Its not just about Sunita...

This is not just about Sunita. Though she shares her name with Sunita Williams, who was on the front page of TOI yesterday, she represents that strata of Indians which is poles apart from Sunita Williams.

Sunita used to work in my house as a maid some months back. She was a thin lady in her mid 30s (looking like 45) from some small town of Maharashtra, near Pune. I never knew about her personal story until yesterday. There were times when we did not like her work, and her demanding less work and more money, we did not like her especially when she stopped coming to our house, saying that she is not well and kept on sending her 12-13 year old girl who was not working well at all. Even after being ill, she used to strech herself to get some extra money through working. Atlast, we have replaced her in our house with another maid before a month. The whole thing sounds so boring and so familiar, isn’t it?

But I want to discuss something more than this. Yesterday I came to know about her personal story. Her husband left her for another woman some years back. They had 2 children, one boy and one girl. And her husband took away her boy from her, leaving Sunita and her young girl child without any means to earn. Sunita came down to Pune, the land of opportunities for the IT world. She started working as maid in our building as her sister also was working for the same. She and her daughter used to earn enough to sustain themselves and the little Monica (her daughter, I don’t know if she is going to school or not). Though I don’t consider them to be very good and gentle most of the human beings, they were good.

Yesterday, I got the news that Sunita died after her chronic sickness that consumed her for months. I don’t know what would life bring for Monica now.

Well, Its not just about Sunita.

Suddenly, I see, those 30 odd maids coming to my building and think what might their lives be like? What kind of family do they have? And if they die suddenly, how would their family be supported? And after that while coming to office in the bus I saw hundreds of these people on road, working on construction sites of this developing city, Maids going in the other similar building as mine, people picking garbage, people living in small huts near the great IT park, which is like the pride of Pune….. No one cares for them as there no one has the time to do so.

I feel guilty that even when I know that these are the problems I am more concerned with my promotion, my work, my career, changing coaches of Indian cricket team, the new DLF IPO, the French open results, my onsite trip that is getting delayed and am in the same rat race of making more money. Its not that I cannot do anything for this, it just that I don’t want to. Doing it would bring me out of my comfort zone and will put me in a situation where I will have to invest my resources, time and efforts to change it and I am not ready for it. I feel ashamed.

It’s these cities where the rich is getting richer and the divide is increasing day by day. There is no safety net for the poor who work for getting this new face of “India Shining” work in the entire world. These people working for building the great malls, the IT parks, and maintaining the entire support system of the society, definitely deserves a lot more than what they are facing.

Well, today morning while coming to the office, outside my office gate I saw an agent of LIC , selling a specially designed life insurance package for the Infosys Employees, who has that extra money to invest and are working in a safe AC cubicle, solving the defects that some program is giving them. Even they are not concerned about people like Sunita, who probably doesn’t have the education or resources to understand the importance of life insurance and its impact that their family might have. If Sunita had a life insurance cover I think it would have done some good for her daughter.

I don’t know how would it be possible but I would like to see Insurance companies doing something for this along with the people for which these people are working for.

We as employers of these maids, security people or our companies as employers of many such contractual workers can do our bit in making them educated and getting a life insurance cover for them.

If a maid works in 5 houses the owners of those 5 houses can definitely pay some money towards the premium of her life insurance and make her life secured and give the earning hand of a family a safety net they can rely on.

How I wish to see a time when we will take responsibility for others in our society and might take up the issues that would not make our country a place of extremes.