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.
