Kerala has long relied on domestic services while simultaneously refusing to formally acknowledge them as an economic sector. Cleaning, cooking, caregiving, home maintenance, errands, and personal assistance operate in a grey zone—essential to daily life, yet structurally invisible. This invisibility has consequences. Workers remain informal, households lack predictable quality and accountability, and entrepreneurs are discouraged from building serious service businesses because the policy environment treats domestic work as personal arrangements rather than economic activity. If Kerala is serious about becoming a high-quality, human-centric economy by 2047, this contradiction must end.
Household services are no longer peripheral. Urbanisation, nuclear families, ageing populations, dual-income households, and migration have fundamentally altered how homes function. The modern household is not a self-sufficient unit; it is a node that depends on external services to remain functional. Yet policy still behaves as if domestic labour is a private matter rather than a public economic system. This gap creates inefficiency, exploitation, and stagnation.
Recognising household services as a formal economic sector is not about bureaucratisation for its own sake. It is about clarity. When a sector is recognised, it gains definitions, boundaries, standards, and rights. It becomes visible in economic data, eligible for credit, insurable, taxable in rational ways, and open to innovation. Without recognition, domestic services remain trapped in informality, where neither workers nor consumers are protected, and where scale is impossible.
Kerala already has the raw ingredients to lead this transformation. High literacy, strong local governance, digital penetration, cooperative traditions, and a service-oriented workforce give the state a structural advantage. What is missing is a policy decision that says, explicitly, that household services constitute a legitimate, productive, and future-facing sector of the economy.
Formal sector recognition would immediately change the nature of domestic work. Workers would no longer exist solely as individuals negotiating power asymmetries with households. They could operate as registered service providers, micro-entrepreneurs, cooperatives, or members of service companies. This shifts the relationship from dependency to contract, from emotion to service-level expectation, and from charity to professionalism. Dignity does not come from sentiment; it comes from structure.
For households, sector recognition brings predictability and trust. Today, households rely on personal referrals, informal arrangements, and social pressure to ensure reliability. This works poorly in urban and semi-urban contexts and collapses entirely during disruptions such as illness, migration, or disasters. A recognised sector enables verified providers, transparent pricing, service histories, grievance mechanisms, and quality benchmarks. Homes become consumers of services rather than managers of informal labour.
For entrepreneurs, the implications are profound. Recognition unlocks access to MSME benefits, startup incentives, bank credit, insurance products, skilling programs, and digital infrastructure. It becomes possible to build subscription-based models, platform cooperatives, franchise networks, and specialised service verticals. Today, anyone attempting to professionalise domestic services faces regulatory ambiguity at every step. Sector recognition removes this friction and signals that the state welcomes innovation in this space.
There is also a critical gender dimension. Domestic services are overwhelmingly performed by women, often from economically vulnerable backgrounds. Keeping the sector informal ensures that women’s labour remains undervalued and unprotected. Formal recognition allows targeted policies for safety, insurance, maternity benefits, skilling, and leadership pathways. It also creates space for women-led service enterprises, moving women from labour roles into ownership and management.
Migration is another structural reality. Kerala increasingly depends on migrant labour for domestic and home-based services. Without sector recognition, migrants remain exposed to exploitation, arbitrary wages, and unstable living conditions. A formal sector framework allows registration, portability of benefits, language training, housing linkages, and ethical recruitment standards. This is not only humane; it is economically rational, ensuring workforce stability and service continuity.
Critics may argue that formalising domestic services will increase costs for households. This concern misunderstands how informality works. Hidden costs already exist in the form of unreliability, disputes, turnover, and crisis replacements. Formalisation does not necessarily mean higher costs; it means transparent costs. Over time, efficiency, competition, and scale reduce prices while improving quality. Informality feels cheap only because its costs are externalised onto workers.
Another concern is cultural resistance. Domestic work in Kerala is often entangled with notions of intimacy, hierarchy, and tradition. However, culture is not static. The same society that once resisted professional nursing, childcare centres, and catering services now accepts them as normal. Household services are undergoing the same transition, whether policy acknowledges it or not. The question is whether Kerala leads this shift or reacts late.
From a macroeconomic perspective, recognising household services expands the formal economy without heavy capital investment. Unlike manufacturing or large infrastructure, this sector is labour-intensive, locally rooted, and immediately scalable. It generates employment across skill levels, absorbs migrant labour, and circulates income within communities. For a state facing demographic ageing and youth underemployment, this is a strategic advantage.
There is also a resilience argument. During floods, pandemics, heatwaves, and demographic shocks, households depend heavily on services such as cleaning, caregiving, food preparation, and minor repairs. A recognised sector allows the state to rapidly mobilise trained service networks during crises, treating them as essential infrastructure rather than ad hoc help.
By 2047, Kerala’s households will look very different. Smaller families, older residents, higher expectations of quality, and deeper integration with digital systems will be the norm. Continuing to treat domestic services as informal favours will make homes fragile and workers vulnerable. Recognising the sector now lays the groundwork for a stable, dignified, and innovation-friendly domestic economy.
This is not a welfare proposal disguised as policy. It is an economic reclassification with far-reaching consequences. When something is named as a sector, it enters the realm of planning, investment, and accountability. Household services deserve that status, not as an afterthought, but as a central pillar of Kerala’s service economy.
