Devyani Khobragade, the deputy consul-general of the Indian mission in New York, spoke in April this year on "Women's Rights and the Influence of Demographics in India" at the Australian Consulate in Manhattan. "The continued entrenchment of women's rights through affirmative action, such as reservations for women in parliament, a holistic approach to education and gender sensitisation were also discussed by Dr Khobragade and the round-table participants," according to the Australian consulate, which identified her as a "woman of the Dalit caste."
On the social media though, there was little sympathy for the diplomat, with some readers pointing to her involvement in the Adarsh housing issue, whe re she is reportedly a member. Her father Uttam Khobragade, is a retired Maharashtra government bureaucrat and former head of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA). Others recalled several notorious cases of Indian families mistreating their domestic help and using them as slave labor, although the U.S charges against Khobragade mainly pertained to fraud and misrepresentation, not abuse.
In one of the most egregious cases the wife-husband team of Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, NRIs who owned a multi-million dollar perfume business in New York, were sentenced in 2007 to 11 and 3 years respectively for abusing their Indonesian housekeepers. Their callousness and brutality provoked such revulsion that New York tabloids dubbed Varsha Sabhnani as "Cruella De Evil." The couple was also ordered to pay restitution of more than a million dollars to the women they enslaved.
While that episode brought to light what the judge hearing case called modern da y slave labor practice, Bharara has signaled that the U.S will not tolerate exploitation of foreign workers even by diplomats.
"Foreign nationals brought to the United States to serve as domestic workers are entitled to the same protections against exploitation as those afforded to United States citizens. The false statements and fraud alleged to have occurred here were designed to circumvent those protections so that a visa would issue for a domestic worker who was promised far less than a fair wage. This type of fraud on the United States and exploitation of an individual will not be tolerated," he said in a statement.
But Indian officials insist there was no intended fraud or misrepresentation. They point out that the domestic help in this case, Sangeeta Richard, was flown to the U.S at government expense, and she had no problems with her wages, which were split between paying her in New York and her family in India, in the eight months she worked in the Khobr agade household. Things only got complicated when she wanted to seek permanent residency in the US.
Officials explained that because diplomats typically take care of all the other needs of the domestic help brought from India, such as housing, food, medical treatment, and trips back home, their written commitment to mandated local wage in western countries ( $ 9.95 per hour of $ 4500 per month in the Khobragade case) is only of a "technical nature." The real cost does work out approximately to that, they maintain, adding that the situation has become complicated because in several cases, the domestic help from India have figured out they can make a killing and gain permanent residence by "going legal."
But the flip side is that this is the third such case involving the Indian consulate in New York. In June 2011, a former housekeeper, Santosh Bharadwaj, had sued India's then consul general in New York Prabhu Dayal, accusing him of intimidating her into forced labor and seeking sexual favors. The case is close to being settled out of court. In February 2012, a New York City Magistrate Judge ordered that Neena Malhotra, a diplomat at the Consulate, to pay nearly $1.5 million for forcing an under-aged Indian girl, Shanti Gurung, to work without pay and meting out "barbaric treatment" to her. The case is still being contested. There have also been such cases in Europe.
In most cases, Indian officials insist the complainants, helped by NGOs, exaggerate and conflate issues in an effort to seek permanent residency and restitution. "The same complainants have had no problems working with the same officials in places such as Morocco or Cambodia. It is only when they come to U.S or Western Europe that all these issues crop up," one official fumed.
But much of the public and media perception in New York has been shaped by one egregious case of domestic abuse (not involving Indian diplomats) that occurred in 2007. The wife-husband team o f Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, NRIs who owned a multi-million dollar perfume business in New York, were sentenced to 11 and 3 years respectively for abusing their Indonesian housekeepers. Their callousness and brutality provoked such revulsion that New York tabloids dubbed Varsha Sabhnani as "Cruella De Evil." The couple was also ordered to pay restitution of more than a million dollars to the women they enslaved.
For many, the case encapsulated the Indian practice of treating domestic help badly. It's a rap that even diplomats have had to bear in the line of duty.
via Top Stories - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNH_z3k0C6VZ_Q02lMN0ZXyuI2MR_A&url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Diplomat-a-voice-for-dalit-womens-rights-took-up-cause-at-Oz-meet/articleshow/27390590.cms
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