or Recommendation, to provide guidance to constituents on developing legislation, policy and good practice for domestic work. The Government of India has a practice of ratifying only those Conventions that have already been implemented in India, at least in the form of enactment of a legislation. Therefore, the ILO Convention and the advocacy for a comprehensive Central Legislation for Domestic Workers must go hand-in-hand to achieve success in the direction of a workable ILO instrument and its ratification.

Ensuring an adequate Convention for the ILO and the enactment of an appropriate, comprehensive central legislation by the Parliament in India will require at least two years of intensive campaign activity before the Convention is adopted in June 2011 by the ILO. Nirmala Niketan, along with Delhi Domestic Workers Union, has planned to build a National Campaign Committee for Domestic Workers, with the active participation of domestic workers` unions from all over the country. The legislation, drafted by the NCW and endorsed by the National Consultation of March 2008 (in which over 100 representatives from 16 states participated), needs some fine-tuning before a nationwide signature campaign is started and a petition sent to Parliament to demand the enactment of a legislation for domestic workers.

At this juncture, the key to success for the construction workers` campaign in 1996 was their united effort under the single banner of NCC-CL. The failure to learn from this experience is evident when the pursuit of legislation for social security by various platforms of unorganised workers resulted in the enactment of a bogus legislation that, in the absence of any budget provision, cannot provide assistance to even a single worker. In the name of domestic workers, many platforms have come up in India. There is need to bring all these together in order to succeed. Given the past success of the unified construction industry, in which the builders had a directly antagonistic relationship with the interests of construction workers, there is confidence that efforts to unite all the platforms working for domestic workers will succeed in bringing in a central legislation in India.