She helps you with cleaning your house, or with washing those smelly-dirty utensils, or washing stained clothes, drying them, or maybe taking care of your child, helping serve the guests, and the list goes on. Who is she? A Superwoman? That’s the domestic worker, or domestic helper, or the maid, or Didi. Whatever you call her, but there is one common thing, that our lives depend upon them for smoother functioning. One such domestic worker is Mallika, who has dedicated more than 20 years of her life to the fast paced life in the National Capital – Delhi. Mallik has a lot of stories about a common household, and the Indian laws who unsee people like her. In the absence of any statutory benefits like Provident Fund or Medical Security, know how people like Mallika make it in their lives.
Mallika reflecting upon the Misery of Domestic Workers in India
Difficulty with Language
When Mallika first landed in the National Capital in the early 21st Century, she was not very much familiar with Hindi. It took her quite some time and a few lessons from her husband and relatives to understand a bit of Hindi to help her get work. When she was first introduced in a Delhi household for cleaning work, it took her 3 attempts to make the house owner understand her name, due to her Bengali accent. She was slow at understanding the words of her employer in the beginning and did not understand anything at all. This would anger the employer who in turn would utter some harsh words in a demeaning tone. Years passed by and Mallika eventually got comfortable with understanding the language and making others understand her words.
Discrimination
Back in her hometown, Mallika had experienced scarcity of resources, and everything was counted. Each member of the house had a handful of clothes for all seasons, which could be packed in one big bag. There were counted utensils as well, same for all occasions. But when Delhi customs hit her, Mallika realized that there was an abundance of clothes and utensils. There were separate crockery sets to be used in the household and those used for serving food to guests. The house owners had separate plates, glasses, teacups, etc. for domestic workers like her, which no one else would touch.
Inhumane Treatment
People who were working in offices, apparently promoting work-life balance on their LinkedIn profiles, would want Mallika to start her day early, and stay till late wrapping all the work and preparing for the next day. Nobody cared if she had rested enough, but everyone would lose their calm if she would stop by to watch the TV for a minute or answer a phone call during her work time. While everyone knew that Mallika was a human whose body needed fuel and also created waste, there was no surety about clean food, and no toilets for her use. She could clean their toilets but could not use them in an emergency.
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Personal Life of a Domestic Worker
Almost two decades ago, Mallika left her village, moving to an unknown city to earn a livelihood to help her family back in the village. She had 2 children at that time, so she brought a son with her and left the daughter to stay with her old mother-in-law. Another son was born when she was in Delhi. Her daughter did not have many memories of her parents or siblings. Now, she is married and has her own world, and now is no more time to make memories.
City life is not so easy for people from small villages. They would spend what they earn. Mallika would work all day long to earn and make ends meet. At the end of the month, she would hope to get the money to take care of expenses and make some savings. To her surprise, her husband would steal money from her wallet, and would beat her when she confronted him. Her husband beating her was not a once in a month aspect, it was a ritual whenever he was drunk or did not like something about what Mallika said or did. When asked why Mallika did not report him, she said that husbands beating their wives was not odd in their village. If at all she would approach the Police, they would take him away, and she wanted to stay with him and their children, regardless of how he treated her.
No Job Security
When Mallika was working at a household where the working woman got pregnant and staying at home when she neared her due date, she came to know about the maternity benefits policy. Mallika shared about the time when her third child was born in Delhi. She was working and pregnancy came up as a surprise. She kept working in a routine manner without any difference, but as months passed, her belly grew bigger and it got harder to comfortably do the cleaning work. At this point, her employer told her to take a leave till her delivery, fearing that they would be in trouble if anything happened to her. Eventually, she had to stop working. She spent almost a year without any income, running the house on her left out savings she made without her husband knowing.
Whenever she has to visit her village for 15-20 days, people would replace her services, and she has to start from scratch when she returns, looking for new homes to work at. During COVID-19 when everyone sought to stay back at their homes, it was the hardest for domestic workers like Mallika. There was no information about when things will get back to normal. Nobody wanted her to work at their homes, fearing the infection. She was willing to work but had no means to earn money to feed her family.
Salary Deduction
In the absence of any fixed minimum wages, the trend decides how much domestic workers get paid. It is mostly the carpet area for cleaning, number of people in the house for utensils, washing clothes or cooking, etc. which leads to deciding the worker’s salary. For full time domestic help, it may be the wholesome work or number of hours. In any case, the amount is meagre. However, Mallika shares that her monthly wage depends upon the moods of her employers, whether they wish to pay in the first week of month or delay. Though she has fixed 3 paid leaves per month, she is not paid extra when she does not avail them in full. However, whenever the number extends to 4 or 5 due to some illness or other reasons, money is deducted from her wages. Sometimes, she would not even get her wage and fired from work without any notice.
There was this one instance when Mallika accidentally slipped a vase while dusting, which eventually broke into pieces. Since the vase was expensive, her employer deducted its cost from her salary as compensation along with orally humiliating her. Since then, Mallika vowed not to take up the task of dusting in any household.
Financial Status
People like Mallika leave their house, family and village in search of means to earn money. However, once they get a foothold in this profession as domestic workers, there is no stability. They keep on working, looking forward to making things better. However, money comes and goes by, just in the blink of an eye. They have to send money to their family in the village, they have to take care of rents, education expenses of their children, food, and other basic requirements. Since big cities have big expenses, savings never become a reality. So, as Mallika says, her financial footing is the same as 20 years ago. She does not own a piece of land property in Delhi, or even a piece of gold jewellery.
The Extreme Side
When asked if Mallika had ever been abused physically or sexually at her workplace, she outrightly denied. However, she shared about one of her neighbour’s daughter who was 14 Y/O and also worked as a domestic worker on a full time basis. There was this one point when her employer, an educated couple, beat her too much while alleging theft. That incident shook them all, but there is no protection in place, even today. There have been instances when domestic workers were reported to police for theft, and were eventually released since nothing was found in their possession.
Happiness Factor
When asked if Mallika was happy with her work or would want her family to join in the domestic workforce, Mallika outrightly denied. She said that although she did not want to, her daughter has come here to work like her. But if it was upon her, she would make all her children study hard and become independent in any other profession except domestic work. The reason being that although not everyone was the same, there was no respect for them. People want their household work done, but do not care if we have had our meals or need any kind of rest. They do not think we should get any time-off or deserve to celebrate any festivals. We don’t have any gazetted holidays.
