Commonwealth Games 2010: Illegals not allowed | Parvez Sharma | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Sita, the servant, is gone. Delhi is shining, as is Gurgaon. Sita, like my uncle's family, lives in Malibu Towne in Gurgaon, 212 acres of heaven where the upper-middle-class inhabitants of the tower apartments enjoy a life of "no load-shedding" meaning the towers' power is supplied by generators so that residents can avoid the cyclical power cuts the Indian government inflicts on its booming populace.
No marble floors and 24-hour power and water for Sita, though. She and her husband, Mahesh, live in a makeshift jhuggi, or shanty town, right next to the towers, where a few sticks in the mud support the blue tarp that they and their three children call home. Sita is my uncle's family's primary servant and she cooks and cleans the dishes, toilets, floors and clothes. Mahesh cleans the cars. Their friend, Gautam, is the mali, or gardener.
Their jhuggi, just next to the Malibu towers, is built on a plot of land owned by a jat a member of the land-owning caste in Haryana, the state of which Gurgaon is a part. They call him Pehelvan (meaning "wrestler") and pay 600 rupees (£8.50) a month for the right to live there illegally. There are about 100 residents there. Pehelvan, like my family, also knows their other secret. "Sita" is really Mehrunissa, "Mahesh" is Muhammad and "Gautam" is Yassir Khan. They are all Bangladeshi refugees, Muslims using Hindu names to work in the predominantly non-Muslim households of Gurgaon. They are illegal immigrants and have no papers.
On the night of 15 September, Pehelvan confirmed to Sita and her family that the Gurgaon police were rounding up people like them and sending them home, because there was no room for illegals during the approaching Commonwealth Games. He told them that he had tried to bribe the cops with 15,000 rupees per family, which was the going rate, but the lines at the local thana, or police station, were too long he was not the only jhuggi slumlord in booming Gurgaon with the same idea and it might make better sense for them to leave till "the Games are over".
Five nights later, Sita and her family arrived at my uncle's house with two trunks of belongings, two bicycles and six buckets to store. In the early hours of 20 September they drove out of Gurgaon, leaving most of Malibu Towne without servants, car cleaners, gardeners and rubbish collectors. Pehelvan had helped them charter a bus for the inflated rate of 100,000 rupees, including his cut. The bus was headed to the porous border towns of the Indian state of West Bengal, next to Bangladesh, the impoverished country they fled eight years ago.
My extended family also left Malibu Towne, taking up temporary residence in the larger family house in one of Delhi's other satellite townships, where the servants are aplenty and live in "servant quarters" on the property (so no prying police). They hope to return to Gurgaon in a month when "Sita", "Mahesh" and "Gautam" come back.
Gurgaon, arguably the call-centre capital of a new and booming India, is home to many gated communities like Malibu Towne. There is Central Park, Unitech Nirvana Country, Beverly Park 1 and 2, Suncity, Georgian Residency, Emerald Hills, and Hamilton Court. The list is long and a new one seems to come up every week. Each supports its own micro-economy of illegal domestic workers.
Delhi, which now has 20 million-plus residents if one includes satellite towns such as Gurgaon, has been doing a massive cleanup for its much-derided Commonwealth Games. Overnight, it seems, beggars have been literally swept off the streets. A clean and green Delhi is busy welcoming its firangi (foreigner) guests with endless cultural extravaganzas and marigold garlands.
The servant crisis has gone largely unreported, though. The residents of Malibu Towne are not used to cleaning their own homes, so dishes are piling up and floors are not being swept daily. Calls to various neighbours who were dependent on Sita and her friends reveal that many have taken to eating in Gurgaon's air-conditioned shopping malls which boast vast food courts.
Sita's workday would start at 5.30am and finish at 7pm. She took care of eight houses. There are an estimated 500 families in Malibu Towne. Many Sitas were therefore needed. Most of them have now decamped to the Bangladeshi border to wait till the games end.
The central government has started the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, the man who gave us the mother of all outsourcing companies, Infosys. More than 1 billion people are to be given UIDs, or unique identification numbers a gargantuan and complicated exercise. It is not clear if Sita and her family will have access to UIDs or even want them. Being undocumented sometimes has its advantages.
At partition, Bengal was split into East Pakistan and the Indian state of West Bengal; East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh in 1971. From somewhere in West Bengal, Muhammad ("Mahesh") phoned my uncle five days ago: "Are these games over, Sahib?" he asked. "Can we come back?"
Around the same time in the US, another domestic servant called Nicky Diaz Santillan hired a prominent lawyer and held a teary press conference. Her former boss, the Republican Meg Whitman, is running for governor of California and Nicky, the "illegal alien" is now an election issue.
Sita and her family have no access to lawyers and press conferences, yet.
