Disclaimer
- This is
not a review or appreciation of a movie, but a thought on a motivational movie-
story that it gives to the youngsters.
- This is
written in response and in protest to the increasing and humiliating events
that occur in the country where some people are happened/asked to do some
‘dishonoured’ jobs. At the other end, educated youngsters of the so-called
upper and middle class dream becoming a doctor or engineer or civil
servant.
- This
doesn’t support or promote any ‘caste/class-based’ labour.
It is a fact that nowadays
nobody wants to become a house maid or servant or farmer or farm labourer, by
choice. Youngsters aspire turning engineers civil servants, doctors,
teachers, scientists, artists and so on.
Why? This is a million dollar question. In other words, we have
maids, farmers and agricultural labourers by default.
Udaharanam Sujatha is a 2017 Malayalam movie made by Phantom
Praveen and team. It is a remake of the 2016 Hindi film निल बटे सन्नाटा.
Senior actress Manju Warrier plays the lead role, Sujatha, a woman living in a
colony doing odd jobs. Sujatha is a full-time housemaid and single mother. She
lives to see her daughter Athira's success, taking up more and more odd jobs to
support her schooling. Meanwhile Athira is unmotivated due to the bleak chances
she sees in her future. Whenever she is forced to study, she mocks her mother
being a lowly paid servant who doesn't have enough wealth or basic education.
Athira never studies, gets poor scores in her exams and won't quit believing
that she can't be anything more than a housemaid like her mother. The mother
takes the responsibility to instill in her daughter a positive attitude by
initiative and insight from others (as detailed in wikipedia).
Finally Athira
clears IAS. In the climax, answering to the question of a young aspirant,
Athira IAS gives the moral of the story which is like “I never wanted to be a
maid, that’s why I have become a civil servant”. Good and loving moral for
passionate youth who grow reading Wings of Fire etc.,
right? Athira once even proposes a theory like engineers’ kids turn engineers,
doctors’ kids turn doctors and the same must be with maids’ kids!
Here comes the questions, Why
Athira is unmotivated? Why Athira (or we) never dream to become a maid or
servant? Is it because of the lack of status and securities – Social?
Financial? Emotional?
Have
you ever seriously looked into the duties of housemaids, domestic workers,
housekeeping assistants, home nurses or sweepers? They take care of our babies
and elders, they prepare food for the working class, they polish the filthiness
of the so-called ‘educated and civilized’ people, and earn (little) money and
very little respect. Even if we own sophisticated technologies, we can’t live
without these people who do odd jobs. The programs like Swacch Bharat or HarithaKeralam Mission can have the slogans like ‘my waste is my
responsibility’, But you know what comes in reality.
Yes, my thought goes in this
way. We have our youth who aspire to be doctors, engineers, collectors, police
officers, teachers, lawyers and so on. Do we need this much professionals in a
year? Is the job of a maid or servant or farmer or farm labourer so dull and
dirty? Or as a freak Keralite do you believe that all such works will be
taken care of by Kudumbashree? Well,
you can’t just pass over the contributions of Kudumbashree in helping
these odd labourers to come up with dignity. Many of such characters visualized
in stories and movies (and of course in real life!) are either single mothers
or have drunkard husbands. It is a fact that they live in poor conditions. Many
of them or all of them are made such by default, not by their choice and
passion.
Today’s well acclaimed notion is
that, ‘I have my own passion and choices, let the odd labourers derive by
default’. Don’t you agree with this?
According to the International Labour Organization, among the 67 million domestic
workers, 80% are women. Most of them work up to 18 hours a day and live in very
unsatisfactory conditions, records UK based Overseas Development Institute. The
payment for their work is calculated singly by their employers and these odd
jobs have never become well-paid. Even if we stick on the word ‘functional
hierarchy’, in many cases the relation is, owner - slave kind. There was a
Central bill introduced in the Parliament in 2015 that ensures better working
atmosphere, good wages and welfare to domestic workers. It was not implemented
it seems.
Our attitude towards these nice people are also not really welcoming.
I know an educated lady who had insisted a room for her maid while she was
planning a new house. It was a welcoming gesture. But I was stunned after
seeing the servant’s room once the house was finished- a very small room
between kitchen and living area, without windows or even air vents! Let them live
in any conditions, doesn’t it read like that? What they really want is not sympathy
and empathy, but a conducive atmosphere and necessary technological aids to do
their job in a dignified way.
