New Delhi: The high-stakes Bengal elections, a do-or-die battle for the Trinamul Congress, aren’t just rattling the state; they’ve triggered a full-blown domestic crisis in Delhi-NCR. With polling slated for April 23 and 29, a sizeable chunk of the house help workforce, largely from Bengal, has collectively gone “out of office” to vote, leaving employers facing an existential crisis at home.
Unwashed dishes are staging a silent protest, laundry is piling up like a political rally, and floors are waiting for their own “achche din.”
Sangeeta Saxena of Logix Blossom County in Noida seemed at her wits’ end.
She zeroed in on the upcoming Bengal polls, saying, “Delhi-NCR is facing a serious disruption as many migrant workers head back to West Bengal to vote.”
She added, “Voting is essential in a democracy, but the sudden vanishing act of domestic help has upended daily life, especially for working families and the elderly.”
She explained, or rather alleged, “When I asked my domestic help why she was leaving despite losing wages for the days she’d be away, she said that ‘no vote, no subsidies’ (read ration cards).”
While Ms Saxena is firefighting the domestic chaos, Shilpa Sharma, an entrepreneur living at Laburnum in Gurgaon, has had to call in reinforcements, summoning her mother from Haridwar to hold the fort while she heads out to work.
Her domestic help made it clear, “Can’t come before the polls.”
Someone channelling the old Nirma jingle quipped, “It’s not only Sangeeta and Shilpa, these days it’s a full-blown chorus of ‘Hema, Rekha, Jaya, aur Sushma…’”
Meanwhile, besides the so-called threat of ‘no vote, no subsidies,’ another anxiety weighing on Bengali voters working across Delhi-NCR is the looming spectre of the special intensive revision (SIR).
Many fear that not voting could cost them not just their names on the rolls but their very citizenship.
But as the adage goes, “One man’s loss is another man’s gain.”
Riding this near mass exodus of the Bengali workforce are house-help apps like Insta Maid, Snabbit, Pronto, among others.
These apps seemed to be experiencing the kind of demand usually reserved for IPL tickets. Even then, good luck getting a slot before 48-72 hours.
Suddenly, popular brands of robot vacuum cleaners are also flying off the shelves. And just when you think the plot couldn’t get more interesting or chaotic, comes the irony — those very WhatsApp groups across NCR that once branded these workers as “Bangladeshis” are now refreshing their chats like stock traders, while anxiously awaiting the return of the very people they thought they could do without.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
