The tribal areas of eastern India has seen their youth migrating to the cities for a decade and more now. The search for jobs and livelihood opportunities lures young maidens to take a hard journey to a contrasting world.
Going by estimates available from the Domestic Workers Forum there are over 3,00,000 tribal girls in Delhi alone! These domestic working girls come mainly from the eastern tribal belts of Indian states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. The push and pull factors do operate in the process of migration. While poverty and unemployment are the push factors that make young girls leave their parental and cultural security; job expectation and allurement of better life in the city, operate as pull factors.
These young girls who come from interior villages are exposed to a metropolitan setting full of vulnerability and unforeseen dangers. And because these girls by their very nature are non-judgmental, straightforward and unsuspecting, they become victims of physical, mental, and emotional abuse from their own employers. Thousands of girl are being trafficked to neighbouring states like Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana, sometimes even to other gulf countries. The domestic workers are sold and re-sold to employers without their consent, reducing their status to bonded labourers denying even the basic human rights and freedom of expression. Lack of awareness and support systems make these girls undergo an ordeal of miseries and sufferings. Due to absence of adequate shelter, just wages, right working hours, proper holidays, and other rights related to the domestic workers this section of the society suffers in silence. It is disheartening to see how their own people, who work as middle men/placement agencies, exploit these women for the sake of money.
The question is are these young girls slaves for eternity?
‘No wonder the ILO commended domestic work as modern kind of slavery!’
"The last time I was in a super market, I saw a 7 year old, chocolate coloured but, without a trace of smiling lines. And then I saw a 5 year old, all peaches & plums without a trace of smiling lines again. I broadened my view and spotted a skinny woman, in her twenty something, who I figured out to be the young mother! Now, peaches & plums wants to ride the cycle and asks her mother, however, she was mistaken. She is supposed to ask the 7 year old! why? Because the chocolate coloured one is called a domestic worker who is suppose to take over from a twenty something because she needs to do other things - go to the MAC boutique, enjoy her coffee @ the bar and spend some quality time with a old woman who I figured out to be her mother. I cud'nt stand beyond this and choose to forget the scene before me. However, inquisitiveness troubled me and the next I see is Peaches & plums ordering her way into chocolate coloured's life. I understood why both of them do not have smiling lines."
No comments:
Post a Comment