The Political Economy of the “Idle Wife”: Unpaid Labour, Patriarchy, and the Law’s Blind Spot

-Ramphal Kataria

Maintenance or Recognition? Rethinking Women’s Unpaid Labour

  Abstract

The recent judgment of the Delhi High Court rejecting the characterisation of a homemaker as an “idle” spouse marks a significant moment in Indian feminist jurisprudence. This article situates the ruling within a broader political economy of unpaid labour, tracing the historical devaluation of women’s domestic and care work from early civilisations to contemporary capitalist societies. It argues that the invisibilisation of household labour is not an oversight but a structural feature of patriarchal economies, reproduced through law, market logic, and social norms. Through a comparative analysis of India, the Global South, and OECD countries, the article demonstrates how maintenance law becomes a critical site where women’s unpaid contributions are either recognized or erased. The article contends that legal recognition of domestic labour is essential to substantive gender equality and economic justice.

I. Introduction: Naming Labour That Law Refused to See

Few phrases reveal the moral economy of patriarchy as starkly as the term “idle wife.” It condenses centuries of economic misrecognition into a single moral judgement—one that equates value with wages and work with market participation.

In February 2026, Justice Swarna Kanta Sharma decisively rejected this assumption, holding that a homemaker’s non-employment cannot be equated with idleness or deliberate dependence. The Court’s insistence that capacity to earn is distinct from actual earnings disrupts a long-standing judicial tendency to treat domestic labour as a personal choice rather than an economic contribution.

This intervention invites a deeper inquiry: Why has women’s unpaid labour remained invisible across legal, economic, and political systems despite its centrality to social survival?

II. Civilisational Roots: From Cooperation to Control

Anthropological and historical evidence suggests that early human societies were not uniformly patriarchal. In many hunter-gatherer and early tribal communities, subsistence depended on cooperation, with women playing central roles in food gathering, caregiving, and knowledge transmission.

The decisive transformation occurred with the advent of settled agriculture. As land ownership, inheritance, and surplus accumulation became central, women’s reproductive and domestic labour was enclosed within the household. Patriarchy emerged not merely as cultural domination but as an economic system regulating women’s bodies and labour.

Even ancient civilizations reflected variability:

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, women could own property and initiate divorce.

In Classical Athens, women were denied legal personhood.

In early Vedic India, women participated in intellectual life; later periods saw severe retrenchment.

These shifts underscore that women’s subordination is historically produced, not biologically inevitable.

III. Domestic Labour and Capitalism: The Invisible Subsidy

Capitalism did not dismantle patriarchal labour relations; it reorganized them. As productive labour moved to factories and offices, reproductive labour—childbearing, caregiving, household management—remained unpaid and feminised.

Feminist political economy identifies this as the social reproduction paradox:
Capitalist economies depend on unpaid care work, yet systematically exclude it from economic valuation.

As Silvia Federici observes,

“What we call ‘love’ is unpaid work.”

This unpaid labour:

Reproduces the labour force,

Maintains workers’ health and emotional stability,

Absorbs social risks that states and markets refuse to bear.

Yet, because it does not generate wages, it is treated as non-work.

IV. Colonialism, Reform, and the Gendered Nation

Colonial modernity in India produced contradictory outcomes. Legal reforms—abolition of sati, widow remarriage, women’s education—expanded women’s rights. Yet these reforms framed women as subjects of rescue rather than autonomous citizens.

Nationalist discourse further complicated matters. Women were valorised as symbols of cultural purity while their material claims remained subordinated. Domestic labour was romanticised as sacrifice, not recognised as contribution.

The post-independence Indian state inherited this contradiction: formal equality alongside substantive economic dependence.

V. Feminist Theory and the Unpaid Work Debate

The intellectual groundwork for recognizing domestic labour was laid by second-wave feminism. In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argued that women are confined to “immanence”—repetitive, invisible labour—while men occupy “transcendence.”

Later feminist economists expanded this critique. As Nancy Fraser notes,

“Capitalism has a free-rider problem: it relies on care work that it does not pay for.”

