Middle-class worries

I’ve been reading a lot about “money” recently. Whether it is bitching over a 100 million dollar boxing match, bets that bitcoin hits half a million dollars, bemoaning 100s of thousands of pounds paid to BBC (male) ‘talent’, or berating those pocketing tens of thousands via Multi-Level Marketing referral schemes.

Moaning about money is a (not so) fine art that many are schooled in.

Living in an affluent country, gripes about who makes and takes what ‘money’ and from where, have an air of frivolity about them. Those 'BBC lovies' are getting paid too much… $100 PPV for a joke of fight! GTFOH!!.... I’m HODLing, pumping, dumping my bitcoin, shitcoin for dear life!.... It’s about the size of the cake and how much everyone else (in particular the ‘undeserving’) is making.

Maids and barricades

Occasionally however I stumble across a story that helps put money disputes into perspective. Today I was flicking through social media when I saw a link… ironically, shared by a person that owes me money from about 10 years ago (but that's another story, I won’t get into here). The link was about a dispute in India between ‘maids’ and their ‘madams’. What started as a dispute between a domestic worker (Zora Bibi) and her employer (Mitul Sethi), escalated in to a full-blown riot in Mahagun Moderne, a high rise of luxury flats in Sector 78, Noida, India.

On one side of the story, an employer was accusing the worker of stealing under $300 worth of rupees. On the other side is a worker claiming to have not been paid 12,000 rupees, two months wages (worth under $200). This intensified further with allegations ranging from the worker being beaten to her going missing for a day and being found in the boot of her employers car. What is known is that domestic workers, friends and acquaintances of Bibi, raided the gated community and had pitch battles with police before the situation was brought under control.

Thus giving the outside world a glimpse into the chasm between the haves and have nots in India.

Marriage of convenience

For me it was a reminder of my experience in India, last year. It was not unusual for middle-class families to have domestic help who cooked, cleaned and did the laundry for them. Some become extended, less privileged extensions to the family. It can be an uneasy marriage of convenience. With neither side 100% certain of the true sentiment that lies beneath the arrangement – however each dependent on the other.

I had a similar experience when I last went to Ghana. I was a lot younger then. I remember having heated debates with my cousins about the ethics of getting young kids to run errands for measly sums of money.

Alien nation

Such ways of life are alien concepts in the UK. The nearest I’ve come to this is hiring a cleaner for a couple of hours a week when my wife was heavily pregnant. It felt odd. I found myself cleaning up ahead of the cleaner arriving! My ‘cleaner’ happened to be an Eastern European law student who was cleaning part-time for extra cash. A stop gap. A means to an end.

For the domestic workers in places like India however, there often is no end in sight. They do menial work in luxury apartments by day, and go back to sleep in tin huts at night. The money they make barely sustaining their existence. This is the reality of life without the safety net of 'social security'.

Deeper divides

Often the ‘marriage of convenience’ between rich and poor masks deeper divides. In the Mahagun Moderne, the workers were predominately poor Bangladeshi Muslims. Thus when tensions flare, the ethnic and religious divides bubble quickly to the surface. With accusations of police bias towards the Hindu residents and against the foreign Muslims.

In plenty of communities around the globe, many people, by virtue of ethnicity, race class or caste, stand little chance of raising above their station or simply improving their standard of living. Whereas here 'in the West', it often simply takes a change of mindset or focus for most to overcome perceived financial and social hurdles.

(Not so) Mexican standoff

So while we wait… for Bitcoin to reach one million dollars per unit in three years time or for May-Mac to deprive of 100 PPV dollars on August 26th, or for BitConnect to implode, perhaps, sometime soon…

In Sector 78, Noida there is a real stand-off.

Between $3 dollar a day domestic workers on one side and residents of a luxury complex on the other. One side figuring out how to make ends meet, the other who (among other things) will cook their food to eat. Money may not make the world go around, but it certainly helps grease its wheels.