The Star Valet

"Jagdish, in his safari suit and wispy choti has globe trotted so often that he blanches at the sight of the Alps and English countryside where Govinda shoots those comic David Dhawan/Priyadarshan capers."

Books of the Year 2007

A few among my favourites.

Criminal Ignorance

HIV positive women in a Chandigarh slum reveal that they were forced to have sex with their HIV/AIDS counsellors and technicians. Sharmila, one of the women, says she was given medicines and access to testing facilities only in exchange for sexual gratification. But "when she was unable to provide young females to the counsellors and technicians as she was asked to, Sharmila stopped visiting (Chandigarh's top medical facility) out of fear." Source: Times of India.

Heavy Petting

A show I regret not auditioning (as anchor) for. Not that anyone asked ...

Animal Harm

This is one of those news items one sees, hears about, even reads and really, still cannot decide on an appropriate response. My first reaction was "The fool!" (The man, not the tigers). I'm sorry he's dead but really, did he have to put his hand right into the cage? I mean, who does that? And after the prison, I mean zoo, guard asked him to stop. On the subject of zoos, here's an article I wrote on the Jijamata Udayan in Bombay, where little monsters, I mean children, entertain themselves by feeding monkeys packets of chips. Packets that once held chips, that is.

On the Subject of Domestic Workers ...

"One by one over the past four years, three educated sisters in India have wed their servant, believing he is holy and will miraculously bring them wealth. ..."

"In The Gulf, A Ticket to Hell"