The concept of social reproduction foregrounds unpaid labour as foundational, not auxiliary, to economic systems.

VI. Indian Family Law: Moral Tests and Economic Amnesia

Indian maintenance jurisprudence has historically oscillated between protection and moral surveillance. Courts routinely inquire whether a woman is:

Educated,

Able-bodied,

“Capable” of employment.

These inquiries individualize what is structurally produced: career interruptions due to marriage, childcare, and relocation.

The Delhi High Court’s ruling disrupts this logic by affirming that:

1. Domestic labour has opportunity costs,

2. Re-entry into the labour market is gendered and unequal,

3. Maintenance is not charity but recognition.

By rejecting the “idle wife” narrative, the Court aligns family law with feminist political economy.

VII. Comparative Perspective: India, Global South, and OECD

India

Unpaid domestic work by women contributes an estimated 7.5%–30% of GDP, yet remains excluded from national accounting. Maintenance law often becomes the only forum where this labour is indirectly acknowledged.

Global South

In Latin America and Africa, women disproportionately shoulder unpaid care due to weak welfare states. Countries like Uruguay and Chile have begun incorporating care into social policy through national care systems, recognizing care as public infrastructure.

OECD Countries

Nordic states demonstrate how institutional design alters gender outcomes:

Paid parental leave,

State-funded childcare,

Recognition of caregiving in pension credits.

Even so, wage gaps and care penalties persist, indicating that policy recognition alone does not dismantle patriarchal norms.

VIII. Class, Caste, and the Double Burden

The trope of the “idle wife” is profoundly classed. For working-class women, the issue is not non-employment but overwork—paid labour outside followed by unpaid labour at home.

For middle-class women, education becomes a double-edged sword, cited to deny maintenance while ignoring years of unpaid domestic contribution.

Caste further intensifies this burden, with Dalit and Adivasi women occupying the most precarious forms of paid and unpaid labour.

IX. Maintenance as Deferred Wages

The Delhi High Court’s insistence that maintenance reflects marital contribution reframes the discourse. Maintenance emerges as deferred wages for unpaid labour, not discretionary support.

The Court’s critique of adversarial proceedings also recognizes how litigation reproduces gendered power asymmetries—through income concealment, expense inflation, and procedural exhaustion.

X. Conclusion: Toward Substantive Equality

The rejection of the “idle wife” trope is not symbolic—it is structural. A legal system that recognizes only market labour reproduces inequality under the guise of neutrality.

As Virginia Woolf wrote in A Room of One’s Own,

“Intellectual freedom depends upon material things.”

So does domestic freedom.

Until women’s unpaid labour is fully recognized—legally, economically, and socially—gender equality will remain formal rather than substantive. The Delhi High Court judgment offers a jurisprudential opening. Whether it becomes a systemic shift depends on how seriously law is willing to confront the economics of patriarchy.

Footnotes

1. Federici, S (2012): Revolution at Point Zero, PM Press.

2. Fraser, N (2016): “Contradictions of Capital and Care,” New Left Review.

3. de Beauvoir, S (1949): The Second Sex, Gallimard.

4. Agarwal, B (1997): “Bargaining and Gender Relations,” World Development.

5. Sen, A (1990): “Gender and Cooperative Conflicts,” in Persistent Inequalities.

6. Woolf, V (1929): A Room of One’s Own, Hogarth Press.

7. Delhi High Court (2026): Maintenance judgment under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act.

 

 

 

Parental Permission and Adult Love: The Gujarat Notification and the Death of Choice

-Ramphal Kataria

When the State Becomes a Khap: Marriage, Consent, and Constitutional Betrayal

Marriage did not begin as law. It began as life.

Long before statutes, registrars, or governments, human relationships evolved organically—through companionship, sexual intimacy, survival, and shared responsibility. Anthropological scholarship consistently shows that early human societies functioned without the rigid, institutionalized form of marriage familiar today. Kinship was often communal rather than nuclear, sexual relationships were relatively fluid, and child-rearing was a collective responsibility rather than the exclusive obligation of biological parents. What we now recognize as marriage is therefore not a biological inevitability, but a historical and social construction.¹

This raises a foundational question:
why did marriage evolve into a formal institution at all?

