NYTimes | At the heart of the fracas surrounding the arrest of an Indian diplomat
in New York who promised to pay her housekeeper $9.75 per hour, in
compliance with United States labor rules, but instead paid her $3.31
per hour, is India’s dirty secret: One segment of the Indian population
routinely exploits another, and the country’s labor laws allow gross
mistreatment of domestic workers.
India is furious that the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade, was
strip-searched and kept in a cell in New York with criminals.
Retaliation from the newly assertive but otherwise bureaucracy-ridden
nation was swift. American diplomats were stripped of identity cards
granting them diplomatic benefits, and security barriers surrounding the
American Embassy in New Delhi were hauled away. A former finance
minister suggested that India respond by arresting same-sex partners of
American diplomats, since the Indian Supreme Court recently upheld a
section of a Colonial-era law that criminalizes homosexuality.
Notwithstanding legitimate Indian concerns about whether American
marshals used correct protocol in the way they treated a diplomat, the
truth is that India is party to an exploitative system that needs to be
scrutinized.
I grew up in a middle-class household in India in the ’80s; my parents
were schoolteachers, and our lifestyle was not lavish by any means. I
received new clothes once a year; I don’t recall ever going to a
restaurant; our family couldn’t afford a car, so we used a scooter. But
we always had a live-in housekeeper who cooked and washed our clothes,
while a man came by every other day to sweep and mop the floors.
This sort of arrangement is typical of middle-class life in India. (The
wealthy have multiple servants: drivers, security guards, babysitters
for their kids, cooks, and household maids who wash dishes and sweep
floors.) My parents were not unkind people, and my mother paid our
housekeeper above the market rate, but our family, too, was part of the
unfair system that pays servants a fraction of living wages. Even
liberal Indians who voice concern about human rights in other contexts
often don’t see this exploitation for what it really is. I have no doubt
that if I hadn’t come to the United States in my 20s, I, too, would
have hired a maid whom I would have paid standard Indian wages, which by
any objective standards are ridiculously low.
Perhaps it’s impossible for mind-sets to change without a long drawn-out
series of events. In my case, moving to a country where labor laws
exist and are enforced, combined with the perception that detachment
facilitates, allowed me to recalibrate my attitude.
In urban India, revolution of any kind in favor of the rights of the
underclass has been largely absent. The feudal mind-set of otherwise
educated people and their lack of qualms about underpaying the poor and
disadvantaged are alive and well.
