Think about your morning.

Someone swept your floor before you had your first cup of chai. Someone washed last night’s dishes while you were still asleep. Someone dressed your child, chopped your vegetables, and quietly disappeared before you even registered they had been there.

Now ask yourself: do you know if she has health insurance? Does she have a pension? If her mother fell sick tomorrow — the way mothers do — would she have any safety net at all beyond asking you for a loan and hoping you say yes?

Most of us don’t know. Most of us, if we’re honest, haven’t thought to ask.

For 17-year-old Ayaan Wadhwa, that question became impossible to ignore.

The moment that changed everything

It began with a small but uncomfortable moment at his own front door.

The woman who worked in the Wadhwa household needed money. Her mother was ill. She had no savings, no insurance, and no fallback of any kind, so she did the only thing she could: she asked Ayaan’s mother for a loan and hoped for the best.

It was the kind of request that plays out quietly in homes across Mumbai every day. Most families either say yes or no and move on. Ayaan couldn’t.

“I just kept thinking — if we didn’t give it to her, what would she have done?” he says. “People around me have medical insurance, and that’s when I realised that most workers don’t have access to something that basic.”

He went back to his room and started researching. What he found surprised him.

The government had, in fact, created something for exactly this situation. The e-Shram card — a central welfare scheme for unorganised sector workers — could provide domestic workers with a registered digital identity, accident insurance, access to housing grants, and even a pension.

And yet, when Ayaan returned and asked the woman who had worked in his home for years whether she had heard of any of these schemes, she had never heard of a single one.

“That was the moment,” he says. “Not anger exactly. More like — how is this possible? And then: how do I fix it?”

A booklet, a building, and 80 strangers

What followed was not a sudden burst of activism. Ayaan’s mother, Pinky Panjwani, watched the process unfold and was careful to describe it accurately.

“It wasn’t a sudden revelation,” she says. “It was gradual curiosity. He started asking questions, then researching. Then one day, he said he wanted to conduct a workshop. He was 15, so I told him we’d do it.”

During the summer of 2025, Ayaan began building a booklet from scratch. He researched central and state government schemes available to domestic workers, simplified the information into accessible language, and translated it into Hindi and Marathi. While he could understand Hindi well, speaking it fluently was another challenge. So he practised until he became comfortable enough to conduct workshops himself.

Pinky helped with logistics — approaching sceptical housing society committees, arranging printing, and booking halls. But Ayaan made the pitch to building managements himself. Some were unconvinced. He persisted anyway.

The first workshop was held in their own apartment complex. He had no idea how many people would show up.

80 to 90 workers came.

Armed with his laptop, Ayaan sat with them one by one........

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