From Intimacy to Institution

Marriage emerged not to regulate love, but to regulate property, lineage, and power.

The transition from nomadic life to settled agriculture fundamentally altered social organization. With the accumulation of surplus wealth and land ownership came anxieties over inheritance: who would succeed whom, which children were legitimate heirs, and how lineage would be preserved. In this transformation, women’s sexuality and reproductive capacity became central to social regulation. As feminist historian Gerda Lerner demonstrated, the institutionalization of marriage was inseparable from the historical subordination of women and the consolidation of patriarchy.²

Marriage thus shifted from a personal bond to a social contract, increasingly enforced through religion, custom, and later the state. Its functions crystallized around:

controlling sexual relationships,

ensuring patriarchal inheritance,

defining legitimacy of children,

assigning gendered economic and caregiving roles, and

stabilizing social hierarchies

In this sense, marriage became a mechanism of social order, not individual freedom. As anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss observed, marriage historically served as an alliance between groups rather than a union of individuals.³

Why the Law Intervened: Protecting the Vulnerable

Paradoxically, the same institution that enabled control and exploitation eventually required legal intervention to mitigate its harms.

Modern marriage statutes were not enacted to moralize intimacy but to curb abuse: child marriage, polygamy, abandonment, denial of maintenance, and dispossession of women and children. Liberal political theory, particularly John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, justified state intervention not to impose morality but to prevent harm to vulnerable individuals.⁴

This rights-based reorientation transformed marriage from a purely religious or customary arrangement into a legal relationship carrying enforceable entitlements. Indian personal laws across religions gradually absorbed this logic. The Special Marriage Act, 1954, was especially significant: it offered a secular framework permitting marriage across caste, religion, and nationality, grounded solely in adult consent. It was conceived as a liberatory statute, not a surveillance mechanism.

Choice as a Constitutional Value

In India, the right to choose one’s partner is not textually enumerated as a “right to marry,” but it flows directly from Article 21 of the Constitution—the guarantee of life and personal liberty. Over the past two decades, constitutional jurisprudence has made this position unequivocal.

The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly affirmed that adult choice in marriage lies beyond the control of parents, community, or state. In Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh (2006), the Court upheld inter-caste marriage and condemned familial violence. In Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M. (2018), it held that the choice of a life partner is intrinsic to personal liberty. In Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), it declared khap diktats unconstitutional, and in Laxmibai Chandaragi v. State of Karnataka (2021), it emphasized that once two adults consent, the law must protect rather than obstruct their union.

The constitutional message is consistent and unambiguous:
adults are citizens, not subjects of family or community rule.

Khap Panchayats and the Sociology of Control

Why, then, does society resist choice marriages with such ferocity?

Khap panchayats and community councils oppose inter-caste and inter-religious marriages not out of concern for individuals, but out of fear of social dilution. Such marriages threaten endogamy—the core mechanism through which caste reproduces itself. B.R. Ambedkar identified endogamy as the essence of caste, arguing that dismantling it would unravel the caste system itself.⁵ Choice marriage is therefore revolutionary precisely because it undermines hierarchy without overt political mobilization.

This is why it is punished—through violence, ostracism, and moral denunciation.

From Social Khaps to Legal Khaps

What marks the present moment as particularly dangerous is that the state itself is increasingly assuming the role of the khap.

This shift is no longer abstract. It has now taken concrete administrative form. The recent notification issued by the Government of Gujarat, mandating prior parental intimation before the registration of marriages between consenting adults, marks a decisive rupture from constitutional jurisprudence. By converting marriage registration into a site of familial scrutiny, the State has effectively imported the logic of khap panchayats into formal governance. What was once social coercion has now been clothed in bureaucratic legality.

