4 organisation of paid doMestic WorK in Jaipur
4.1 the scene: middle class domesticity
In India, home, ghar, and the meanings given to it are central (Tiengtrakul 2006, 30). Home refers both to the physical place of domicile and to an ideological or psychological space to which one has a sense of belonging (ibid, 25). Households are not only a neces-sity of life but also central to social and cultural reproduction (Moors 2003, 389), and can also be understood as practices (Hendon 1996, 56). The middle class obsession with cleanliness, reflecting tradition-al Hindu thought on purity and pollution, is one of the most visible pointers to the centrality of the domestic sphere in middle class val-ues (Säävälä 2010, 178).
Homes are also central sites of class reproduction, and meeting points for different classes, especially the higher classes and their domestic workers. While the middle class aim to clearly distinguish themselves from the lower classes, they are actually highly integrated with each other in their daily activities (see Peace 2007, 154). One manifestation of such integration is the outsourcing of all sorts of work as an integral element of middle class life in India (Waldrop 2004). It is very common for the middle class to call for manual la-bourers for both large and small tasks, from repairing things to
pur-chasing food products, household items and clothes from door-to-door vendors (see Tiwari 2000).128
The homes that I visited in Jaipur were usually in an impeccable condition, but achieving this is a time consuming process. The de-mands for purity and cleanliness are not merely symbolic, since dust settles on surfaces in a matter of hours in Jaipur, a polluted city sur-rounded with sand deserts. In India the floors are typically washed every day, part of a general heavy cleaning load. Cooking is often ex-tremely time-consuming because of the adherence to rules related to purity and pollution and the multiplicity of dishes. Even if ready-made food is becoming increasingly popular, preparing the dishes takes several hours each day. So, women try to outsource as many tasks as possible: for example, the vegetable vendors who come to their gates sell garlic readily peeled and divided into cloves. All these tasks, and many others, are mainly women’s responsibility.
Middle class women as household managers
To explore women’s roles in reproducing middle class domesticity, let us look at a lengthy excerpt from Raj Kamal Jha’s (2002, 266–269) novel If you are afraid of heights, which captures the self- and cultur-ally imposed standards for cleanliness, portrayed through a middle class “Mother” in Kolkata.
After you leave for school, for Mother there are a thousand and one things to do. Chandra (the maid) has already done the dishes, swept and scrubbled the floors, made the bed, fluffed the pillows, aired the bedsheets, but when Mother moves from one room to the other, her eyes pick up the pillows, not in a straight line. One pillowcase hasn’t been pulled all the way down so she picks it up, pats it back into shape, fluffs it again, places it on the bed, moves a few steps back to see if she’s got it right. No, it’s now at an angle to the other, a couple of inches
128 In an upper middle class neighbourhood in Delhi, employers tended to ex-tend their mastery to all people who appeared to be working class, for example, by ordering strangers to perform manual tasks in a common park (Waldrop 2004).
off to the right, she pushes it to the left, now they are in one straight line but the movement of the pillows has rumpled the bedsheet, two creases run diagonally, she tugs at the end that overhangs the bed until the creases are gone.
Now the bed is perfect.
Almost.
The bed out of her mind and her way, at least for now, she looks at the floor. It’s clean, she can see the marks the scrubbing has left but what she’s drawn to are the specks around the chair’s legs. She goes to the kitchen to get the mop, it’s behind the gas cylinder, she wets it in the sink, the tap is dry so she has to take water from the bucket in a glass and pour it onto the mop. She watches the water stain the cloth, wrings it just a little bit, she doesn’t want the water to drip as she goes from the sink to the room but she wants the wetness to stay so she cups the mop in her hands. And bends down to wipe the rings from the chair legs away.
Now that she has the mop in her hand, what else should be done?
The showcase.
She cleaned it the day before yesterday, it’s shut tight, the dust wouldn’t have
entered through the glass door but why take a chance? The first shelf has a brass Buddha, two ashtrays made of stained glass, the second has three dolls. She stands there for a while, perhaps thinks about the doll you want, the one in the shop, in the red dress.
And so the “Mother” went on and on, going through her clearly middle class apartment in Kolkata. Home management in Jaipur and other Indian cities is largely a women’s world, and women bear almost the sole responsibility for housework (Agarwal 2000; Fernandes 2006;
Palriwala & Neetha 2009; Säävälä 2010; Tiengtrakul 2006; Tiwari 2002). Traditionally, women were responsible for house-work inside the house and men for work around the house,129 but in urban
fami-129 Husband and wife have been described as two wheels of one cart, each wheel performing its own function. The wife is expected to manage the home
the house and men for work
lies today there is much less work outside. According to the Indian National Time Use Survey, in 1998–99 men spent on average thirty-six minutes per day on unpaid care work while women spent about five hours (Palriwala & Neetha, 2009, 22–23).130
Women take pride in maintaining the home well and measure their own success by how they create a home for their family. Moreo-ver, their status depends upon how well they are able to maintain the home (Donner 2008; Tiengtrakul 2006, 30, 49). Since many women spend most of their lives within familial parameters, the centrality of the family and the household in their lives cannot be overemphasised (Dube 1996, 2).
