By Suhashini Raj and Ellen Barry, front page, Sunday, July 16, 2017<\/p>\n
NOIDA, India \u2014 The madams in the luxury gated community went to yoga classes and toddler playgroups; the maids soundlessly whisked away dirty dishes and soiled laundry before retreating, at night, to a nearby shantytown of tin sheds and plastic tents.<\/p>\n
This kind of arrangement has persisted across India<\/a> for decades, in apparent harmony.<\/p>\n But early on Wednesday, at the Mahagun Moderne in Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India\u2019s capital, the madams and the maids went to war.<\/p>\n A dispute between a maid and her employer erupted into a full-blown riot<\/a>, as hundreds of the maid\u2019s neighbors, armed with rocks and iron rods, forced their way into the complex and stormed her employer\u2019s apartment. In response, thousands of families have locked their maids out, saying they can no longer trust them in their homes.<\/p>\n Ashok Yadav, the development\u2019s head of security, wondered how long the madams could hold out.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is that it is a symbiotic relationship between the madam and the maid,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, the residents are very angry and shocked at the violent way the mob attacked the society. But before long, they will have to find new maids. How will life go on otherwise?\u201d<\/p>\n India\u2019s vast disparity between rich and poor means members of a newly moneyed class are able to hire domestic help for low pay, with no contracts and few legal obligations.<\/p>\n Though they may resent their treatment, maids are typically afraid to lose their jobs, and of the \u201cpull their employers may have with the authorities,\u201d said Tripti Lahiri, the author of \u201cMaid in India: Stories of Inequality and Opportunity <\/a>Inside Our Homes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Conflicts between domestic workers and employers are a regular feature of Indian crime logs, but mass violence is almost unheard-of, Ms. Lahiri said. <\/strong>That is partly because i<\/strong>n Indian cities, many maids live in their employers\u2019 homes, giving them little opportunity to build networks and compare notes.<\/strong><\/p>\n That has changed, however, as luxury high-rises proliferated in farmlands on the outskirts of New Delhi, and slum neighborhoods appeared beside them, in what Ms. Lahiri called \u201ca perfect setup for an us vs. them clash.\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of Harshu Sethi and her maid, Johra Bibi, in Noida on Wednesday, the clash was Alfred Hitchcock-grade, awakening subterranean anxieties about the true relationship between the rich and the poor.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Ms. Sethi accused Ms. Bibi of stealing 17,000 rupees, or about $265, from a safe in her apartment. She said Ms. Bibi had admitted taking 10,000 rupees in back wages, and then disappeared. Ms. Bibi, 30, denies confessing to anything, and said Ms. Sethi \u201ckept me locked at her place\u201d that night, an allegation that her husband shared with other residents of the slum. The police say the maid spent the night in the apartment of another employer.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember anything,\u201d Ms. Bibi said in an interview. \u201cThe next morning there was a big ruckus. A lot of people came. The guard came and took me out.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Sethi, a schoolteacher, described something more frightening. She was in her apartment waking her 8-year-old son for school, she said, when she saw a \u201chuge crowd,\u201d led by women, coming toward her unit, shouting, \u201cToday we will kill her; we will kill the madam.\u201d<\/p>\n Video shows a loud, aggressive crowd surging toward the complex while security guards try ineffectually to beat it back. Ms. Sethi said people in the crowd jumped over the balcony of her ground-floor apartment and shattered a plate-glass door with a flower pot.<\/p>\n Ms. Sethi said she pulled her son from a glass-strewn bed and hid in the locked bathroom with her husband for an hour and a half, while the crowd ransacked her apartment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were only thinking of saving our lives,\u201d she said in an interview, sobbing, and displayed a heavy iron rod left in the apartment by one of the intruders. \u201cThey tried to show that they did not have rights. I feel that we do not have any human rights. We are the poor ones.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Sethi, 34, considers herself a benevolent boss.<\/p>\n \u201cWe worship them, because they are such an important part of our lives,\u201d she said of the maids. \u201cHindus believe that if you are eating something and someone with an empty stomach is watching you eat, you cannot digest this food. We first feed them and then eat. I would give her tea before making her do her chores.\u201d<\/p>\n But she has, she said, lost her faith in that bond. \u201cI think they hate us,\u201d she said of the maids. \u201cThere is a definite class divide. They hate us for the money, they wonder: \u2018Why are they so well off, so rich? Why do they have everything?\u2019 They envy us, and this is how it comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Bibi, the maid, had a different take on the relationship, saying Ms. Sethi had not paid her 3,500 rupees, or about $55, for the past two months, and had falsely accused her of stealing.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because she has money, does she think she will get away with anything?\u201d she said. \u201cAll over, everyone is listening to her, and nobody to me. Will she throw us in the garbage just because I am poor?\u201d<\/p>\n Within hours, the conflict had drawn a bright line through the complex, which has 2,700 units, and the residents announced a decision to bar all servants from the complex. The Hindustan Times reported earnestly that \u201ca large number of families ordered their food from outside on Wednesday and Thursday.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe point is that they must be taught a lesson,\u201d said Mamta Pandey, 50. \u201cIf they can unite, why can\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Pandey said she now woke up an hour earlier to do chores, and was planning to buy \u201ca wiper which is made with new-age technology\u201d so she could more easily swab her floors. She said she \u201chad a problem sitting and wiping the floor the traditional way.\u201d<\/p>\n