This notification cannot be read in isolation. It forms part of a broader pattern across BJP-ruled states such as Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Haryana, where executive orders and statutes regulating interfaith marriages—popularly branded under the rhetoric of “love jihad”—have institutionalised suspicion over adult consent. The cumulative effect is the transformation of the State into a legal khap, arrogating to itself the power to vet, delay, discourage, and delegitimise marriages of choice.

The Manufactured Panic of “Love Jihad”

At the ideological core of these measures lies the conspiracy theory of “love jihad.” Despite the absence of empirical evidence, judicial findings, or credible data, the narrative persists—mobilized by right-wing organizations to police interfaith intimacy, demonize Muslim men, infantilize women, and legitimize state intrusion into private life.

This is not about protection; it is about control. Political theorist Hannah Arendt’s warning is instructive here: revolutionary rhetoric, once institutionalized, often mutates into conservative authoritarianism.⁶

“At the ideological heart of the Gujarat notification, and similar enactments in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Haryana, lies the manufactured conspiracy of “love jihad.” These laws and notifications operate on a shared presumption: that adult women lack agency, that interfaith intimacy is inherently fraudulent, and that the State must intervene as moral guardian. Despite repeated judicial affirmations that consent is paramount, the narrative persists—amplified by right-wing organisations and legitimised by state action”

Two Yardsticks, One Republic

A stark hypocrisy underlies this moral regime.

Urban elites routinely marry across caste, religion, and nationality with social approval and legal ease. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens confront caste prohibitions, gotra taboos, community violence, police harassment, and bureaucratic obstruction. As legal scholar Upendra Baxi has argued, Indian constitutionalism often protects elite autonomy while disciplining the poor and socially marginal.⁷

Freedom becomes selective; autonomy becomes a privilege rather than a right.

Why Choice Marriages Strengthen Society

Contrary to reactionary claims, choice marriages do not erode social cohesion—they deepen it. They break caste silos, humanize religious difference, and foster everyday solidarities that no state policy can manufacture. Each inter-caste or interfaith marriage becomes a lived assertion of constitutional values.

Ambedkar’s famous observation remains relevant: the progress of a society is measured by the status of its women. The freedom to choose one’s partner lies at the heart of that progress.

Constitution vs. Custom

The Indian Constitution does not exist to preserve social orthodoxy. It exists to transform society. To privilege custom over consent is to invert constitutional morality. When the state demands parental approval for adult marriages, it violates Articles 21, 14, and 19, reinforcing patriarchal and communal control.

A democracy cannot demand a father’s permission at the registrar’s door.

“The Gujarat notification mandating parental intimation before marriage registration exemplifies this inversion of constitutional morality, privileging family authority over individual dignity and substituting constitutional citizenship with patriarchal permission.”

Conclusion

Marriage is a human relationship before it is a legal form. Law exists to protect autonomy, not suffocate it. When governments behave like legal khaps, they betray both history and the Constitution. The Gujarat notification is not an aberration but part of a broader authoritarian drift in which intimacy becomes suspect and autonomy negotiable.

A confident society does not fear love across boundaries.
A constitutional state does not police consent.

To defend choice marriage is to defend India’s plural soul.
To resist moral policing is not rebellion—it is constitutional fidelity.

Footnotes

1. Engels, F. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884).

2. Lerner, G. The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford University Press, 1986).

3. Lévi-Strauss, C. The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Beacon Press, 1969).

4. Mill, J.S. On Liberty (1859).

5. Ambedkar, B.R. Annihilation of Caste (1936).

6. Arendt, H. The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951).

7. Baxi, U. “The Crisis of the Indian Legal System,” Oxford University Press (1982).

8. Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh, (2006) 5 SCC 475.

9. Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K.M., (2018) 16 SCC 368.

10. Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, (2018) 7 SCC 192.

