Dont bracket homemakers with beggars,prisoners: SC

The observations came on an appeal filed by Arun Agrawal whose 39-year-old homemaker wife Renu died after their car was hit by a truck at Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh a few years ago.

Arun sought a compensation of Rs 19.2 lakh from the insurance company for the death of his wife,a victim of rash and negligent driving. However,the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal,and later the Allahabad High Court,disagreed with him.

Both courts said Renu,as a homemaker,did not have a regular source of income,and her family was not dependent on her. They found her worth only Rs 1,250 a month.

The Motor Vehicles Act,1988 the statute which decides the amount of compensation for families of victims of road accidents rates a homemakers worth at only one-third of her earning spouse.

Time has come for the Parliament to have a rethinking for properly assessing the value of homemakers work and suitably amend the provisions of Motor Vehicles Act and other related laws for giving compensation when the victim is a woman and a homemaker, the Supreme Court said,ordering a compensation of Rs 6 lakh to Renus family.

Justice Ganguly,in a separate judgment,said Renus case was an example of how even statutory laws do not consider a homemakers work of cooking,cleaning of utensils,looking after children,fetching water as economically productive.

Gender bias,the judge said,is shockingly prevalent in the work of the Census a statutory exercise blessed by Parliament in the form of the Census Act,1948.

About 36 crore women in India have been classified in the Census of India,2001,as non-workers and placed in the category of beggars,prostitutes and prisoners, Justice Ganguly wrote.

We often forget that the time spent by women in doing household work as homemakers is the time which they can devote to paid work or to their education. This lack of sensitivity and recognition of their work mainly contributes to womens high rate of poverty and their oppression in society, the court observed.

A homemakers unpaid contribution at home can be better assessed if a third person is paid to do her work,the court said.

Monetary value of cooking for family members could be assessed in terms of what it would cost to hire a cook or to purchase ready cooked food or by assessing how much money could be earned if the food cooked for the family were to be sold in the locality, the judgment said.

Even a gift from a homemaker should be considered as a contribution made by her in the capacity of a homemaker or parent, the court said.