I/III. http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/Cursor/entry/the-baggage-from-home [email protected]<progressive-interactions%[email protected]>
The Baggage from Home TK Arun <http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/Cursor> Wednesday December 25, 2013, 11:36 AM Even as middle-class , TV watching India smoulders in outrage over the treatment meted out to Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade , she leaves most Americans of Indian origin cold. Khobragade was, of course, arrested, handcuffed , cavity-searched and jailed before being let out on bail for paying her domestic help less than the amount declared in her visa application. There are three reasons why people of Indian origin in the US respond so differently from people in India to the same development. One is the shabby reputation India’s consular officers have for the way they treat people. Even those Indian-Americans fortunate to have been treated with courtesy and dispatch by consular staff have two other reasons to eschew sympathy. *Diplomatic Gaps* One is the lived reality of middleclass Americans, in which they themselves perform all the jobs Khobragade had outsourced to a maid. The notion that you need a maid to be an emancipated woman professional is contrary to multiple American notions of self-worth and regard for manual work. And the second factor holding back Indian-American tears is the respect Americans have for contracts. To have two contracts for the maid, one for visa documentation and the other for actual payment of salary, is unacceptable. There are useful insights to be drawn from these three factors that distinguish the reaction in India from the reaction in the US to the same development. One, the government of India is being unfair to their diplomats deployed at their consulates by understaffing these offices in relation to the demand placed on their services . This is at the root of public disaffection with Indian consulates. Since all consular services are fully paid for, there is no reason whatsoever why consulates should not recruit the full complement of personnel required to handle their workload efficiently and fast. Fees are not cast in stone and can be revised and raised. There is no need for either those requiring consular services or consular staff to feel they are being treated unfairly. Two, middle-class India, which vocally and volubly resents the symbols of privilege used by the political elite, is perfectly happy to treat as an underclass a segment of humanity that toils to make their genteel existence comfortable. The rights of domestic workers are on a different footing from the rights of middleclass Indians. *Elites at Work* The harsh reality is that the Indian woman professional’s relative emancipation is achieved at the cost of domestic workers. It is not the case that the division of work at home gets evenly distributed between the man and the woman so that the woman is released from what otherwise are deemed to be her chores to pursue a career. Domestic chores remain the woman’s responsibility , but she has the luxury of outsourcing them to a worker. The smaller the outlay on the worker, the more the work that can be outsourced and the more emancipated the woman professional. Given this logic of work in India, it is not surprising at all that women diplomats think they cannot function abroad without carrying their load of domestic help along with them. If this can be achieved only by making false statements on official documents, so be it. Of course, the US government is complicit in such misdeclaration when it issues visas to domestic workers of diplomats who are promised a salary comparable to what the concerned diplomat gets. And this would be true with diplomats not just from India but from a range of developing countries as well. *Inviting the Shame* But given the institutional structure of American democracy, this kind of complicity is not absolute. If a maid creates a legal dispute, it can take a course as ugly as the present one has. Especially if political ambitions come into play, such as those that seemingly drive Preet Bharara, US attorney for the Southern District of New York to pursue Khobragade with vigour. Bharara, who has high-profile prosecutions such as those of Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam to his credit, could hope to follow in the footsteps of Eliot Spitzer , who became governor of New York after catching the public eye for a series of prosecutions, including that of the 1990s Wall Street wizard Michael Milken. It is unclear why and how the US government gave asylum to the maid’s immediate family in India before Khobragade was arrested. But it is more plausible to see in the present development exploitation of a good opportunity by an ambitious politician in the making than to nail a conspiracy by the US government to show an independent-minded India its place in the world. But New Delhi would do well to bar its officials from bundling domestic help into their diplomatic baggage . It should pay those ranks it deems eligible a large enough allowance to hire local help wherever they are posted, rather than bear embarrassment of the kind the Khobragade affair has wrought. II/III. