Aarti was barely seven when a distant relative, who used to be friendly with her family, offered to take her to see Delhi. The little girl was delighted and her impoverished parents happy that she would learn some work in the city.
But she did not return even after four years. She found that her uncle was married to a Nepalese ‘aunt’, who periodically went home and came back with dozens of Nepalese girls, while her uncle brought girls from Uttar Pradesh — mainly his home town of Azamgarh.
Aarti was sent to work in the house of a wealthy family in Delhi, where she did not have much to do, but hang around and help the other workers. She stayed there for a few years and learnt the basics of cooking and the way wealthy people lived.
She continued to live in the city. At 12, she found herself working at another family’s residence where she cooked, cleaned and looked after a three-year-old child, while his parents went to work.
This went on till her uncle arrived one day to ask for her salary. She was angry after the meeting. She, thereafter, informed her employer that her uncle forced her to give him all the money she earned. She told them that she did not have even a single penny after all these years of work. She had not seen her parents for four years and there was no hope of ever going back home, she added.
Aarti also told them about the Nepalese girls in the neighbourhood being supplied by her uncle, and that the girls were pining to go home but he would not budge.
The next day, Aarti’s employers took her to Azamgarh. They were going to find her home.
Following the tips she provided, they reached her home. Her parents were overwhelmed to see the child and Aarti’s joy knew no bounds. When it was time to leave, they insisted on escorting her employers to the station. A happy ending to Aarti’s tale.
In fact, Aarti came back to the city later, accompanied by her parents and siblings. She knew where to find work as well as a place to stay.
They still live somewhere near Noida. Aarti knew of many girls who were brought directly from their villages by employers and kept locked inside their homes as virtual slaves. While she was her uncle’s slave, she was lucky he never let anyone abuse her in any way, for he knew important people and regularly supplied girls to them, according to her.
The safest bet for many domestic workers are the agencies registered with the government. Here, the women — mostly illiterate and from neighbouring villages — get to know one another and help each other in trouble. But unless they are monitored, even the agencies can do mischief. In Delhi, there are scores of agencies which do nothing, but supply girls on a daily basis to people as prostitutes. This was vouched for by workers who knew some of these girls. The girls were mostly from Bengal and once they established contact with one another, they were able to help girls switch over to better agencies.
The new international convention, which member counties of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) have adopted for domestic workers, resolves to treat these workers as just that. But to ensure this, a mechanism to identify these recruiters and a mechanism to monitor are both necessary.
The police are not the best inspectors and it should be left to organisations of domestic workers themselves, according to Saraswati, a domestic worker in Ghaziabad. She, for instance, finds it difficult to cope with the distrust of employers. One of them used to lock her inside with their infant when they left for work. Whether that is the best way to ensure the safety of the child is arguable.
The convention provides rights to form associations and collective bargaining to domestic workers. It also provides for inspection of employers to see that workers are not exploited and treated as slaves. Once India ratifies it or even if it does not, these are the only ways that these millions of workers can get their rights as citizens of this country. India had earlier objected to inspections on grounds of breach of privacy. But later it agreed and voted for the convention, a giant leap forward for the cause of empowerment of women from the poorest parts in the country.
Many states such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra have already passed legislations to empower domestic workers. Some provide minimum wages, some help them with social security and some help in registering trade unions.
With around 100 million women and girls are working across the country as domestic workers, and national and international attention is now focused on them, the future may not be as bleak as the present for them any more.
