HOME MAKER or HOME ENGINEERS

My mother is a house wife. Since childhood I have found her to be the busiest person in the world. Her job commences at 6 AM and don’t know when it ends; because I have never seen her sleeping before me. Adding to this, she was my first teacher too.

“We make home. Call us house-ENGINEERS”, says Woman and Child Development Minister Krishna Tirath. The Government of India is mulling on a formula to put an annual cost to the housewives’ work which makes every housewife entitled to some monthly pay. The husbands will have to discharge a certain percentage of their income for their grueling job of keeping house, if they are staying back home and doing household chores.

Actually this idea in India finds its origin from a UK based website. It, for the first time, estimated the value of an average British housewife’s job. They made the calculations based on the average wages professionals would get for discharging the work which a housewife does - cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, caring for children, helping them with studies and handling house accounts. The average annual value of the work done by a housewives is 30000 pound(2.6 Million approx). Now that is not the average income of a typical Indian.

“Home maker” is good word but a very little value is attached to it. Even 2010 Indian census, the largest ever in the world, displays occupation of house wives as unemployed. But as a matter of fact, they yield huge gains to the family- a healthy environment, well tended children, well-kept houses, domestic budgets and what not.

Woman’s low socio status can be somewhere associated with the society’s lack of recognition of household works. I appreciate government’s move to help females regain their Vedic status. They want to change that daft mindset. Women do a thankless job of managing house and children. 

However, this idea of the respected minister seems baseless, although desired, as this can only be implemented in Orwellian bureaucracy where open thoughts had no values and all financial activities of a family was under scanner. The idea they are talking of, comes from a highly developed country where cost of labour is much higher.

Going a bit abyss into the Economics, price is inversely proportional to demand. In UK 70% females are employed, whereas in India merely 35%. Moreover the Drift varies drastically from urban to rural areas. In addition to this, around 40 percent population lies below poverty line. Now, families in UK need a substitute to do the household work. Hence, its costly there. Moreover, we must not forget to check the background of the people raising their voice in this regard. On the other hand, making husbands pay their wives the wages that maids might be paid for domestic labour, could dis-empower women within the family.

This idea gives rise to several Hercules questions, which cannot be answered, or might be bitter in taste. For instance, can we terminate them if they don’t work properly? Or say, what about husbands who stay at home and do housework, while their wives work in offices. Will the reverse money flow?

Another question that arises in my mind, isn’t government discriminating between a rich house-wife and a poor houses wife whose share might be much higher than the total income of latter’s husband. And the quality of work of homemakers cannot even be compared with others. Than how the government is going to fix the indexes for different works, would be worth watching. Atleast I am eagerly waiting for that!

This Law will also encourage Live-In-Relationship. This Law encourages divorces. This Law encourages fight in the loving family life. The government can do far more for women by ensuring total female literacy, and enforcing existing laws against rape and domestic violence. Until we, as a society, really feel graft, unethical behavior and nepotism are huge problems and start to truly care about, all cannot change.

(Last para Ref: Times of India, Nov 3,2012, CHETAN BHAGAT. )