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/devyani-khobragade-prabhu-dayal-new-york-consular-officials-feeling-insecure/1/332442.html Consular officials feeling insecure and their families, vulnerable: Prabhu Dayal Prabhu Dayal New Delhi, December 23, 2013 | UPDATED 09:29 IST *Though deeply-pained over the development which he had seen coming, Dayal and his wife have chosen to remain quiet. However, in a special interview, the 1976 Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer bares his heart out to Headlines Today's Jugal R Purohit.* *The Devyani Khobragade case and future ahead* Devyani Khobragade's arrest has resulted in an unprecedented Indo-US row which shows little signs of abating. Since I was Consul General in New York from September 2008 till February 2013, I feel duty bound to put the situation in a full and correct perspective. Devyani worked as my Deputy towards the end of my term. Moreover, I also faced a lawsuit about which some misinformed comments continue to be made in some sections of the media. I met Sangeeta Richards several times at the Consulate. She not only seemed happy and cheerful but also struck me as being quite well groomed and educated--not the usual type of domestic worker. Given the recent history of problems faced by the Consulate, I advised Devyani to be careful. I also told her that there were plenty of people around who could misguide Sangeeta and create trouble. *Cases of desertion by domestic assistants are not new* For decades, domestic assistants accompanying our diplomats to the US have gone missing, preferring to stay there illegally and pursue their dollar dreams. Countless Security Guards, including many from the police and paramilitary services have also done likewise. Although the US authorities have been invariably informed whenever this has happened, they have done nothing to nab them. As is well known, the US has a very large number of illegal, undocumented aliens who provide cheap labour. However, in October 2000,the US Congress enacted the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act(TVPA).In terms of this Act, our domestic assistants who now abscond can obtain a trafficking visa by alleging that they were subjected to involuntary servitude and not paid wages as per US laws. They can get a three year T Visa which gets converted to full resident status. Naturally, such persons allege that they would face extreme hardship if they were deported back, as Sangeeta Richards has done. In return, they have to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies against the alleged traffickers--their former employers. Then in 2010, New York State enacted the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, after which there has been a spate of law suits filed by domestic workers. It is no secret that many Indians go to the US and try to stay on by hook or crook. Thousands of Sikhs have managed to obtain political asylum by alleging that they are being persecuted in India and thus getting full resident-status. Privately, many of them admit that they only took the asylum route as it was the only way they could get a Green Card. However, the US authorities continue to give asylum visas to many Sikh applicants, blindly ignoring the fact that the Sikhs are a thriving community in India, and that our Prime Minister is himself a Sikh. However, the asylum visa is not available to everybody. This is where the TVPA has opened the doors to people like Sangeeta Richards who can obtain official passports as domestic assistants of our diplomats, get an A3 visa from the US Embassy, reach US shores, work there for some months, abscond and then obtain a T Visa. The visa fraud allegedly committed by Devyani Khobragade was in fact committed by Sangeeta Richards as she misrepresented her terms of employment to the US Embassy during her interview with the Consular officer for getting an A3 domestic worker visa which would later enable her to leapfrog to a trafficking T Visa. Now, a few words about two earlier cases which took place in New York. Shanti Gurung worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Neena Malhotra, Consul for over three years. I met her often as she would come to the Consulate to attend functions such as Republic Day, Independence Day, Deewali, Baisakhi etc. as well as music concerts, and she was always happy and contented. I was shocked when she went missing on the eve of Dr. Neena's departure from New York on transfer and even more shocked when she filed a lawsuit a year later against her employer alleging confinement, forced labour, slavery, ill-treatment etc. No doubt, she did so to obtain a T Visa. Mrs. Santosh Bhardwaj worked as my housekeeper for two years in India and four years in Morocco before joining me as my domestic assistant in New York in February 2009. Eleven months later, in January 2010 she absconded from the Consulate building where she lived. Seventeen months after that she filed a suit against me alleging slavery, forced labour, non-payment of full wages etc. She alleged that she was not given proper accomodation and was made to sleep in a storage area. She also made an allegation about an incident of