From the home to the World: ethnography of a contemporary domestic workers’ riot

ABSTRACT This essay examines the instance and the aftermath of a violent confrontation between domestic workers and middle-class apartment residents in the Noida-Delhi region with a view to understand the evolving employer-employee dynamics vis-à-vis paid domestic work in India. Through interviews with workers and employers, and careful study of citizens’ reports, FIRs, and media reports, the essay investigates how the conflict between a domestic worker and her employer snowballed into a ‘riot’ between basti-dwellers and apartment residents. The paper analyses the confrontation within the processes of urbanization and class-formation in the post-liberalization era. Employers deployed religious and regional identity markers as well modern technologies of surveillance to exploit the vulnerabilities of the workers. The tension between the employer’s desire for total control and the compulsions of a very specific kind of labour shortage, along with the weight of ‘political economy’ determined the nature, limit and reach of the ‘economy of power’. The dimension of gender complicated the relationship between the ‘madams’ and the ‘maids’ and affected the processes of group solidarities within and across classes.