Sita, the servant, is gone. Delhi is shining, as is Gurgaon. Sita, like my uncle's family, lives in Malibu Towne in Gurgaon, 212 acres of heaven where the upper-middle-class inhabitants of the tower apartments enjoy a life of "no load-shedding" meaning the towers' power is supplied by generators so that residents can avoid the cyclical power cuts the Indian government inflicts on its booming populace.
No marble floors and 24-hour power and water for Sita, though. She and her husband, Mahesh, live in a makeshift jhuggi, or shanty town, right next to the towers, where a few sticks in the mud support the blue tarp that they and their three children call home. Sita is my uncle's family's primary servant and she cooks and cleans the dishes, toilets, floors and clothes. Mahesh cleans the cars. Their friend, Gautam, is the mali, or gardener.
Their jhuggi, just next to the Malibu towers, is built on a plot of land owned by a jat a member of the land-owning caste in Haryana, the state of which Gurgaon is a part. They call him Pehelvan (meaning "wrestler") and pay 600 rupees (£8.50) a month for the right to live there illegally. There are about 100 residents there. Pehelvan, like my family, also knows their other secret. "Sita" is really Mehrunissa, "Mahesh" is Muhammad and "Gautam" is Yassir Khan. They are all Bangladeshi refugees, Muslims using Hindu names to work in the predominantly non-Muslim households of Gurgaon. They are illegal immigrants and have no papers.
On the night of 15 September, Pehelvan confirmed to Sita and her family that the Gurgaon police were rounding up people like them and sending them home, because there was no room for illegals during the approaching Commonwealth Games. He told them that he had tried to bribe the cops with 15,000 rupees per family, which was the going rate, but the lines at the local thana, or police station, were too long he was not the only jhuggi slumlord in booming Gurgaon with the same idea and it might make better sense for them to leave till "the Games are over".
Five nights later, Sita and her family arrived at my uncle's house with two trunks of belongings, two bicycles and six buckets to store. In the early hours of 20 September they drove out of Gurgaon, leaving most of Malibu Towne without servants, car cleaners, gardeners and rubbish collectors. Pehelvan had helped them charter a bus for the inflated rate of 100,000 rupees, including his cut. The bus was headed to the porous border towns of the Indian state of West Bengal, next to Bangladesh, the impoverished country they fled eight years ago.
My extended family also left Malibu Towne, taking up temporary residence in the larger family house in one of Delhi's other satellite townships, where the servants are aplenty and live in "servant quarters" on the property (so no prying police). They hope to return to Gurgaon in a month when "Sita", "Mahesh" and "Gautam" come back.
Gurgaon, arguably the call-centre capital of a new and booming India, is home to many gated communities like Malibu Towne. There is Central Park, Unitech Nirvana Country, Beverly Park 1 and 2, Suncity, Georgian Residency, Emerald Hills, and Hamilton Court. The list is long and a new one seems to come up every week. Each supports its own micro-economy of illegal domestic workers.
Delhi, which now has 20 million-plus residents if one includes satellite towns such as Gurgaon, has been doing a massive cleanup for its much-derided Commonwealth Games. Overnight, it seems, beggars have been literally swept off the streets. A clean and green Delhi is busy welcoming its firangi (foreigner) guests with endless cultural extravaganzas and marigold garlands.
The servant crisis has gone largely unreported, though. The residents of Malibu Towne are not used to cleaning their own homes, so dishes are piling up and floors are not being swept daily. Calls to various neighbours who were dependent on Sita and her friends reveal that many have taken to eating in Gurgaon's air-conditioned shopping malls which boast vast food courts.
Sita's workday would start at 5.30am and finish at 7pm. She took care of eight houses. There are an estimated 500 families in Malibu Towne. Many Sitas were therefore needed. Most of them have now decamped to the Bangladeshi border to wait till the games end.
The central government has started the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), headed by Nandan Nilekani, the man who gave us the mother of all outsourcing companies, Infosys. More than 1 billion people are to be given UIDs, or unique identification numbers a gargantuan and complicated exercise. It is not clear if Sita and her family will have access to UIDs or even want them. Being undocumented sometimes has its advantages.
At partition, Bengal was split into East Pakistan and the Indian state of West Bengal; East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh in 1971. From somewhere in West Bengal, Muhammad ("Mahesh") phoned my uncle five days ago: "Are these games over, Sahib?" he asked. "Can we come back?"
Around the same time in the US, another domestic servant called Nicky Diaz Santillan hired a prominent lawyer and held a teary press conference. Her former boss, the Republican Meg Whitman, is running for governor of California and Nicky, the "illegal alien" is now an election issue.
Sita and her family have no access to lawyers and press conferences, yet.