The idea of gender complementarity within middle class families has meant and still means in many families that husbands are re-sponsible for the provision of income and women for the home. Even in larger cities such as Mumbai, where significant changes have oc-curred in the gendered middle class norms related to the joint family structure, to behaviour in public space, and in the age of marriage, the actual experiences of working women continue to be structured around the dual shifts of labour within the workplace and house-hold (Fernandes 2006, 163). There is an alternative ethos of women’s agency and the ability to lead her family out of economical and social challenges exists in India (Tiengtrakul 2006, 33-34), but it was not explicitly expressed among the people I met in Jaipur.
In Jaipur, every single female employer I met, both housewives and wage-earning women, told me they were solely responsible for household work: as one put it, “In India men don’t do household work.
I mean all the home business is women’s business. Even if the wife is a working wife, like I am, I don’t get any kind of help from my husband in household work.”Their husbands did minimally household duties,
front and husband the outdoor one, and they are expected not to interfere in each other’s spheres (Tiwari 2002, 30)
130 When calculated only for those who actually participate in care work, men spent 1 hour and 12 minutes on such work while women spent 5 hours 36 min-utes (Palriwala & Neetha, 2009, 22–23).
limited to the occasional preparation of tea or an omelette131.
The gendered division of labour has remained virtually intact, but women do not manage the “home business” on their own. As Faye Dudden (quoted in Romero 2002, 84) has noted:
Domesticity’s new view on women’s roles, while implicitly assigning the domestic to drudge work, called employers to
‘higher’ tasks and to supervision.
While both middle and working class women in Jaipur have the main responsibility for housework, the ability of the middle class to hire workers to ease their burden accentuates the differences between them and reproduces class contradictions (Romero 2002, 82-83). In Nepal, Shah (2000, 102) argues that domestic workers “play a crucial (albeit unrecognized) role in economically and culturally subsidizing the advancement of women from another class.” Although it has been argued (Shurmer-Smith 2000, 50) that the ability to employ work-ers in India distinguishes the ordinary middle class from the upper middle class, my data show that both groups frequently hire workers.
However, the number of workers, the frequency of their visits, and their tasks varied considerably depending on each employer’s needs and economic standing.
Success in managing the house requires the right mix of workers.
Perhaps the most important decision for the employers is whether to hire part-time or live-in workers. Out of the seventeen employers in my data, ten employ only part-time workers and seven employ both (see Appendix 2). Nearly all households employed at least a maid and a sweeper, and most also a washerwoman or man. Two wealthier upper middle class families employed five different workers. It was not uncommon in wealthy families in the early 20th century 10 to 20 servants (King 2007, 56), but I have never come across such large numbers, although I have understood that this may occur in the
rich-131 In some social circles in India, among younger couples in academia, for example, men may also participate (Agarwal 2000, 55).
est families in India.132 In terms of total working hours, the employer who hired most labour power had two in workers and one live-out cook who worked a full day from 9.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m., as well as one part-time worker.
It is usually the women who supervise domestic workers. Coor-dinating their schedules requires considerable organisation, and is particularly challenging for wage working women. Both women em-ployed outside the home and housewives need to plan and structure their day around the workers’ visits, since usually at least two dif-ferent workers visit a single household within the same day, maids usually twice a day.
Even if part of women’s work is outsourced to domestic workers, the overall amount is so time-consuming that there remains much for most women to do themselves. Those who carry out minimal work themselves continue to have the overall responsibility to ensure that tasks get done (Agarwal 2000, 48). Agarwal (2000, 55–56) ar-gues that the fact that middle class families hire domestic help actu-ally cloaks the reality that a large number of tasks are still done by women in such families. To examine the supervisory roles and the significance of domestic workers for middle class domesticity, we can look at Kripas’ day in managing her four part-time workers. In terms of her role as an employer, Kripa can be seen as a rather typical upper middle class, high caste employer of her generation.
