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ShareSome years ago, a man wrote a letter to a newspaper full of outrage that it had carried an article suggesting that the government was considering a bill to give rights to domestic workers. This is complete poppycock, or words to that effect, he spluttered. In my house, domestics are treated very well. Why, we even give leftover food and allow them to sit at our feet when we watch television. It is possible that he belonged to a generation that did not grasp the irony of what he was saying. But it is more than likely that he spoke for many who employ people to work in their homes. We pay them, they become like members of our family, they bunk when they feel like it, they keep taking loans, they come from a different class and we all know that, they sulk and moan when given extra work and when they go home to their villages we have to do all the work ourselves which is very troublesome. The upshot is, what more could these people want?
In an extreme case, two years ago a family tortured and killed a young 10-year-old girl who worked in their house. Her crime: she tried on a lipstick that belonged to her employer while cleaning her dressing table. The family has been convicted, and perhaps that is an unfair example of the kind of treatment meted out to domestics, but it's still more common than you could imagine. The odds are that domestics have more horror stories about their employers than the other way around.
The domestic workers' welfare board bill was finally passed this week in both houses of legislature in Maharashtra after 20 years of lobbying. When it is implemented, domestics will be entitled to weekly offs, paid annual and sick leave from employers and provident fund and education aid and health insurance from the state. This is a welcome attempt to regularise what is a vital but highly disorganised industry.
It is a fact -- however unpalatable to those who depend on them -- that as India moves up the economic scale, domestics as we know them today will become a dying breed. If you give them respect as a profession today, it makes it a viable job option as years go by. Look at it this way -- almost no domestic you speak to would like the same fate visited on their offspring. It is only the endless spiral of poverty that keeps them there. The first hint of escape and rest assured they'll be out -- as has happened in the rest of the developed world.
Indian cities are going to have an additional problem. The cries to move slums out of city areas are getting louder. But do that, and out goes an entire workforce that keeps a city alive. All your domestics, hawkers, vendors, electricians, plumbers, dhobis will become scarce or be relocated into the distant suburbs. If they drive you crazy if they come late when they live next door, imagine what'll happen when they have to travel 30km?
Everything about domestic service is uncomfortable because the subject exposes us -- the employers -- and our employees to our basest selves. We want someone to do the work we do not want to do ourselves, but we really don't want to pay that much for it. We know the people who work for us are poor and we want to exploit that. Even if we don't want to, we end up doing it anyway. That's the nature of the beast and this bill gives us the chance to rectify those errors and provide dignity to those who are vital to our well-being and extremely convenient to have around.
There are issues of compassion, of fairness, of providing dignity but all this sounds like NGO-speak to a middle class populace terrified of its monthly budgets going up. On a personal note, two Sundays ago I was invited to lunch by my maid and my cook. It was a long-pending engagement which I finally managed to fulfil. We walked over half a km through the slums of Khar and climbed up a rickety staircase to one room. There a sumptuous spread awaited me. I asked why there was no furniture and they laughed. What was the use when they had to change rooms every 11 months and every monsoon, when the drains overflowed, those on the ground floor were in knee-deep water?
They were not asking for sympathy; they were amused by my naivete. I would wish, however, for change for them. For a better life, for more benefits, for a life less dependent on the whims of a nitpicking memsaab or a lecherous saab, for a police force that did not suspect them first and a chance to fulfil their hope for a better life. Perhaps low cost housing benefits ought to be next? Cities cannot only be full of rich and middle class people.
Sentimental claptrap? Middle class guilt -- India is full of poor people and so on? Perhaps. And perhaps not, if this bill makes the changes it is supposed to. It can only help all of us.
