The need to recognise ‘volunteer’ care work

The Union Budget 2026-27 proposes to build a ‘strong care ecosystem’ by training 1.5 lakh multiskilled caregivers in geriatric, core care and allied skills through programmes aligned with the National Skills Qualification Framework (NSQF). As India’s care needs expand, such a move is both timely and necessary.

However, the Budget reveals a deeper paradox; even as the state prepares to train a new cadre of certified care professionals, it makes little mention of the five million plus women who already run India’s health, nutrition and childcare systems. Our Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), Anganwadi workers and helpers, and mid-day meal workers continue to deliver essential public services every day, yet remain classified as ‘volunteers’, excluded from the very ecosystem the state now seems determined to strengthen.

A shadow labour force

From the Anganwadi worker ensuring a child is fed to the ASHA worker tracking a pregnancy in a remote village, these women constitute the backbone of India’s welfare architecture. Their work is essential, continuous and indispensable to the state, yet they labour in a deeply precarious space, earning meagre monthly honorariums, without formal contracts, paid leaves or maternity benefits. What little support they receive come from small and fragmented responses by individual States such as honorarium hikes (which vary from State to State) and gratuity benefits, or coverage under national schemes such as Ayushman Bharat and Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan. But these piecemeal measures do little to address the contradiction that lies at the core of India’s care economy — that the state relies on a vast, feminised shadow labour force of women to deliver essential public services but classifies them as ‘honorary workers’ to limit protections typically associated with formal employment. 

A gendered form of work

This contradiction is rooted in deeper structural norms surrounding care. The ‘care penalty’ in India is not just a sociological concept, it is a statistical reality. Insights from the 2024 Time Use Survey highlighted in the Economic Survey 2025-26 reinforce Indian women’s role as primary caregivers, with 41% of females aged 15-59 spending 140 minutes daily on household caregiving, compared to just 21.4% of males at 74 minutes.

This pattern mirrors India’s welfare architecture. By outsourcing its care responsibilities to women labelled as ‘volunteers’, the state draws on long-standing social norms that view care work as an extension of a woman’s domestic duty rather than skilled labour deserving fair compensation. Since care is seen as ‘natural’ to women, it is rendered cheap and informal. This creates a vicious cycle — the less care work is recognised as skilled, the less compulsion there is to pay for it, trapping a predominantly female workforce in insecure employment. Against this background, the recent Budget’s emphasis on investing in a new cohort of care workers exposes the absence of clear avenues to integrate its existing workforce; these workers already perform complex, multi-skilled tasks that demand emotional labour, field coordination, and deep knowledge of community dynamics. So why is the state not looking to upgrade and secure the livelihoods of those who already perform such critical work?

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India’s so-called ‘volunteer’ care workers are in reality the permanent pillars of our welfare state. The country cannot realise its ambitions to be a global powerhouse for health while the women who sustain such systems remain underpaid, unprotected and largely invisible. But reimagining India’s care economy requires both financial investment and a cultural shift.

Reimagining the care economy

To begin with, India must move beyond the ‘volunteer’ label. In the Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in Dharam Singh & Anr. vs State of U.P. & Anr., the Court upheld that work which is recurrent and central to an institution’s functioning cannot be treated as temporary indefinitely. For India’s cadre of ‘volunteer’ care workers who perform duties that are indispensable and continuous in nature to the state, this judgment offers a strong basis to demand that their honorary roles be converted into permanent posts.

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Combined with the renewed Budgetary focus on skilling, this creates an opportune moment to revisit employment norms governing India’s existing care workforce, and nudge the state towards the creation of clear transition frameworks that help move these workers from honorariums to fair wages and formal contracts. Perhaps the first step could be to extend the proposed NSQF-aligned programmes to ASHA and Anganwadi workers as well. 

For years, these workers have mobilised across the country to demand dignity and recognition of their work. It is now past time that the state responds by fulfilling the final two commitments — Reward and Represent — of the International Labour Organisation’s 5R Framework for Decent Care Work. Our care workers who perform tirelessly need to be properly compensated and given a genuine voice in employment and policy decisions: in short, a real seat at the table.

Renjini Rajagopalan is a lawyer and research lead at the Centre for Gender Analysis, JustJobs Network (JJN)