"Government reticence on the nightmare conditions that await Indian domestic help in the Gulf mirrors the bad treatment they are as likely to face at home. If you wish to meet an Indian household employee in the countries of the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC), your best bet, it is said, is a deportation centre or the flight home. After a fact finding mission to study the conditions of Indian industrial and household employees, I encountered the veracity of this statement on the seat besides me on my return flight to Mumbai. “Madam say go!” said a hapless Padmavati Kadali, of village Rameswaram in Andhra Pradesh. The 28-year-old, returning from Abu Dhabi, UAE, hadn’t been provided with a promised ticket from Mumbai to Hyderabad, and was refused two of four months pending salary. Of the 500 dirhams (approximately Rs 5,354) she had been reluctantly paid, she would spend Rs 3,000 on completing her journey home. The majestic villas which the urbane and wealthy residents of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have such a fondness for, are where an unaccounted number of women from India live and work with little contact with the world outside. The stories of sexual abuse and a bewildering range of violence including amputation, immolation, and abandonment, have, over four decades, become synonymous with their employment. These now appear to overshadow the appeal of remittances—approximately Rs 235 crore from the GCC in 2006—that have extracted their families back home from generational poverty. This September, after over 195 women sought refuge in its premises since January 2007, the Indian Mission in Doha stopped attesting contracts for female household employees, without which they cannot legally work in the country. The Government of Qatar responded by agreeing to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to improve working conditions for Indians, signed during the visit of Qatar’s Foreign Minister to India on November 21. Similar MOUs were signed with Kuwait and Oman in October, and according to Vyalar Ravi, Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Bahrain and Oman are expected to follow. One of the reasons the issue is now in the spotlight is India’s dramatic growth, which has prompted forecasts that it will, along with China, dominate the 21st century economically. It is therefore seen as unbecoming for Indian expats in the GCC to make headlines for being victims of abuse. In India itself, migration to urban centers is socially permissible for single women, and the monthly income for a live in household employee in Delhi and Mumbai equals that of an expat. The conclusion that the infrastructure of the GCC and its frenetic building boom is entirely dependant on Indian workers; and that Indians are the first choice among immigrants as household help, has increased vocalization for change from Indian expats, prompting the Government to step up negotiations to safeguard the human and economic rights of its community of 4.5 million in the region. In this argument, the role of registered and unregistered recruitment agents, as well as immigrant officials, both of who initiate the process of abuse in India itself, cannot be ignored. In 2006, there were 1,515 recruitment agents in India, who had obtained a permit under the Emigration Act, 1983. Unscrupulous agents most commonly lie to prospective employees about the terms of their employment, particularly salary. Kadali, for example, was promised Rs 15,000 a month but paid less than Rs 6,000. The standard wage for a live in employee in upper middle class neighborhoods in Delhi and Mumbai is Rs 5,500, while one who works an eight hour shift may be paid Rs 3,500. Agents also push through women who, being under the age of thirty, are banned from working as household help in any ECR (Emigration Check Required) country. In “Pushing Through” an agent pays an officer at the Indian airport to go for a cigarette break when his client is due for Immigration Check. She walks past, and on returning to his seat the officer finds an envelope with Rs 10,000 placed in it. The potential employee has broken a law in India, but since the destination country doesn’t have similar requirements, she receives employment. This was most likely how Kadali, who is now 28, and had at 24, worked in Oman as a household employee, left India. Ignoring the approved fee for services, the agents may also demand in cash and without providing a receipt, as much as six months to a year’s promised salary from the woman—an amount she is often unable to earn back. Or, he may encourage her to enter the country on a Visit Visa, and start working in the grey market, a crime which ensures that even the Indian Mission is unable to extend protection when things go wrong. Another common abuse is the substitution of the original work contract with an inferior one in Arabic, which she is forced to sign upon arrival in the destination country. Refusal to do so results in the withdrawal of sponsorship and loss of her savings paid out to the agent. Although it sounds like urban legend, a complaint lodged with the Indian Mission spoke of an IT engineer from South India whose spurious contract led him to tend camels in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, while distrust of private recruiting agents is now strong, distrust of the Government is stronger, and state sponsored agencies in India often find themselves without employees to send abroad. Unscrupulous agents are also encouraged by the labour laws in GCC countries, the most debilitating of which is a sponsor requirement. A potential employee may not enter the country without a sponsor, who is most often the employer, and must be a national. International companies such as Air India pay their sponsor 51 per cent of their profits. Individuals submit their passport to him, and may only leave with an Exit Visa issued by him. In situations of abuse, a sponsor will refuse to remit the passport, virtually imprisoning his employee. A runaway is termed an “absconder” and is liable for arrest and deportation, while anyone who protects him is considered a criminal. In Qatar, a sponsor who doesn’t wish to pay his household employee may take her across the border to Saudi Arabia and abandon her in the desert. Or, he may file a false case of theft against her. In Kuwait, where the head of the family is provided sponsor visas equal to the number of his family members, it isn’t unusual for him to retain two or three and sell the rest for an exorbitant amount to recruitment agents or runaway employees. Not all runaways thus come to the Indian Mission for help. They may find work elsewhere on this sort of purchased sponsorship, or even work without a sponsor, opening them to all sorts of abuse. A lawyer who runs a shelter for women in Kuwait City pointed out that such abuse is often the result of the employee’s inability to operate household gadgets. “Indian maids need to get trained,” he said. “Else they come here, burn up the vacuum cleaner, and get beaten up by their employers.” Of course, this doesn’t explain why in Saudi Arabia it wasn’t at one time unusual to hear of Indian help forced to donate their kidneys to their employer when the need arose. The Indian Missions in the GCC play a crucial role in protecting these battered women. Local laws don’t permit them to have a shelter on their premises, and unlike certain embassies that have shelters in the guise of cultural associations, they won’t even harbor runaways for more than a few hours. They have, however, employed what is referred to as the Taxi System. The escapee upon reaching the mission is fed a meal, provided with a translator—since many of them speak only Telugu or Malayalam, and counseled. She is then placed into a waiting taxi, which takes her directly to the deportation centre where she must wait until her case is resolved and the Mission permitted to buy her ticket home. Despite circulated stories of abuse in the countries of the GCC, young women still choose to work there as household employees. Andhra Pradesh’ Kadapa district and Kerala’s Malabar and Travancore have sent the largest number of female household help to the GCC. Many do believe they will earn well, and those who do support their families. Others who wish to return, however, are often pressurized to stay on. This could be because their families are unaware of the abuse and see no logic in return, but also because they have acquired an addiction to the flow of money, which is increasingly observed as expended on non essentials. During the 10-day festival of Onam in Kerala this year, Rs 60 crore was spent on liquor. Official sources credit the amount to remittances. Remittances aren’t necessarily invested in retirement plans, and household employees have returned to India after decades in the Gulf with no money to bank on. The issue of sexual abuse isn’t restricted to the GCC either. In Saudi Arabia, household employees are considered the employees of the extended family, and male relatives treat them as their personal property. But sexual abuse of vulnerable, migrant women isn’t uncommon in India, and women who accept that it is a hazard of their job would prefer to suffer abroad, away from the repercussion of stigma that in inevitable in Indian society, than to face censure at home. Runaways also fear this stigma and are more likely to return with stories of electricity that never fails and of living in air conditioned comfort, than to admit they were cheated out of an investment and lost a gamble. Although the Government’s stand has always been one of persuasion rather than demand, it has been less vocal about the rights of household help than most. This is because in India itself, these women aren’t accorded the status of workers bound to receive a minimum wage, paid holidays, or a pension plan. The Unorganised Sector Workers Bill, which promised to include domestic workers, has been pending since 2004, leaving domestic workers, who constitute 30 per cent of the 30 million unorganised sector, unprotected. Similarly, for every nefarious recruitment agent there are several “employment agencies” that transport vulnerable young women from the tribal belt of Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to Delhi and Mumbai, and force them to live in small spaces until an employer picks them out from a crowd. During the 11 month contract, the employee’s salary, which is between Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,000, is paid directly to the agency that purports to send the money to the employee’s family. It never is. The majority of Delhi’s 3,000 employment agencies, it was recently learnt, traffic minors into domestic help; some are as young as six. In a disturbing new trend, agencies were found to send young girls back to their village to entice others to return with them. For every child they bring, they receive a commission. In another parallel to the situation in the GCC, a study by the National Domestic Workers Movement (Chhattisgarh Unit) revealed that 707 families in 11 villages in the area were only able to reveal that their children had been taken to work in Delhi and Mumbai, and had no address or phone number for them. Certain experiences in households in India and the GCC are therefore shared—long working hours, even sexual abuse, and violence. The difference, however, is that in India employees are most often able to escape home or to seek help before the situation escalates. In the GCC, the norm appears to cloister household employees and debar them from contacting their family. In numerous cases escapees were unable to offer the Indian Mission the name of their employer, or his residential address. It has been seen that by the time she learns enough Arabic to understand the demands made of her, as it was with Kadali, she wants to leave." Tehelka, December 15, 2007. Photos: With the exception of the first, the photos above were taken at the Al Hajery “Labour Camp” outside Doha, Qatar. The 3,000 Indian, primarily Keralaite workers at this camp, work at the Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest LNG exporting facility. It covers 106 square kilometers and is 80 kms north east of Doha. The Indians work primarily in piping, steel erection, as rigging foremen, carpenters and masons. Workers are selected through recruitment agencies in Bombay and Kerala, given a two year contract, and must leave their families behind. Photo 1: Signs like this are common in the newspapers. They are most often from people who have entered the country on a visit visa and want to stay on, or those who have run away from an abusive employer and are searching for a new sponsor. Photos 2 and 3: Between 6 to 12 workers share a room with bunk beds measuring 1.5 X 2 meters. In many labour camps, necessities like a cupboard aren’t provided and the worker’s belongings are stuffed in a plastic bag, which hangs from a nail besides their bed. In this camp, which houses 3,000, and is described as a “model” by government officials, workers are allowed television and DVD players in their room. The standard salary for a 10 hour work day is 600 Rials (Rs 6,488 approximately) a month, with 1.25 Rials an hour paid for overtime. It is common for workers to be on site on the weekend and on festivals. Their day begins at 5 a.m. and they return to camp at 7 p.m. Lunch is on site. In the summer temperatures cross 50 degrees Celsius. With labour camps often situated over a 100 kilometers from the city, the workers rarely get the opportunity to take a break from camp. To entertain themselves, they listen to Malayalam songs on the radio; share a can of non alcoholic beer, play cards, and write letters home. The camp provides three meals a day. Vegetables are imported from Kerala, and meals include fish and chicken. Lunch food boxes are taken on site, and workers carry a thermos of cold water.

