India is the world’s largest democratic country in terms of population. There are therefore many poor people and many living below the poverty line. Inflation is rising rapidly but earnings have remained the same which brings down the standard of living. The gap between the poor and the rich widens daily.
Last Saturday in a restaurant at Sernabatim I noticed a family having dinner and the maid standing behind them looking after their five-year-old boy. Not one among them was courteous enough to offer her a glass of water. They kept her busy in her work. This maid was about 12-years-old, an age when she should have been playing and studying but she was working without any rest. I call this modern-day slavery.
A few years back in Delhi, an eight-year-old maid was locked in the house when the family went for a holiday in Bangkok. They kept her was some wheat flour in a tin which she ate for four days. Someone saw her pleading for help and called the police. She was later released. She was employed by this family through a Delhi agency connected through Uttarkhand agents where this girl came from. Poverty is such here that some parents cannot afford to educate their children and are forced to make them work to earn some money to survive.
Earlier in Goa, maids came from our villages. Later they came from Yellapur and Karwar and now they come from Jharkhand and Bihar which has many tribals and adivasis. The standard of living in their states is poor. Two meals a day is hard to get and for them Goa is better and safer. But this results in slavery and exploitation of child labour and sometimes inhuman treatment by their masters.
Every month labourers from Jharkhand come to Goa by train and are picked up by a contractor and transported to industrial estates. They are employed in industry and while proper payment is around Rs 270 per day, the contractor keeps Rs 100 as commission, the person who keeps the payment details retains Rs 20 and the labourer is paid Rs 150 a day with which he has to pay his rent and spend on his food.
Many people work in shops and private firms for too little or poor salaries. They have to work for 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes even more and at the end of the month are paid around Rs 5000 to Rs 8000 and sometimes an amount is cut towards Provident Fund but when they leave their jobs they don’t get anything in return since the owners don’t pay towards PF. People don’t complain since they know nothing will happen and they will waste time and money.
