prasad1
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In the decade after liberalisation, there was a nearly 120% rise in the number of domestic workers in India from 7.4 lakh in 1991 to 16.2 lakh workers by 2001, says author Tripti Lahiri quoting census data in her recently released book, Maid In India. Women constitute over two-thirds of the workforce in this unorganised sector, which also includes chauffeurs and security guards, according to Lahiri’s analysis.
Female domestic workers usually come from India’s least-developed regions, such as Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Assam. Their journeys are cross-country and transnational, as they seek work as servants in affluent homes. They are, often barely of legal working age, their wages less than the minimum fixed by the government. Their employers range from India’s elite to its nouveau riche, many of who still believe in the traditional divide between servants and masters. Abuse, mental, physical or sexual, of these women is not uncommon. One such dispute between a family and their Muslim domestic worker led to a riot-like situation in a gated community in Noida on Wednesday, July 12.
This is the world of Maid in India.
Through anecdotal evidence, Lahiri charts the sector’s trajectory and details the business of brokers and agents and exposes the workers’ limited access to justice and formalization. She also draws from her own personal experiences of engaging domestic help. “We eat first, they later; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we call them by their names and they address us by titles,” she writes.
Read more at: http://www.sify.com/finance/overwor...omestic-helps-news-finance-rhqnzAjchegcg.html
Either this article is dated and out of touch with today's reality or it is localized.
When I speak with housewives in India, they say that the servants rule and terrorize them. The pay for the servants has gone up and the demands are exorbitant. Some servants want their own assistants.
So there is a disconnect.
Female domestic workers usually come from India’s least-developed regions, such as Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Assam. Their journeys are cross-country and transnational, as they seek work as servants in affluent homes. They are, often barely of legal working age, their wages less than the minimum fixed by the government. Their employers range from India’s elite to its nouveau riche, many of who still believe in the traditional divide between servants and masters. Abuse, mental, physical or sexual, of these women is not uncommon. One such dispute between a family and their Muslim domestic worker led to a riot-like situation in a gated community in Noida on Wednesday, July 12.
This is the world of Maid in India.
Through anecdotal evidence, Lahiri charts the sector’s trajectory and details the business of brokers and agents and exposes the workers’ limited access to justice and formalization. She also draws from her own personal experiences of engaging domestic help. “We eat first, they later; we sit on chairs and they on the floor; we call them by their names and they address us by titles,” she writes.
Read more at: http://www.sify.com/finance/overwor...omestic-helps-news-finance-rhqnzAjchegcg.html
Either this article is dated and out of touch with today's reality or it is localized.
When I speak with housewives in India, they say that the servants rule and terrorize them. The pay for the servants has gone up and the demands are exorbitant. Some servants want their own assistants.
So there is a disconnect.