Daycare regulation: Videos from a daycare centre inside Capgemini’s Bengaluru campus showed toddlers allegedly being locked in bathrooms, sprayed with water and put inside the drum of a front-loading washing machine. Police booked five caregivers and made arrests. Capgemini temporarily closed the centre, which was operated by Little Scholars, an external provider.
The police investigation is continuing. Little Scholars subsequently alleged that some former employees had staged videos as part of an extortion attempt, a claim that investigators will have to examine. That does not dispose of the questions raised by the case. The Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has itself called for a uniform regulatory framework for daycare centres in the state.
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Parents who leave their child at a crèche make an unusually large transfer of responsibility. Small children cannot narrate what happened to them during the day. In the Bengaluru case, parents of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl told police that their daughter has developed an intense fear of bathrooms after joining the centre.
The question therefore extends beyond the criminal case. India has expanded women’s participation in the labour force without building an equally dependable system of childcare. The female labour force participation rate rose from 23.3% in 2017-18 to 41.7% in 2023-24. For many salaried households, dependable childcare determines whether two parents can work or not.
Workplace crèches have become economic infrastructure
Families have traditionally filled the childcare gap with grandparents. That arrangement remains important, but it cannot be a substitute for a trusted childcare system. Raising a toddler is demanding work, and grandparents are neither available nor able to provide full-time care in every household.
The alternative for many working parents is paid daycare. They are purchasing supervision, but the transaction rests mainly on trust. A parent can inspect the premises and speak to the staff. The parent cannot observe how a two-year-old is treated during eight hours of the working day.
Indian labour law recognises the importance of childcare. Section 67 of the Code on Social Security requires establishments with 50 or more employees to provide a crèche facility, either independently or through common facilities. The four labour codes came into effect on November 21, 2025, replacing the earlier Maternity Benefit Act.
That obligation answers one question: whether qualifying employers must provide access to childcare. It does much less to answer another: who continuously assures the quality of the care being purchased?
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India’s daycare regulation has an enforcement gap
India is not without standards. The ministry of women and child development has issued National Minimum Standards and Protocol for Crèches, while the Palna programme lays down norms for government-supported crèche services. Earlier national policies have also specified standards covering infrastructure, safety, caregiver-child ratios, staff qualifications, nutrition and child protection.
The weakness lies in enforcement. India does not have a uniformly enforced national licensing and inspection framework covering the private daycare industry. Regulation differs by state and by the type of institution. The Bengaluru case prompted Karnataka’s child rights commission to seek mandatory registration and stronger supervision of daycare facilities.
That distinction matters. Publishing a standard and enforcing it are different administrative acts. A credible system requires a register of providers, minimum qualifications, staffing ratios, child-protection procedures, complaint mechanisms, inspection powers and penalties for repeated violations.
Reports about the Bengaluru centre make the oversight question more troubling. Investigators alleged that concerns about treatment of children had been raised earlier and that an employee who complained was dismissed. Capgemini says its daycare providers undergo due diligence and compliance checks, and that it is reassessing providers across its Indian facilities after the incident.
If earlier complaints were indeed made, the issue is no longer confined to the conduct of individual caregivers. It becomes a question about the system through which complaints reached the contractor and the company, and what happened after they arrived.
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Workplace daycare cannot outsource responsibility
The distinction between employer and contractor means little to a parent. Employees leaving their children at a crèche inside a corporate campus are entitled to assume that the company has satisfied itself about the people, procedures and safeguards operating there.
A service agreement cannot settle that obligation. Companies offering workplace childcare should audit providers, verify caregiver backgrounds and qualifications, establish an escalation channel for complaints, examine CCTV records when complaints arise and commission independent safety inspections. Procurement cannot be the final layer of supervision.
Childcare work itself also requires a different approach. A worker entrusted with children too young to report mistreatment requires training in child development, first aid, nutrition, behaviour management and child-protection procedures. The Palna framework already recognises minimum qualifications for crèche workers and helpers. A private childcare market should not operate with weaker expectations merely because parents rather than government are paying the bill.
Daycare safety needs licensing and inspection
The immediate reform is less complicated than creating another large institution. Existing national standards can form the baseline for state registration and inspection regimes. Every private daycare centre should disclose its licence or registration status, staffing ratios, staff qualifications, recent inspection findings and complaint procedure.
Other countries have made these functions visible to parents. Ofsted publishes inspection reports for registered childcare providers in England. Australia’s National Quality Framework places childcare services under national standards, assessment and quality ratings administered through state and territory regulators, with ratings publicly available.
India need not copy either model. The useful principle is simpler: childcare quality cannot depend on the diligence of individual parents or the reputation of an employer.
The Bengaluru case will ultimately turn on evidence collected by the police and other authorities. The policy question does not have to wait for the criminal investigation. A workplace crèche remains part of the workplace even when another company operates it. For parents, the name on the outsourcing contract is irrelevant. The institution that offers the facility must remain answerable for the care delivered inside it.
Dr Deepa Palathingal is Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, CHRIST University, Bangalore. Sritirupa Dey is a policy intern at the Centre for studies in population and Development.