11. Laxmibai Chandaragi v. State of Karnataka, (2021) 3 SCC 360.

12. Agnes, F. Law and Gender Inequality (Oxford University Press, 1999).

13. Kannabiran, K. Tools of Justice: Non-discrimination and the Indian Constitution (Routledge, 2012).

From Guardian to Facilitator: India’s Supreme Court and the Normalisation of Power

By Ramphal Kataria

Judicial Courage in America, Judicial Caution in India

“However good a Constitution may be, it is sure to turn out bad if those who are called to work it happen to be a bad lot.”
— B. R. Ambedkar

On February 20, 2026, something increasingly rare occurred in constitutional democracies drifting toward executive dominance: a court said no.

In a 6–3 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down sweeping global tariffs imposed unilaterally by President Donald Trump, holding that emergency economic powers do not authorise tariff-making. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed a first principle of constitutional governance: taxation belongs to the legislature, not the executive. Justice Neil Gorsuch went further, reminding the Court that unaccountable taxation was among the abuses that triggered the American Revolution itself.

“Emergency powers cannot be allowed to swallow constitutional structure.”

This was not merely a trade dispute. It was a reassertion of separation of powers, the major questions doctrine, and—most importantly—judicial courage.

For India, the judgment should have been more than comparative interest. It should have been a mirror.

A Court Designed to Be Supreme—and One That Hesitates to Act Like It

Few constitutional courts in the world are as textually powerful as the Supreme Court of India.

Article 32 allows citizens direct access for enforcement of fundamental rights—what Ambedkar called “the very soul of the Constitution.”
Article 13 empowers judicial invalidation of unconstitutional state action.
Article 141 makes its law binding on all courts.
Article 50 mandates separation of the judiciary from the executive.

And yet, constitutional supremacy on paper has increasingly translated into institutional caution in practice.

“India’s Supreme Court is constitutionally supreme—but institutionally hesitant.”

Where the U.S. Supreme Court confronted executive overreach early and decisively, India’s apex court has too often deferred, delayed, or domesticated constitutional conflict—allowing executive power to harden into fait accompli.

The difference is not constitutional text. It is constitutional temperament.

Article 370: Federalism Rewritten Through Judicial Deference

The most consequential example is the 2023 ruling upholding the unilateral abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status.

The Court accepted executive actions taken under prolonged presidential rule, endorsed retrospective reinterpretations of accession, and treated federal consent as dispensable. A provision meant to manage a sensitive federal compact became a legal pathway for permanent centralisation.

This was not constitutional interpretation—it was constitutional accommodation.

“A Constitution that once restrained power now explains it.”

Contrast this with the U.S. tariff ruling. There, even foreign policy and economic urgency could not substitute for legislative authorisation. In India, by contrast, the Court allowed executive convenience to override federal structure—without even invoking the basic structure doctrine it once used to restrain Parliament itself.

Ayodhya: Law Condemned, Illegality Rewarded

The Ayodhya title judgment is often defended as pragmatic conflict resolution. But constitutional courts do not exist to manage sentiment; they exist to enforce principle.

The Court acknowledged that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was illegal—then nonetheless awarded the disputed land for temple construction. Illegality was condemned rhetorically and rewarded substantively.

“The judgment punished illegality in words and rewarded it in outcome.”

This marked a profound shift—from rights-based adjudication to majoritarian accommodation. Faith inherited the fruits of illegality, and constitutional morality yielded to political closure.

Ambedkar had warned precisely against this temptation: constitutional morality is not natural; it must be cultivated—especially when public sentiment demands otherwise.

Electoral Bonds: Judicial Correction Without Democratic Repair

When the Court finally struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme in 2024, the verdict was legally sound—and constitutionally incomplete.

For seven years, anonymous corporate funding distorted electoral competition, entrenched inequality, and hollowed out democratic transparency. The Court intervened only after the damage was structurally irreversible, and declined to order restitution or accountability.

“Justice delayed here was not neutral; it reshaped democracy.”

Compare this with the U.S. tariff ruling, where the Court openly contemplated refunds running into hundreds of billions of dollars—recognising that unconstitutional extraction cannot simply be declared unlawful and left uncorrected.

In India, relief was declaratory. Consequences were allowed to stand.

