60% domestic workers not paid in lockdown, faced poverty, debt: Report

The 2020 lockdown and the partial state shutdowns have hurt millions of informal workers in India, with female workers bearing the brunt of the crisis

"My children did not understand why we could not eat when we were hungry," said Saraswathi R., a domestic worker from Bengaluru's Shantinagar area, recalling the difficult days after a national lockdown was announced in March 2020 to contain Covid-19. Saraswathi had been working in six houses before the pandemic and all her employers, except one, stopped paying her wages during the lockdown.

With her monthly earnings down from Rs 10,000 to Rs 500, Saraswathi and her three children often went to bed hungry. "How was I to feed my family with this money? It was very hard for me