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Miguelitro's avatar

Living in Delhi India in the early to mid-eighties, it was common for many Indian middle-class households to hire children--mostly young girls-- as young as 11 or 12 to act as live-in servants. Usually, they were low caste and often from the nearby mountains, as mountain people were considered more honest and docile. Surely their parents sent them.

The Ahujas, my landlords who lived downstairs, always had one. I would see the unkempt child mopping the driveway or washing clothes. Mrs. Ahuja, a loud Sardarni, would regularly scream at the hapless child.

Like you, if I had "reported" it, nobody would have done anything about it because it was a socially accepted behavior at the time--and in any event technical violations were easily addressed with a bribe.

Maybe I'm rationalizing to myself, but all I would have accomplished is getting us evicted from the upstairs of the Ahuja's house. I also wonder what kind of life she left.

I saw lots of really inhumane stuff in India--much, much worse than in any country I have lived in or spent significant time in. Though I worked for my then sister-in-law (who did labor organizing for poor women with SEWA), when it came to individual instances, all I did was watch.

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Jeff Pearson's avatar

The world is full of people beyond our help. So, we help those we can.

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