How India’s labour laws exclude ASHA, anganwadi and other workers by treating them as ‘volunteers’

The Union Budget of India for 2026-27 proposes training 1.5 lakh new multi-skilled caregivers under the National Skills Qualifications Framework. Even though it is a well-intentioned move, threading through this ambition is a quiet embarrassment.

The government that now speaks of a ‘care ecosystem’ has spent decades refusing to recognise the 5 million-odd women - ASHAs, Anganwadi workers, mid-day meal workers - who already sustain such ecosystems. These women are not volunteers. They are the hidden infrastructure of India’s welfare state, held in deliberate legal ambiguity by a classification that is as convenient as it is constitutionally suspect.

The designation ‘volunteer’ or ‘honorary worker’ is not a sociological description. It is a legal strategy by which the Central and State governments, for decades, have structured ‘schemes’ under executive orders - not acts or codes - to insulate themselves from the protections that statutory employment would afford. The ambiguity in designating such workers is by design, where the work is essential, voluntary and indispensable.

The contradiction is stark when these ‘volunteers’ go on strike. The moment they do, governments invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act, legally conceding the very essentiality they otherwise deny. Governments cannot consistently maintain both positions that these women are community volunteers rendering informal service and that their absence constitutes a threat to essential services. One of these must yield to the other. The answer, as legal conscience suggests, should be obvious.

India’s new four labour codes, in effect from November 2025, were presented as a landmark rationalisation of fragmented labour laws, but on the issue of ‘scheme workers’, they represent a quiet silence.

Section 2(k) of the Code on Wages, 2019 defines ‘employee’ as any person ‘employed on wages’ for ‘hire or reward.’ The operative word is wages. Anganwadi workers receive ₹4,500 per month and ASHA workers receive a fixed incentive of ₹3,500 along with performance-linked payment amounts. By labelling these payments ‘honorariums or incentives’ rather than wages, the government exempts itself from minimum wage requirements under the Code on Wages. The definitional line between an honorarium and a wage is, in this context, the line between constitutional protection and constitutional abandonment.

The Code on Social Security, 2020 offers a glimmer of promise, only to retreat. Chapter IX (Sections 109-114) creates a framework for framing schemes for ‘unorganised workers’ and Section 45 envisions ESI-like coverage for gig and platform workers. But scheme workers like ASHAs and anganwadi workers occupy a legal no-man’s-land as they are not self-employed in the conventional sense, not employees and not formally ‘unorganised workers’ under Section 2(86), which envisions those working in household or enterprise-based environments. The result is that Chapter IX’s promise dissolves upon contact with the definitional structure. Neither EPF nor ESI applies. There is no gratuity, no provident fund, no maternity benefit as of right, but only what individual states choose to grant as discretionary relief.

The Industrial Relations Code, 2020 compounds this by defining ‘worker’ in ways that effectively exclude those without a recognised employer. Since the government refuses to acknowledge an employer-employee relationship, these workers cannot raise industrial disputes, demand collective bargaining recognition as a matter of right, or access the adjudicatory machinery that the Code otherwise provides. Their unions exist, but the legal standing of those unions within the law does not.

The courts have navigated this position with increasing discomfort. The Supreme Court in State of Karnataka v. Amirbi and Ors. (2006) held that anganwadi workers do not carry any function of the State and are mere conduits. The Court’s finding was used for nearly two decades to deny them worker status. By 2022, in Maniben Maganbhai Bhariya v. District Development Officer, Dahod, the Court dismantled this position, holding that anganwadi workers are entitled to gratuity by virtue of their statutory status under the National Food Security Act, 2013. The Gujarat High Court in Adarsh Gujarat Anganwadi Union v. State of Gujarat (2024) went even further while examining the ‘master and servant’ reality of the relationship and held that the appointment by advertisement, suspension and transfer powers, and performance-linked remuneration all bear the hallmarks of employment, regardless of what the scheme documents say.

But the most consequential decision came in Dharam Singh & Anr v. State of UP (2025). The Court applied a principle whose implications reach far beyond its immediate facts by holding ‘perennial work deserves perennial posts.’ Where work is recurrent and indispensable to public functioning, the State cannot perpetually mask it under temporary or honorary labels. The Court’s reasoning was based on Articles 14, 16 and 21, where it held that the long-term extraction of regular labour under temporary labels corrodes the guarantee of equal protection. This principle is directly applicable to ASHA and anganwadi workers who have delivered these services for decades. Its invocation in future litigation seems not merely possible but inevitable.

The classification as ‘volunteer’ under the constitutional lens strains Article 14’s guarantee of equal protection. When the government creates multiple categories of persons performing identical public functions - some on regular payrolls with EPF and ESI, others on ‘honorariums’ - the differentiation must be intelligible and rationally connected to a legitimate object. The Supreme Court made this clear in Dharam Singh that fiscal convenience is not a legitimate constitutional object:

"Financial stringency is not a talisman that overrides fairness, reason, and the duty to organise work on lawful lines."

A workforce denied minimum wages, social security and job security cannot be said to labour with the dignity the Constitution envisions.

Parliament should amend the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 to insert ‘scheme worker’ as a distinct statutory category, which should cover persons engaged by the Union or State governments under social welfare schemes for functions that are continuous and indispensable. This would bring them within the dispute resolution and collective bargaining mechanism. The Code on Wages must be amended, or a notification be issued under Section 2(k) to explicitly include scheme workers within the definition of ‘employee,’ thereby bringing minimum wage protections. An honorarium below the minimum wage is not a legal grey area but a minimum wage violation cloaked in euphemism.

Chapter IX of the Code on Social Security must be operationalised specifically for scheme workers. The Central government should frame a dedicated scheme - rather than relying on Ayushman Bharat or Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan - providing EPF, maternity benefits and work-related injury compensation as a matter of entitlement rather than policy discretion.

India will not build a good care economy on the labour of women it refuses to recognise as workers. The ‘volunteer’ fiction has served fiscal convenience at a cost too great for human and legal rights. The legal position from Maniben to Dharam Singh is turning and, therefore, the legislative architecture must follow. The question before parliament is not whether these women work for the state but whether the State is prepared to work for them.

Yashweer Singh a penultimate-year law student at Gujarat National Law University.