guardian.co.uk,
Gethin Chamberlain, Saturday 7 April 2012
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| Dr Sanjay Verma, centre, and Dr Sumita Verma, right, are arrested at their home in Dwarka, near Delhi, on 4 April 2012. Photograph: Hindustan Times/ Getty Images |
It was the
13-year-old maid's desperate cries for help that finally alerted neighbours to
her plight. She was standing, sobbing, on the balcony of the upmarket Delhi
apartment. Her employers had locked her in, she said, and gone on holiday.
Finally rescued by a firefighter, she told a tale that prompted a widespread
display of national revulsion.
Her employers
– middle-class doctors Sanjay and Sumita Verma – had "bought" her
from an agency, which had in turn bought her from her uncle. She was hungry,
she said, because they barely fed her. She received no pay and was regularly
beaten. Their latest act of cruelty had been to lock her in and go on holiday
to Thailand.
The couple
claim that they thought the girl was 18 and deny mistreating her, but they were
roundly vilified and have been refused bail. In court the couple were accused
of "subjecting the victim to a treatment which can be best described as
torture".
Perhaps the
most puzzling aspect of the story is why it has caused such fury in a country
where, after all, the sight of a youthful servant rarely raises a flicker of
curiosity. Delhi's thriving middle class would crumble without its army of
domestic servants, whose presence enables couples to go out to work and
continue to boost an economy projected to be the largest in the world by 2050.
The most
liberal members of that society think nothing of employing a maid, a driver, a
sweeper, a cook, a gardener and a couple of house boys who sleep on the roof,
or in tiny shared rooms.
The
International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least four
million domestic servants in India, including about 100,000 children working in
and around Delhi. While it has been illegal to employ anyone under the age of
14 since 2006, that has done little to hinder the placement agencies which
routinely hire out trafficked children.
A good maid
might earn 3,500 rupees (£43) a month, if she is very lucky, or about half the
legal minimum wage for an unskilled worker in Delhi. The less fortunate are
bought from brokers and kept as unpaid skivvies – simply fed and given
somewhere to sleep.
A company
called Domestic Help in India is one of thousands of agencies supplying staff.
Based in Gurgaon, near Delhi, the company charges employers 16,000 rupees to
arrange the hire of a maid for 11 months. Its website is packed with adverts
for staff, who can be selected on the basis of age (15 and upwards), religion
and gender. Gurpreet, a maid/cook, has two years' experience and costs 3,000
rupees a month. Harjett, who has one year's experience, is available to anyone
in Delhi for just 2,000 rupees a month. Those less comfortable with the way the
system operates often try to assuage their feelings of guilt by hiring staff at
above the going rate.
However,
writing on an expatriate website that offers advice to foreigners moving to
India, Shawn Runacres, managing director of the Gurgaon-based Domesteq staff
placement agency, says there should be no need to feel awkward if staff are
treated well. "Throw out the guilt – remember you are providing
much-needed employment at fair rates and excellent working conditions,"
she says. "The very thought of no longer having to make beds, cook, dust,
wash dishes and do laundry sounds like heaven and, for those with children, if
you add to all these things the possibility of affordable, on-tap childcare, it
becomes irresistible." Speaking on Friday, she said she was convinced that
the market for domestic staff would continue to grow as India's economy
expanded, not least because of the challenges posed by living in India.
"There are many more challenges to your daily life," she said. She
doubts that it would be possible to live without staff. "You would spend
your entire time just trying to keep yourself fed and your home in some
semblance of shape. You can't just get water from the tap; you have to clean
your water. You can't just eat fruit off the tree or out of the market. Is it a
luxury? No, not in India. It is absolutely a staple of life." Runacres's
agency – which does not employ children and promises fair wages and dignity of
labour – pays well above the average. Others are less scrupulous.
Bhuwan
Ribhu, national secretary of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood
Movement), said child labour was now common in the cities, particularly
involving girls aged 12 to 18, while boys aged 10 and upwards are more common
in the countryside. "India cannot and must not grow at the cost of
millions of childhoods," he said.
Many
children are trafficked from poor states such as Bihar and West Bengal through
the thousands of illegal agencies operating in the cities. Last year the
movement raided a placement agency to rescue six girls and uncovered evidence
of 400 girls who had been trafficked.
Ribhu says
people cannot resist a cheap deal. "Well educated or not, people try to
maximise their profits by employing kids. They do not pay proper wages. The probability
of children leaving employment whenever they want is very low, and they may be
exploited, beaten and made to work long hours," he said.
While many
people in India may have been appalled by the Delhi case, he said, there were
thousands of others who continued to employ children. "Children work
because they are the cheapest form of labour, and in these situations they are
victims of slavery. They are abused, not only economically but physically and
sexually, as the exploiters also have little fear of law enforcement," he
said.
Patricia
Lone of Unicef says domestic labour is one of the most dangerous forms of child
labour because of the potential for abuse, particularly for girls. "It is
a huge problem in most countries in south Asia because of the levels of
poverty."
Sometimes
it is parents unable to support their children who pack them off to work; other
times it is the children themselves who seek to pay their own way, she says.
"But it is related to poverty, which forces parents and children to put
themselves at risk."
The outcry
over the Delhi maid was encouraging, said Ribhu, in that it opened people's
eyes to the reality of what is going on. But he is not getting too excited
about the arrests. They were, he said, an anomaly in a country where many
people simply do not understand that using children as servants is
wrong."Recently, I was in a mall where I saw a couple with a 10- or
11-year-old girl taking care of their baby while they were eating. When I
confronted them, the lady replied that: 'She is in such a good condition here –
she would starve to death in her village. Who will go feed her there? And she
has even been taught English'," he said. "When I asked her if she
realised that she was committing a crime, she replied that the girl was being
kept just like her own daughter and she is 'even brought to the mall … can
anyone in her village even dream of such a luxury, of going to the mall?'
"I explained as nicely as possible to her husband that if I were to call
the police to their house, they would be arrested, and if the girl was 'like
their daughter', why was she not eating with them at the same table? And he had
no answer."
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