Kripa’s day:
supervising domestic workers in an upper middle class home
It is early morning and Kripa, about fifty-year old Brahmin house-wife, is doing the morning puja, a worship ritual in the small home temple. The beautiful altar adjoins the living room, allowing for easy
132 Having a very large household staff is a phenomenon known also elsewhere in Asia. In her study on Java in Indonesia, Weix (2000, 141) writes about a wealthy, female entrepreneur whose staff includes forty workers, of different ages and sexes.
accessibility and a view for guests.133 As in so many other upper mid-dle class homes, the spacious living room accommodates a TV-set, a sofa set and a large dining table. The kitchen, next to the living-room, is rather small but it is meant for cooking, not eating. The two-storey house is a little worn-out but comfortable and it is clean everywhere.
As always, the bathroom is out of sight in the furthest corner of the house, behind the bedrooms.
The gate bell rings and Kripa lets in a man in his early forties. It is the driver, who works from early morning till late evening but lives in his own home. Since they do not have a cook, Kripa has woken up early to prepare the breakfast. She now offers the driver some lefto-vers and tea while he waits patiently for Kripa’s eldest daughter to get ready. Driving the adult daughter to work is one of the driver’s main duties. Kripa’s son and younger daughter drive scooters to their jobs.
All Kripas’ children are still unmarried but arrangements for their marriages are being made. Her husband works in another city, but when he is in town the driver takes him wherever needed. Kripa and her husband both have a Masters Degrees but whereas her husband works as a manager in public sector, Kripa has never worked outside home since her marriage
Hurrying her daughter off, Kripa is now home alone with her own mother, ammaji, the grandmother. She is getting a little irritated since the maid, Nirmala, is late again. But there she comes, a little af-ter 10 a.m., complaining about her husband´s drinking. Kripa listens politely for a moment, although she would rather not. Nirmala origi-nally comes from Bihar and has worked for Kripa’s household for four years now. Kripa has also become familiar with her small daughter, whom Nirmala has brought along to work a couple of times. Nirmala works for four other houses in the same neighbourhood.
Time for work, the young woman picks up the broom and sweeps
133 Säävälä (2010, 179) notes that household altars are increasingly moved away from the protected interior spaces of homes to more neutral spaces to become more accessible to visitors.
the floor. After sweeping, she mops the floor with a piece of wet cloth.
Then to the kitchen where dishes from yesterday evening and this morning wait in a large pile. She throws the left-overs away, carries the steel utensils outside in a big emal basin, and starts the washing with cold water under the tap. After finishing and bringing the dishes back to the kitchen, Kripa gives Nirmala a small pile of her mother’s clothes. Kripa washes the clothes of all other family members in a washing machine herself, but hands the grandmother’s clothes to Nirmala who washes them in less than fifteen minutes. Completing her tasks in about two hours, she hurries away after having refused, as always, the tea which Kripa sometimes offers her. In the meantime, the sweeper has completed her work in ten minutes. She first swept the street in front of the house, and then took out the garbage bag that Nirmala gave her - in this Brahmin house the sweeper never enters the house. She then threw the garbage onto the nearest empty plot, where garbage is generally thrown for scavengers to collect and for cows to eat.
Later in the afternoon the gardener arrives, waiting for Kripa’s instructions in his quiet manner. There is no proper garden in this house, only a few plant pots on the small terrace in front of the house and some plants surrounding the gate. So he only comes here about once a forthnight.
At 5 p.m., Nirmala, the maid, is back for the second shift. This time, she gets her work done in a little less than 30 minutes. She only needs to wash the lunch dishes. Kripa had eaten lunch with her old mother and her youngest daughter, and, before that, drank tea with her niece who had come to discuss a detail related to an upcoming wedding.
In the evening the driver brings the elder daughter back from work. Now it is time for Kripa and her younger daughter, who has come back from her work by scooter, to go together to the nearest market. The driver carries the vegetables back to the car. At home, Kripa and her daughters start dinner preparations. At around 8 p.m.
the driver leaves for home with instructions for the next day. Kripa’s supervisory work for the day is over and she continues the dinner preparations, expecting two relatives to join them.
The following table is a summary of Kripa’s workers, their tasks and schedules:
table 1. kripa’s workers, their tasks, schedules
Occupation Tasks Schedule
Maid (woman) Cleaning floors Washing dishes Washing some clothes
10–12 a.m.
4–4.30 p.m.
Driver (man) Drives daughters (and
father) to work 8 a.m.–7 p.m./8 p.m.
Sweeper (woman) Sweeps the front of the house
Takes out the garbage
Every second day, 10 minutes each time
Gardener (man) Gardening work Twice a week Washerwoman Ironing, washing clothes Every second day
This overview of Kripa’s day shows how work is differentiated into clearly separable tasks and outsourced to different workers. Next, I examine further the commodification of domestic work, which char-acterises particularly the part-time work.