The Best Day

Meeting my favourite author and the author of one of my favourite books.

Myth and Reality

Rakesh Sharma's Final Solution captured the allegiance to hate practiced by a section of people in Gujarat post Godhra. He has two follow up film. Khedu Mora Re focuses on the "myth of a vibrant Gujarat," by documenting the farmers' suicides. ("Rajkot, 63, Junagad, 85, Amreali, 34, Mehsana, 48, Nadiad, 44, Jamnagar, 55, Narmada, 30, and even in Gandhinagar, 13." In Chet'ta Rejo, he analyzes the caste component of those arrested since the riots, a majority of whom were tribals, Dalits, or OBC's. ("Of 1577 detainees from 32 police stations in Ahmedabad, only 30-odd were upper caste!"). The film is in Gujarati with no English subtitles. For copies please call Dakxin on 99099 11474. Previous posts on Rakesh Sharma.

Only the Funniest Show On TV

Aliens in America:

In which 16-year-old Raja Musharraf from "a village in Pakistan" lives with the Tolchucks of Wisconsin for a year, doing his best to avoid "naughty websites" and "women who flaunt themselves" while also praying five times a day, de-nerding Justin Tolchuck, and looking after the family's pet alpacas. (And yes, he's the best student in class). In the clip above, Raja, having taken on a part time job at a convenience store, refuses to entertain his school mates who had until then successfully bought alcohol with their fake IDs.