A very heartening development that I have been tracking in India is the constant shortage of household help. I better explain this fast before my wife and her ilk take me to task for this sort of blasphemy.

 

One of the distinctive feature of a middle class Indian household is being able to employ a part time household help, a maid. Across geographies and languages the word maid is ubiquitous amongst housewives. I remember from my childhood days the procession of maids who would come and go, not able to pass muster. And they could be sacked at the drop of a hat. They were in abundant supply and competition amongst them was fierce. In the big cities most of them were rural immigrants.

 

As India progressed, as the economy opened up, as more jobs became available, as more graduates found jobs in new industries ( software, call centres, malls…), suddenly the importance of education magnified. Till then the lure of education for the poorest was non existent as enough jobs which justified the time and effort in education were not there. All that changed in the nineties.

 

Let me give you an example. 20 years ago when my parents retired in Dehradun they had a family of 6 whose mother was the family maid and cook. 3 boys and 1 girl seemed destined to go the typical way of the boys helping father to be casual labour and the girl married off at a young age. They were enrolled in a Government school and as I wrote in one of my previous blogs my parents started tutoring these children. The boys not only completed their 12^th standard but also did some specialised courses like hotel management, accounting etc. Today they are well settled, each earning  anywhere between 20-30k a month, have their own house and the parents are retired. The girl, who typically would have got married and followed in her mom’s footsteps, studied till class 12^th, took a job in a school as a mid day meal cook and got married to a boy who was equally educated. She too earns a decent money and today sends her children to a public school. This had a cascading effect on the extended family, caste members and friends. They saw the benefit of education and today many more have followed in their footstep.

 

Now multiply this across cities and towns in India and you will see what has changed. Maids are no longer looking at their daughters taking up their profession or their sons joining their fathers as labourers and farm hands. They dream of their sons and daughters doing well and  and they work to realise the dream. As the dreams get realised the perpetuity of maid as a profession starts fading out.

 

This also has other socio economic effect. Reliance on superstition and religion starts dwindling. I am not saying it disappears but it definitely does not hold as much sway over the lives of these people. Exploitation is reduced. Their confidence grows. Even when they are still working as maids the exploits of their children gives them confidence to demand respect in their work. They stop being subservient and also start realising their own rights.

 

When we moved to Dehradun, in our own house, after getting a gas connection the next big headache my wife faced was getting a good part time maid. One or two came but did not last and in a complex with about 80 apartments there seemed to be an absolute shortage of maids. While I was chuckling and my wife was fretting she finally got one good maid. Neat, clean, hard working and not cutting corners. She wanted a day off in a week, which we agreed to. After a few days we discovered something interesting through our maid. A rumour had been circulated amongst the maids that we were not Hindus ( maybe, as we do not have many physical manifestations of religion or practice of the same in our house) but Muslims. So some prospective maids had backed off. When asked if she was not affected, she had a simple answer. As long as your religion does not interfere with mine, I am fine with it.  

 

She spoke disdainfully about the other maids and her confidence and poise with which she spoke left us surprised. A bit of probing revealed that though she is uneducated, her 3 children all go to a private school. Her two daughters, though only 10 and 11 are today her teachers. They talk a lot about what they learn in school ( not studies but society, community, religion…).

 

I have used maids to illustrate that there are enough such categories of people who through decades, maybe centuries were living an awfully subjugated and dictated life. But education coupled with the new economic changes have ushered in an era of hope for them. Are we ready and prepared to accept this change? As marketers have we even thought of these people? We definitely have produced products to suit their needs but have we build brands which address there hopes and aspirations? More importantly have we as communicators devised communication strategies which reflect the reality or insight of their lives. Maybe an odd example here or there. But this is a huge untapped segment which if addressed properly can give enormous returns.

 

I am a happy person. This is truly India shining. Though my wife, in her usual candour quipped about preparing our daughter to be ready for a maid less environment. I hope I am alive to see that day.