Diwali For All: Let This Be A Celebration Of Equality, Respect And Dignity For All

Over the past few decades, a section of our society has managed to flourish and secure a strong financial foothold. From a time when the ability to afford a house by retirement was considered to be luxury, we have moved to a time where we see people in there 20s buying multiple properties. Luxury and ease of living seem to be one of the highest priorities of life.

Now, more and more people are able to afford helping hands to let them cruise through the day. It has now become something of a passing joke where people refer to their domestic help as their actual better-half. It is not entirely strange, given that we are able to manage our lives largely due to their help and assistance.

However, we sometimes fail to realise the fact that, like you and me, who go to work to earn a livelihood, our domestic help too are just doing their job, for the exact same reason.

Did you know, a Wall Street Journal Report of 2014 revealed that the average wage for a domestic helper in India was Rs 3,000 for a month of full-time work, six days a week? This amount is only slightly higher in metropolitan cities, so is the cost of living. This stands in stark contrast to over Rs 700 per hour in the United States of America.

Apart from just the financial aspect of the employment, it is also about the dignity of labour. Some of us not only fail to appreciate the fact that it is them who are making our lives easier, we even tend to believe that their work does not deserve basic dignity. Sometimes our sense of entitlement is so skewed that we tend to believe that they are something of a lesser human than us, which even reflects in the treatment we mete out to them. They are systematically denied the very right to have a dignified and respectable work environment. It is nothing but a double standard even as we desire these things for ourselves, some of us deny the same to our domestic help.

Realising this very fact, Ghadi detergent has come up with a beautiful and heart-touching video. It shows a young boy, Rohan, who takes his domestic help Meenu’s work for granted. Perturbed by his attitude, Rohan’s mother takes it upon herself to change. And she does manage to do exactly that! As Rohan’s mother says, it is most important for us to clear our heart and mind of all malice and prejudice. #SaareMaelDhoDaalo.