Household Staff

This is my longest-standing draft article from India, so it makes sense that it kick off the catch up series.

During orientation, I asked a fellow new hire (who had lived overseas for awhile) if it was strange to have a stranger in your house all the time. He responded with something along the lines, "Sure, but you get over it really quickly when you don't have to make your bed or fold your own laundry." Household staff are pretty ubiquitous in Chennai, both for expats and for the wealthier locals. Nearly every officer currently employs someone or has in the past.

When we arrived, we hired a driver and an "all-around-er" (nanny/cook/housekeeper). We ended up having to let the driver go a few months later, but our housekeeper has been a wonderful part of our tour. It's going to be a real hit to our quality of life when we have to go back to being responsible adults: cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry... Aside from that, it's a crazy thought that we're in a position to fully employ someone (in many families' cases, multiple people) using solely our disposable income. It's quite the reminder of our comparative wealth to the local Chennaites.

The pictures feature our housekeeper's preferred floor cleaners (we have a vacuum, but she rarely uses it) and homemade dosas for breakfast.

Indian Bank Scheme: Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

The first we heard of Prime Minister Modi's new "banking scheme" was when our "all 'rounder" Harriet, asked for most of a day off to go to the bank an open an account. Bank accounts are something we take for granted in the US, since the minimum balances are so low that pretty much everyone (that wants one, at least) has one. This isn't the case in India, where minimum balances and monthly fees make bank accounts unobtainable for huge portions of the population. It's estimated that less than two thirds of Indian households have access to banking services. Harriet is a prime example; she makes much more working for us (probably twice) than she would performing a similar job for a local family, and she still couldn't (or wouldn't) afford a bank account. That's one of the reasons gold is so popular here, it's a way for people to store wealth.

Anyway, getting back on topic, the Prime Minister announced a plan to allow people to open bank accounts with zero minimum balance and much looser identification requirements. To encourage people to do so, he sweetened the pot with free accident insurance and life insurance. The new bank accounts will also allow for microloans after a set period of good standing. The goal of this scheme is to break the current dependence on usurers and ponzi schemes for loans and investments (respectively). It also may help reduce burgulary rates, by giving people an alternative to storing cash (or pawnable jewelry) in their houses.

The government has a lofty goal of 7.5 crore (or 75 million) new bank accounts by the end of the year. Numbers like that always put into perspective the amount of people in India... that's more than 20% of the population of the United States. Harriet left our house yesterday in time to get to the bank before it opened. Even so, she ended up waiting at the bank for 6 and a half hours to register for her account.

The Hindu Business Line Article
ZeeNews Article
Reuters Article
BBC Article

I can't help but notice that the American news companies either didn't notice, or didn't care to write about this topic. (And the comments on BBC and Reuters exemplify how most Westerners just have no concept of the impact something like a bank account can have for someone living on a few dollars per day.)

Two Years in India, Weeks 9 and 10: Long Weekend

Weeks 9 and 10 sandwiched a four day weekend, so I might as well write about both at the same time. If that logic doesn't work for you... let's just say I was out of town last weekend and didn't get a chance to write a post.

Ten percent of the way through my first tour and things at work are starting to feel "normal." I'm still regularly asked if I'm "settling in" - it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. My bet is until the next arrival/departure season. I don't have a lot to report except my building excitement to visit Delhi in the near-ish future to meet my counter parts on the "mother ship." (As a consulate, all funding for Chennai goes through the Embassy in New Delhi.) We also had to let our driver go last week, when we learned he was on the RSO's DO NOT HIRE list. It was kind of a bummer, since we liked him, but he was very nice about the whole thing. I'll go into more details in another post; I'm due to write one about the pros and cons of employing household staff.

I did have another small victory at work this week. The State Department uses a system called iPost to continuously monitor the health of the computer networks of overseas posts. To make it more competitive (because, why not?), they tell you what rank you are out of all of the posts in the world and those in your region. When I arrived at post, our world-wide ranking for one of our networks was around 125th, and as of this week we're number 1! Although this doesn't win me any awards, further bilateral diplomatic relations with India, or anything like that... It was still a good feeling and it can't hurt my chances of getting tenured. It almost felt like cheating, since it wasn't that difficult and Chennai isn't a very busy post, so I had the time. I've been talking to the other IMSers from my orientation class and they sound way more busy. I guess that's one of the benefits to going to a consulate!

Side note: The day our HHE was supposed to arrive in Chennai (according to the shipping department) has come and gone and I haven't been contacted. Guess I'll fall back to expecting it when the company that shipped it from DC estimated it would arrive (October 10th).

The Downside to Drivers

Just a quick rant about drivers here. We definitely need a driver for our time in Chennai. I'm sure I could learn to deal with the hectic traffic, but it'd be tough for me to drive to work and then return the car to our house for my wife to use during the day without a driver. So, we're in the middle of auditioning people to fill the position and we've noticed something... They all want insanely high pay (in relation to local rates). I'm no stranger to trying to get more money at an interview, but I'm getting tired of people asking for 20% more than the highest paid driver working for the consulate or 40% more than the mode (according to the CLO's survey 4 months ago). Heck, we talked to one guy who said he'd finished a full year with his last job and therefore deserved a 15% raise... and then another 15% raise after 1 year. Before you think I'm too cruel, I should point out that most of the drivers working for Americans at the consulate already make 100% more than their counterparts working for other companies or consulates. Part of the problem may be my poor negotiating skills, but I do have excellent "well I just won't hire you" skills. Oh well, the search continues!