One thing was apparent early into the Devyani Khobragade-Sangeeta Richard imbroglio: both the United States and India were working hard to keep some real issue - or issues - out of the public domain. Based on the news flow, high-level US officials over-reacted; the Indian government over-reacted to the American over-reaction; senior Opposition representatives like Yashwant Sinha also over-reacted.
Ergo, given that the "over-reactors" are generally thought to be persons of competence, the news flow had to be incomplete or imperfect. Either there are hidden reasons for the undiplomatic howling from a bunch of professional politicians and diplomats, or there is a need for the mass psychiatric evaluation of a large number of people holding responsible positions in two large, nuclear-armed nations.
The premise that information was being suppressed enables us to construct delightful conspiracy theories. There's great material here for a thriller with a little creative embellishment of the known life stories of the two leading ladies. Maybe Ms Richard is a spy, or Ms Khobragade is a spy, or perhaps both are spies? Take your pick of agencies. Someday, a desi writer could channel John le Carre and pen the South Asian version of "The Little Drummer Girl(s)."
Returning regretfully from that sojourn into speculative fiction, another thing struck me. Quite possibly, this is the last generation when Indians of the so-called middle class will be able to employ domestic help on the scale we have taken for granted for several millennia.
It is dangerous to make too much of anecdote. But there has been a common theme running through all the drawing-room conversations and much of the commentary sparked by this business. The Indian middle class, by which I mean everyone who can afford to hire servants (let's drop the euphemistic "domestic help"), has expressed some version of two sentiments.
One is that Ms Richard was being paid a lot more than she would have got in India. This, of course, blithely ignores the relative difference of the cost of living in New York and Delhi/Mumbai. The second lament is that it is increasingly difficult to find or keep "good" servants, especially the live-in variety. The help demand too much in the way of salaries. Or they learn some skills and push off to clean loos in malls, or join up as hairdressers in beauty parlours.
Some "emigrants" to Delhi have cunningly scoured their ancestral homes for naïve, under-skilled labour. This, minus the visa fraud, is essentially what Ms Khobragade did. It takes a while training said labour and once they come to grips with the big city and its opportunities, they also get uppity and demand higher salaries, or leave. That is essentially what Ms Richard seems to have done, minus the messy cross-border legal consequences.
Another theme pops up in conversations. Most servants seem determined to send their kids to school and even college. Quite a few pay for tuition and for vocational training in Spoken English, massage-hairdressing technique, tailoring, welding, mobile/computer repair and assembly, and so on.
The children don't subscribe to the traditional feudal values that make India such a wonderful place to live in if you belong to the top three income deciles. All of them aspire to doing something other than jhadoo-poccha and nappy-changing the baba-log.
Since India is also Bharat, this change in attitudes will take a while to percolate down into smaller towns. But this social churn, which is destroying the fabric of a civilisation that has lasted several millennia, appears to have gathered unstoppable momentum.
We, meaning the progressive liberal middle classes that can afford to hire servants, have brought it upon ourselves. First, we were complicit in allowing the erosion of the caste system. After that, we allowed the labour pool access to education, and thus greater job mobility. Enjoy your chhota hazri while you may, buy a vacuum cleaner and ask the help to give your kids a crash course in cleaning the loos and dumping the garbage.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
