This Republic day looking for Rosa Parks Bai

So, a few months ago my housing society issued a notice asking all service providers including maids and drivers to necessarily take the service elevator. Further, to ensure that this rule is enforced, the notice also informed that anyone violating this rule will be given 3 warnings after which their entry in the society will be restricted. Clearly, the society’s managing committee (MC) in its fervour to ensure that the lift segregation rule is strictly adhered to, has happily gone ahead and appropriated for itself the powers to declare someone a tadipaar or persona non grata — something which only a commissioner of police or a magistrate can do under the law. Now, this was not a sudden or even an unsanctioned move. About 4 years ago, when a provisional managing committee took over our newly formed society, one of the first few things they did was to put a female guard in each of the three building lobbies of our housing society — her only job was to check the purses of the incoming and outgoing maids to reconcile the cash and other valuables being carried by them and more importantly, to start enforcing lift segregation. Each of our society buildings has three passenger lifts and one service lift. The passenger lifts have all nicely done interiors adorned with full sized mirror etc. while the service lift meant for moving furniture and hauling garbage is just a fully functional elevator bare shell tucked in a stairwell adjacent to the lobby. Enforcing this decision meant, that even if there was a passenger lift waiting in the lobby, the maids and drivers were necessarily required to take service lift even if it meant waiting for it. Interestingly this meant that during morning rush hours, the domestic workers would report late to work with a cascading effect on the residents’ ability to start their day and during rest of the day when everyone can be accommodated in one passenger lift, two lifts would be used thereby pushing up our electricity bill. But who cares about economic or operational efficiency when prejudice reigns supreme?

Now I have been told this was not an unusual occurrence and that many housing societies in the Mumbai city and beyond practice this segregation and security checks. Having been brought up on a heavy dose of middle school civics and passionately believing in the right to dignity and equality guaranteed by our constitution, I used to fret whenever I would read or hear about such a practice — to me it seemed like a modernized form of untouchability based not so much on caste but on class. It was also a crass reminder of ‘Indians not allowed’ signboards that used to dot high end places in British India just some seventy odd years ago and I just could never fathom why and how the same could be practised by fellow modern Indians. Therefore, as soon as I learnt about the same happening in my housing society, I lodged a protest on our society’s Whatsapp group — perhaps somewhere I was hoping that other residents, who may have failed to notice this due to their busy lives, will take note and together we can nip this in the bud. But boy was I wrong! Not only could I not find anyone who was willing to share my anguish over this, I was almost mocked by some who believed that there was nothing wrong in this move. I was later asked to attend a meeting of a ‘hygiene committee’, which was perhaps responsible for the original decision, to present my side of things. The meeting turned out to be a similar affair, with people pointing out hygiene and safety issues as the reason for lift segregation without even realizing the stupidity of their argument, for we entrust the same maids with cooking our meals and cleaning our homes — even when we are not around to keep a watch over them, and trust these drivers with our cars worth lakhs to ferry our invaluable family and kids as well as to run important errands all by themselves. On pointing this out I was told that a resident may trust his/her employees, but others cannot and hence the measure — and I was left wondering since when has neighbours’ comfort with one’s domestic worker become a factor in determining his/her workplace conditions? People were also quick to point on how I was making an issue when none was there — really? How would you react if you were not allowed to ride the passenger lift, say, in your place of work? Of course, such a thing happening to them was beyond imagination!

A few months later, in a special general body meeting, which unfortunately I missed due to my aunt’s demise, the society passed a resolution regularizing lift segregation. Driven by this and other issues, I decided to run for our first MC elections, and not only did I get elected (since we had the same number of contestants as the seats) but by a strange turn of events ended up becoming society chairman a few months later (not because I was so popular but because no one else was willing to take up this position). Both as a MC member and Chairman, I tried raising this issue with a hope of reversing this decision but somehow could not make any headway with the group, for everyone else seemed to be on the other side of the argument even if they did not say so overtly. ‘Every society does it’ was the usual refrain. Of course, during the time I was there in the MC, lift segregation was not strictly enforced much to the chagrin of many residents — one of them even called asking for its enforcement and when I refused citing that this will be violating workers’ constitutional rights, his immediate response was that constitutional does not apply to them before he realized his mistake and hung up! After about a year or so in the MC, realizing that this responsibility was doing me more harm than the good that I could do — I resigned. I must admit that after this experience of trying to bring a change, my respect for social reformers went up by several thousand notches — I think about reformers like Raja Rammohan Roy who played a pivotal role in abolishing sati and wonder what force of nature he would had commanded to change people’s mind on something which was so deeply rooted in our society when I cannot even get people to allow fellow humans to ride the same lift!

No doubt, the notice that I mentioned at the start of this piece has been issued to end any ambiguity that may have built around this matter thanks to an earlier ‘soft’ stance on this matter. The best part is the same notice allows the maids to ride passenger lift when they are with a resident to ensure that when nannies take the kids out for walks in the evening, the kids are not forced to ride the service lift. Funniest thing is that whenever I object to lifts segregation highlighting how it violates workers’ fundamental rights — I always get a ‘what the f**k are you talking about?’ look — essentially trying to tell me that constitutional right is some lofty farfetched idea which has no relevance in this context. Then the same argument around ‘safety’ and ‘hygiene’ follows. However, when you confront asking for proof, folks usually have no data to substantiate how ‘these people’ are a risk expect some random anecdote or their own pre-conceived notions. Whenever I talk to friends and well-wishers about this issue — I am told to ‘pick my battles carefully’ or ‘take care not to cross my neighbours for some domestic workers’ or better still ‘if maids don’t have a problem or complain then why do you care?’. But the reason why maids or drivers will never complain about this is because given their economic condition, their job and salary will always take precedence over this small 5-minute daily humiliation, and therefore, the onus is on us, the people, who have the privilege of education and know the law to point out the indignity of the situation and get it amended. However, it shocks me to the core how most of the educated middle- and upper-class lot do not really care about this situation and I wonder what values their kids would be imbibing seeing such classism and segregation being practiced brazenly by them. Moreover, given that this segregation is no cabal secret and has been written about in the newspaper multiple times, I wonder why authorities have never taken notice of it and done something about it — perhaps to them this too also seems trivial. But shouldn’t they realize that such segregationist move is just a start — a broken window — which can lead to bigger problems later? So, while I grapple with how, and if at all, I should tackle this new notice — for as of now it seems like an uphill task to get my fellow neighbours to see the reason or for that matter get the attention of the right authority to do something about this, I am secretly hoping that somewhere in this city there is a maid with the same fighting spirit as Rosa Parks, who refuses to accept segregation and demands to ride the passenger lift — thereby bringing the attention of all to this ‘trivial’ issue. For those who may not know, Rosa Parks is a American civil rights icon. She was a seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama who, during the height of racial segregation in 1955, refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger, in effect, starting a movement that eventually brought an end to segregation of public transport in the city and later throughout the US. Yes, call me romantic or crazy but that’s my wish on this Republic Day — a day which is meant to celebrate the adoption of a book whose first page pledges to secure equality of status for all its citizen and to promote fraternity among them all, thereby assuring dignity of the individual and unity and integrity of the nation. Of course, as I write this, my housing society is preparing to celebrate the Republic day while the guard sitting in the lobby is ensuring that maids only take the service lift!

Happy Republic day everyone!!