Maids in India

While our governments has numerous plans for making millionaires into billionaires, the silent contributors for our post liberalization economic growth are deliberately ignored and marginalised. Maids in India are one of them. A maid is a female person who works within the employer's household. They perform a variety of household services for an individual or a family, from providing care for children and elderly dependents to housekeeping, including cleaning and household maintenance. Other responsibilities may include cooking, laundry and ironing, shopping for food and other household errands. Such work has always needed to be done and is physically much harder.

• Domestic workers come from vulnerable communities and backward areas. The majority are poor, illiterate, unskilled and do not understand the urban labour market. Their work is undervalued, underpaid and poorly regulated. 
• Lack of decent wages, work conditions and defined work time, violence, abuse, sexual harassment at workplace, lack of welfare measures and lack of skill development avenues resulting in stagnation are major issues that they face.
• Post Independence, the Government passed more than 40 Labour Legislations. These legislations have benefited only the workers of the organized sector, when in actual fact 93% of labour fall into the unorganized sector.
• It is one thing to migrate to a city seeking glamour, an exciting life, and better opportunities. It is something else to be forced out of own village by economic hardship. Distress migration puts the migrant, who is often illiterate, at the mercy of human traffickers. These young girls are vulnerable to exploitation every step of the way.
• Many of the domestic workers in Delhi are from the most backward regions and communities, and tribals, from Jharkhand. 
• All persons in the age group from 5 to 17 years are defined as child labour. Child labour robs minors of the opportunity to enjoy their childhood, go to school, and have a decent shot at success. It condemns them to a life of limited opportunities. 
• Fundamental rights of children must be protected and that they are accorded the opportunity to go after their dreams and aspirations. Child labour is a symbol of a society that has lost its way. The innocence of a child should never be taken away for the purpose of making the lives of adults easier. It is both unfair and morally unacceptable.
• The first thing servanting does is dehumanise us as well as servants. Servanting is slavery by another name.
• Those of us who keep servants grow up being accustomed to rules that are barbaric. Almost all are familiar with rules and practice of domestic servanting. These rules have become normalised and acceptable.
• Many maids are live-in domestics. They sleep in the kitchen or small rooms, such as a box room, usually on floor.
• Many maids in India are child labour.
• Maids have to eat the left overs at the end and also use the used clothes.
• Maids generally have to work 24 * 7 * 365 with no rest days or holidays or any benefits.
• Maids are permanently trapped in menial jobs with meagre earnings, for life.
• Maids may lose their job at the slightest irritation they may cause to the house-lady.
• Maids shall have to bear the tantrums of house lady and other members of the house as well without grumbling all the times.
• While many maids are treated well by their employers, abuse, mental, physical or sexual, of these women is not uncommon. 
• Maids may have to stand scrutiny for any missing valuables misplaced, lost or stolen by family members.
• The only positive contribution of maid system is that it helps them escape from extreme poverty and hunger.
• The maids in India are largely overworked, underpaid and abused.

In cities, numbers of female workers aged 15-59 went up 70% from around 14.7 million in 2001 to over 25 million in 2011. Between 1991 and 2001 there was a 120% increase in the numbers of domestic help. More people are prosperous, so even when women in affluent households stay home, those homes can still afford and want to hire domestic help. The silent contribution of maids in India for the nation's economic prosperity is neither acknowledged nor recognized.

So long as maids continue to work as domestic help,
that country remains a backward country.

On one hand we fight for our democratic and individual rights on other hand we treat our housemaid, personal driver, gardener and security guard etc like slaves reflecting our hypocrisy and bourgeois mentality. This reminds me of Ambedkar telling constitution assembly in 1946 "Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic”. Equality in India is a distant mirage. Until then might is right. It is the duty every social group to fight for their legitimate rights and negotiate for right remuneration. Failing which they stand exploited and under paid.