India, June 11 -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the unpaid domestic work performed by homemakers must be monetised at a minimum of Rs.30,000 per month while calculating compensation for their deaths in road mishaps, declaring that homemakers deserve to be recognised as "nation builders".

In a significant ruling likely to reshape compensation awards in motor accident cases across the country, a bench of justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh rejected the long-standing judicial practice of equating the notional income of homemakers with the wages of skilled labourers, holding that such an approach fails to capture the true economic and social value of domestic care work.

"We have evolved a new principle and laid down that l...