sexual harassment. These allegations were prominently reported in the media. Six weeks later, her lawyers filed an amended suit in which the allegation about sexual harassment and being made to sleep in a storage area were voluntarily dropped. Under US judicial practice, a plaintiff enjoys absolute litigation privilege and can amend a suit by adding or deleting charges. However, these and many other allegations had already received wide publicity in the media and continue to be referred to even now. The fact was that she was not made to sleep in a storage area but was provided a fully-furnished one bedroom apartment in the Consulate building with heating, air-conditioning, television and attached bathroom and there were many witnesses to this fact. As regards sexual harassment, this charge was also completely false. The media gave very little coverage to the voluntary dropping of these charges. She was so well treated in Delhi and Morocco that she voluntarily went with us to New York. Did our treatment towards her suddenly changed so drastically in New York that it was tantamount to slavery and involuntary servitude? The suit alleged that I had not paid her wages at ten dollars an hour as per the contract. Here, I would like to draw attention to the website of the US State Department which states the following: 'As of March 2011, the Department has decided that no deductions are allowed for lodging, medical care, medical insurance or travel. As of April 2012,deductions taken for meals are also no longer allowed'. However, Mrs Bhardwaj worked for me in New York from January 2009 till February 2010 when deductions for perks were allowed by the State Department. If perks are included,the emoluments of my domestic assistant were considerably more than what she was to get under the contract. A fully furnished one bedroom apartment in the Upper East part of New York does not come for less than 2500 dollars! Added to this were the expenses towards water, electricity, heating, air-conditioning, food, medical cover,travel passages (including for home leave) plus a handsome salary. The emoluments of all officials posted by MEA to Embassies and Consulates include salary and perks; the emoluments of a domestic assistant accompanying an India diplomat are built into the officer's own package, and also include salary and perks. It is only after March 2011 that the US State Department has begun to disallow deductions for perks for domestic assistants. Litigation in the US is a very expensive and stressful process. Most law suits end up in an out of court settlement without acknowledgement of wrongdoing. I, too had no option but to settle the case. India's view has been that the domestic assistants of our diplomats hold Official Passports and should be outside the purview of US labour laws. The US side has not agreed to this, insisting that US laws apply to them. This impasse continues. What about the future?. We should either get the US to agree to our position or change our present arrangement relating to the domestic assistants. Our officers should not be caught in this sort of situation arising from how the Ministry of External Affairs interprets the emoluments given to domestic assistants and how differently the US authorities interpret them. This would prevent the sort of ordeal which Dr. Neena, Devyani and I myself have gone through. It is understood that MEA is trying to revamp the system and may itself sign contracts with domestic workers instead of officers having to do so. Will this revamped arrangement shield officials posted at our Consulates fully? I am afraid not,for one must recall the case of Krittika Biswas, a 12th grade student and daughter of a Vice Consul serving under me in New York. She was arrested and handcuffed in front of her fellow students at her school on the charge of cyber-bullying one of her teachers although she asserted that she had a diplomatic passport. She was not allowed to contact her parents or anyone till evening, and was kept in a detention centre for twenty eight hours with prostitutes and drug addicts in the same manner as Devyani. My colleagues and I had to run from pillar to post to get her released. She was not taken back in her school but had to attend a sort of reform school. Later, it was discovered that it was not Krittika but another student who was responsible for the cyber-bullying, but he was not arrested. What can one make of this except that the New York law enforcement agencies were biased and high-handed? The Krittika Biswas case makes me apprehensive that given the US position on immunity, even if were were to revamp our system relating to domestic assistants, we will not be able to guarantee that our officials in our Consulates will not be arrested or dragged into law courts for some reason or another in future. The US is a highly litigious country where suing people is a sort of favourite past time. Family members of Consulate officials are not given any ID cards and have absolutely no immunity. Hence,they are even more vulnerable. An atmosphere of fear already pervades our Consulate in New York, and the New York Consulate is no longer a sought after posting for this reason. What are we to do in