Liberty Deferred: The Normalisation of Pre-Trial Punishment

Nowhere is judicial abdication more visible than in prolonged pre-trial incarceration under anti-terror laws.

The continued incarceration of Umar Khalid—over five years without trial—exposes how Article 21 collapses when courts normalise delay. Bail hearings are adjourned, trials stagnate, and constitutional guarantees become ornamental.

The Court continues to repeat that “bail is the rule, jail the exception.” In practice, the reverse has become routine.

“Liberty survives in doctrine; incarceration governs reality.”

This is not judicial restraint. It is judicial participation in carceral governance.

Delay as Constitutional Method

Judicial delay is often defended as backlog or institutional overload. In constitutional cases, this explanation no longer holds.

Delay has become a mode of governance.

It allows executive actions to harden into irreversible reality.
It converts interim silence into final outcomes.
It avoids accountability by issuing no reasons at all.

Challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act, electoral roll revisions, and surveillance regimes remain pending while their consequences reshape citizenship and political participation. By the time adjudication arrives—if it arrives—the constitutional injury has already been normalised.

“Delay is the perfect judicial alibi: it changes everything while saying nothing.”

The Article 370 challenge illustrates this perfectly. It was not heard when the injury was reversible. It was decided after statehood dissolved, demographics altered, and restoration became practically unimaginable.

Delay here was not incidental. It was determinative.

Selective Urgency and the Politics of the Docket

The Court insists it does not choose politics. But it undeniably chooses timing—and timing, in constitutional law, is destiny.

It moves swiftly when institutional power or executive validation is at stake.
It moves slowly when minority rights, electoral fairness, or ideological scrutiny are involved.

Hate speech by powerful incumbents is routinely deflected downward. Constitutional scrutiny is politely avoided.

This asymmetry is not accidental. It reflects priorities.

What One Court Remembered—and the Other Forgot

The U.S. tariff ruling rested on three foundational commitments:

Separation of Powers — Core fiscal authority belongs to the legislature.
Major Questions Doctrine — Vast economic consequences require explicit statutory mandate.
Judicial Courage — Courts must enforce limits even against dominant executives.

India’s Supreme Court has too often inverted these principles—treating executive intent as constitutional wisdom and dissent as inconvenience.

The difference is not law. It is will.

Ambedkar’s Warning—and Khanna’s Example

Ambedkar foresaw this danger with chilling clarity: constitutional breakdown rarely occurs through dramatic overthrow. It occurs through institutional acquiescence.

During the Emergency, Justice H. R. Khanna proved that a single judge could save a Constitution—by dissenting when all others yielded.

Today, the tragedy is not absence of precedent. It is absence of resolve.

Conclusion: The Quiet Death of Supremacy

The tragedy is not that India’s Supreme Court sometimes rules in favour of the government. Courts inevitably do.

The tragedy is that it increasingly fails to assert its own supremacy—not over Parliament, but over constitutional meaning itself.

Courts possess neither purse nor sword. Their authority rests entirely on public confidence. When citizens begin to perceive the Supreme Court not as an independent arbiter but as a silent partner in executive consolidation, constitutional democracy enters perilous terrain.

“If the strongest executive in the world can be restrained by his court, India’s crisis is no longer about power—but about judicial will.”

A Constitution does not die when it is amended, ignored, or even violated.
It dies when its guardian decides that waiting is safer than enforcing.

Footnotes

1. In Re: Article 370 of the Constitution of India, (2023) SCC OnLine SC 1478.

2. M. Siddiq (D) Thr. Lrs. v. Mahant Suresh Das, (2019) 18 SCC 1.

3. Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India, (2024) SCC OnLine SC 123.

4. Umar Khalid v. State (NCT of Delhi), Bail Orders & Transfer Petitions, 2020–2024.

5. Trump v. United States, 602 U.S. ___ (2026).

6. West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. 697 (2022).

7. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).

8. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, (1973) 4 SCC 225.

9. State of Rajasthan v. Balchand, (1977) 4 SCC 308.

10. Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol. VII, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.