Indian Maid Dispute Bares a Class Divide
NOIDA, India — The madams in the luxury gated community went to yoga classes and toddler playgroups; the maids whisked away dirty dishes and soiled laundry before retreating, at night, to a nearby shantytown of tin sheds.
This kind of arrangement has persisted across India for decades. But early on July 12, at the Mahagun Moderne in Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India’s capital, the madams and the maids went to war.
A dispute between a maid and her employer erupted into a riot, as hundreds of the maid’s neighbors, armed with rocks and iron rods, forced their way into the complex and stormed her employer’s apartment. In response, employers locked their maids out.
India’s disparity between rich and poor means members of a newly moneyed class are able to hire domestic help for low pay, with no contracts and few legal obligations. The maids are typically afraid to lose their jobs, and of the “pull their employers may have with the authorities,” said Tripti Lahiri, the author of “Maid in India: Stories of Inequality and Opportunity Inside Our Homes.”
The dispute between Harshu Sethi and her maid, Johra Bibi, in Noida, occurred over 17,000 rupees, or about $265, found missing from a safe on July 11. Ms. Sethi said Ms. Bibi had admitted taking 10,000 rupees in back wages. Ms. Bibi, 30, denies confessing, and said Ms. Sethi “kept me locked at her place” that night, an allegation that her husband shared with other residents of the slum. The police say the maid spent the night in the apartment of another employer.
Ms. Sethi, a 34-year- old teacher, said she was in her apartment waking her 8-year- old son for school when she saw a “huge crowd,” led by women, coming toward her unit, shouting, “Today we will kill her; we will kill the madam.”
Video shows a crowd surging toward the complex while security guards try to beat it back. Ms. Sethi said people jumped over the balcony of her apartment and shattered a plate-glass door with a flower pot.
Ms. Sethi said she pulled her son from bed and hid in the locked bathroom with her husband for an hour and a half.
Within hours, the residents announced a decision to bar all servants from the complex, which has 2,700 units.
“The point is that they must be taught a lesson,” said Mamta Pandey, 50. “If they can unite, why can’t we?”
Residents of Ms. Bibi’s shantytown said police swept into the settlement overnight on July 12 and the next day, arresting 13 people.
The police said criminal complaints had been lodged by the Sethi family, Ms. Bibi, the residents of the complex and the security guards.
Arun Kumar Singh, Noida’s superintendent of police, said it was striking how quickly the homeowners had turned on their employees, accusing them — falsely, he said — of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. “I asked them a question: How did they then find shelter inside your house for all these years?” he said.
Ms. Sethi considers herself a benevolent boss. But, she said of the servants, “I think they hate us. There is a definite class divide. They hate us for the money, they wonder: ‘Why are they so well off, so rich? Why do they have everything?’ They envy us, and this is how it comes out.”
Ms. Bibi said Ms. Sethi had not paid her 3,500 rupees, or about $55, for the past two months, and had falsely accused her of stealing. “Just because she has money, does she think she will get away with anything?” she said. “All over, everyone is listening to her, and nobody to me. Will she throw us in the garbage just because I am poor?”
Conflicts between domestic workers and employers are a regular feature of Indian crime logs, but mass violence is almost unheard- of, Ms. Lahiri said. That is partly because in Indian cities, many maids live in their employers’ homes. That has changed, however, as luxury high-rises proliferated on the outskirts of New Delhi, and slum neighborhoods appeared beside them, in what Ms. Lahiri called “a perfect setup for an us vs. them clash.”