such a situation? Some of my former colleagues go to the extent of saying that if diplomats posted in our Consulates in USA do not enjoy immunity, then we should close down these Consulates and do all Consular work from the Embassy in Washington DC where our officials enjoy immunity. This is not so cynical as it may sound. Firstly, Consular work relating to passports, visas, OCI cards, PIO cards has already been outsourced. Instead of bringing the documents to the Consulates, the outsourcing company could courier them to the Embassy. Secondly, a large number of persons already send their applications to the Consulates by mail, and they would instead have to send these to Washington DC. What difference would it make if someone living in Boston has to send the application to Washington DC instead of to New York? Of course,the Embassy's consular Section would have to be considerably strengthened for handling the additional load. All other work such as information, culture, outreach and economic would also have to be done from Washington alone, which is not so difficult in today's age of instant electronic communications. As regards all the endless protocol work involving receiving and seeing off delegations which keep coming to New York, it could be done by the Permanent Mission to the UN whose officials enjoy immunity. At present, the protocol load is shared by the Permanent Mission and the Consulate. Again, the protocol wing of the Permanent Mission will have to be augmented. I know that this suggestion by my former colleagues may be dismissed as being too cynical. There is no doubt, however that our officers posted at the Consulate in New York have begun to feel very insecure after all these recent cases, and the same may also be true for the other Consulates in Chicago, San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta. How will India protect its diplomats posted to the Consulates given the US position on immunity? Drastic situations call for drastic steps, and if we can't learn from bad experiences, then we alone are to be blamed. Foot-dragging will not get us anywhere. III. http://www.financialexpress.com/news/indian-diplomat-devyani-khobragade-not-first-in-maid-row-tax-payer-paid-prabhu-dayal-75000-tab/1210481/0 Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade not first in maid row, tax payer paid Prabhu Dayal $75,000 tab Amitav Ranjan <http://www.financialexpress.com/columnist/amitavranjan/1> | New Delhi | Updated: Dec 22 2013, 12:15 IST *SUMMARY* A similar complaint was filed against another Indian diplomat by his maid two years ago in New York. It could ultimately fall on the Indian taxpayer to bail out Devyani Khobragade, the diplomat accused of underpaying her domestic help and falsifying documents to get the maid into the US. A complaint of a similar nature against another Indian diplomat by his maid two years ago in New York had resulted in an out-of-court settlement, with the government of India footing the bill. In December 2012, the Ministry of Finance approved the payment of $75,000 from the budget of the Ministry of External Affairs to a “former domestic assistant” who had filed a lawsuit against India’s consul-general in New York, Prabhu Dayal, alleging inhuman treatment. The settlement agreement stipulated that the deal’s details would not be disclosed, or discussed with the media. The maid, Santosh Bhardwaj, filed a lawsuit in June 2011, accusing Dayal of sexual harassment and demanding a massage from her in January 2010. The complainant accused Dayal and his wife of making her work for long hours for $300 a month, taking away her passport, and forcing her to sleep in a storage closet. Bhardwaj demanded over $250,000 in damages and relief, but subsequently withdrew her charge of sexual harassment against the consul-general. Dayal said the maid had run away because he had refused to let her work outside the consulate, which would have allowed her to make some extra money, but would have violated visa rules. He denied having treated Bhardwaj badly, and said that she lived very comfortably in her own furnished room in the consulate, and was paid according to the rules. Following an out-of-court settlement advised by the US court, the MEA, on November 21, 2012, sought Finance’s sanction for $ 75,000 to settle the matter, official sources said. The argument was that the government should pay, because the consul-general had hired the maid in line with the government scheme of allowing servants during the overseas postings of diplomats. The MEA argued that the allegation against Dayal was false, and he had been caught in blackmail resorted to by domestic helps in collusion with NGOs in the US. It backed the out-of-court settlement, saying that fighting a long legal battle would be costlier. With the approval of the Department of Expenditure, the money was paid from the MEA’s miscellaneous head, the sources said. Despite several attempts, Prabhu Dayal, who retired from service after his New York stint, could not be traced for a comment. His whereabouts were not available even in the retired diplomats’ directory. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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