Aren't they critical part of our society?

I always find verifiable data and information answering lot of questions and clearing doubts. In statistics terms, it gives trends, seasonality, prove or disprove hypotheses, which helps us to substantiate facts and discard factual errors. Economics data is something that fascinates me at present because of my job as well as due to my general interest in the same. A significant data in the field is the economic value generated inside our country or the GDP (not going into detailed technicalities). Every analyst speaks of how much a sector contributes to the growth of GDP or how much it pulls down and other stuff. But no one speaks anything about how much housemaids (I don’t know if there is any better word to use here) contribute to this economy. 

Even before women started coming into the skilled jobs that generate income (If I may count a homemaker as a skilled person who is not generating income in economics sense) in large numbers, we had housemaids. Then, it was mainly supporting work. But now, they have become a critical ingredient of every family such that sometimes a child is more attached to them than their mothers.  But in the social psyche, where do they stand? Does anyone care about their lives? What pushes them to do such hard jobs? Since they are mainly women, what do their husbands do?

I stay in an apartment where the housemaid comes every day to clean and she is paid an amount less than Rs.1000. Since I’m not paying it, I never thought if it was enough. She does the job at hand in 20-30 minutes and does the same at other nearby apartments and goes back to her place from where she travels around 1-2 hours in the morning to come for work. She doesn’t come strictly on time, but she comes almost every day and tells in advance when she doesn’t come. I’m not sure if she does the same work throughout the day too. Sometimes, she comes even when she is ill. She has two sons; one is doing his engineering and the younger one in school. Somehow with her income and with some help from the houses where she work, she managed to pay the fees and other related expenses. Her husband doesn’t go for any work.  

Currently, the elder son has some health issues and he had to be admitted in hospital and she was not able to understand and explain what his illness is. The doctor told that it is fever and she was not able to understand what it means. He was taking medicines for a month. Yesterday, she came for work and told that his son needs an operation. She looked so absent minded while doing the work. After all, she is the mother. A mother may be conscious about what she is doing even when she’s very sick; but if her child is sick, I don’t know how to explain how a mother feels. She told me that she doesn’t know what exactly is his illness or why is he being operated. I didn't know how to tell her that everything will be ok, even without knowing what exactly is the issue. Today, she didn’t come.

I’m not sure how many families would have sustained if the considerable inputs from housemaids had not been there. The surprising part is that we will easily stereotype them as depicted in that Tata Docomo Ad. May be the company had just used the normal societal notions about housemaids.  When Chetan Bhagat said he helped his maid and her daughter, he was made fun of in every way possible in social media. Nobody was trying to understand the significance of what he tried to convey. He even mentioned that his family warned him before he helped.  I don’t know the root cause of such behavior among us. May be this is what we have ‘learned’ over decades and centuries. May be this the dark side of our 'glorious' traditions. May be we are taking so many things for granted, about which we don’t even think or ponder about.  Coming back to the economics point, we may not be even realizing the value they are adding to this country by doing much work which don't count in any GDP numbers. 

Like almost in any social aspect, here too I have only questions. Why do many of us treat them like second class citizens, only because they were born in such conditions and had to struggle in life even from their time of birth and so they are unprivileged? Why do many of us treat them inhumanly for even the most trivial of mistakes? Why wouldn’t we think that their sons/daughters can also be like our sons/daughters, if proper resources are provided? Why wouldn’t we think that they also have same rights as we enjoy?  

One more point. In the traditional “breadwinner” stereotype, she is the one who is running the family in most cases I have seen, including the one I mentioned above. If he was a responsible man, how would have been her life? I still don’t get the idea of not taking any responsibility, being a husband and father. May be our patriarchal leanings never taught men to own up responsibilities, but to have only power.  Here again, I’m lost. I have no idea. Why is it so? Is there something really wrong with how our society has shaped up? I don’t know.  The questions just remain.