Do you remember Baby Halder who came with Aalo Andhari? It was in 2016 that Vidhu
Vincent’s Manhole has
shook Kerala while we continued to think that we had ended manual scavenging. ‘Thottippani’,
the Malayalam word for manual scavenging has become very awful. In many
developed countries, these kind of jobs are done with good care and with
ultimate technologies. The professionals doing them are respectable and well-paid.
But here in India, these works are most often observed as caste/class-based and
those workers are discriminated and very often unnecessarily humiliated by the
mainstream society. They are not well-paid and sidelined in all social and
developmental walks. These circumstances has lead to the movements like Safai Karmachari Andolan which
is committed to the total eradication of manual scavenging and the
rehabilitation of scavengers for dignified occupations.
We had studied this term
‘scavenger’ in our primary classes, associated with the food web. We have
Autotrophs (producers), Herbivores and Carnivores (consumers), Decomposers and
in between, the Scavengers who eventually eat and clean the environment. Life
is not possible if one link misses, a kind of cooperative and balanced living.
Trophic levels have only literal existence, no one is valuable than the other.
King lion and his subjects are our creativity only. There is no religion, no
caste, no one is at the top of the other. A group of creatures that eats and getting
eaten.
Well, it’s enough, this gloomy
story. Let us move to encouraging news.
It is read that the demand, standard
of living and dignity of domestic workers have improved over the last few
years, in total and especially in India.
MyDidi, BookMyBai, TaskBob, LifeMaidEasy, NanoJobs – Look at
these service providers. They provide professionals for all the house-maid
works, ‘nano jobs’ in their language. They have long list of both men and women
professionals. This sector has boomed in the last few years, the records show.
These jobs are slowly becoming highly professional, respectful and remunerative.
BookMyBai offers
its workers a salary of Rs16,000 and other benefits including health insurance.
It was in the last year that the Kerala Labour and Skill Department has fixed the remuneration of domestic workers @ Rs195 for 8 hours work. Sure,
these remunerations are not fair enough compared to other sectors, but the
welcoming thing is that, at least we have started thinking of them and their issues.
It is studied that the demand-supply gap in this sector is huge.
Experts notice that this kind of an action would bring the domestic workers into a formal economy. But unfortunately there isn’t a system in place to closely monitor these service providers. International Labour
Organization (ILO) has given the guidelines for the players in this
sector. In 2011, ILO has come up with Domestic workers Convention. There are some networks like Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) which are involved in research and extension
activities in the sector. Their motto itself is ‘Empowering Informal Workers,
Securing Informal Livelihoods’.
It is read that Kerala government moves ahead with plans to eradicating manual
scavenging, a de-humanizing practice. Let us wait for the good results of States’
Suchitwa Mission. The
country has a couple of directives in
this regard, Employment of Manual Scavenging and Construction of Dry Latrines Prohibition Act (1993) and Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill (2013).
Robotics
It’s quite a while that the
idea of having a robot in a home sparked in US and South Korea. These robots or robotic
smart homes has the ability to identify us and open the door for us, put the
lights and fans on, offer a cup of tea, wash dishes and cloths. Many of such
technologies have started winning markets. Recently a group of engineers from
Kerala has introduced Bandicoot, a robot
that cleans the manhole.
As mentioned before, even if we
own sophisticated technologies, we need to hire people for many odd and small
jobs. It doesn’t matter what their designations are, it is the need of the hour
to change our attitudes towards them. We need to respect their time, they need
to be well-paid, and they have all the rights to live in dignity in this very
same society. The mass attacks on the migrants from other states in Kerala should
also recall us this fact.
Let us wait for good things to
happen. Like doctors, engineers, collectors, lawyers, artists and scientists we
needs people who do small and odd jobs, we need farmers and farm labourers.
They need to be ensured with financial, social and emotional security and this
only can fulfill the terms of inclusive development. Let each one of them work
in dignity, get social justice and create a win-win situation. And remember, don’t
hesitate to be one among them even if you are highly educated. If this is the
case, why should Athiras become unmotivated? But none of these arguments
support child labour.
And a final word, we should move to a democratic, secular,
casteless, and classless society where everyone do the jobs that they like, comfortably
and with dignity. Science and Technologies should help us to do things in ways
that save time and energy and earn financial, social and emotional securities.
ഈ ചെറുകുറിപ്പിന്റെ മലയാളം ഭാഷ്യം വായിക്കാം:
