Professional Documents
Culture Documents
House Helps
BY :-
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First and foremost, we must express our deep sense of gratitude towards WE School,
Mumbai for providing us the opportunity and the leeway to realize what we were afraid might
be untenable, to reach out for what we were unsure was untouchable and to fly when we were
afraid we might be bounded by invisible walls, both around ourselves and our mind.
We would like to express our gratitude to our guide Prof. Victor Manickam, for his
unflagging support throughout the tenure of our project.
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the various bureaus and individuals
who aided in the development of our project.
We would also like to express our gratitude to each and every participant of our surveys,
who knowingly or unknowingly have contributed in their own ways in the successful
completion of this project.
Last but not the least the active and enthusiastic participation of each and every member
of the group is appreciated.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Zipping past the roads, Rohan Ahire is often seen showing off his Rs. 1 lakh worth bike to his friends
and anyone who would care to see… Well, this is not in any plush area of South Mumbai but a modest chawl
area of Anand Nagar which lies in between North Mumbai and Thane. Rohan is the youngest of the three born
to Gita and Parshuram Ahire. While Parshuram is a daily wager at a private factory, while Gita works as a
housemaid in the nearby complexes.
A normal day in Gita Ahire’s life starts at 5 am with her household chores and then she goes to work in
the plush complexes near her basti. Cooking, cleaning, chatting and catching up with her neighbourhood ladies
who are also housemaids, she leads a seemingly happy-go-lucky life. Living life as it comes and spending
money as she earns seems to be her way of life. But how does she afford a bike worth lakh rupees? There must
be something more to her story, there must be much more to her lifestyle. She is one of the 1 million nameless,
faceless plethora of househelps that inhibit the city of Mumbai today. But is she an exception to our
assumptions or are our assumptions misconceived? Such questions inspired us to delve more into the lifestyle of
the household helps in Mumbai.
We started off by defining what we wanted to look for under the broad definition of ‘lifestyle’. Having
set our objectives, we started fishing the internet and maid-employment bureau for some data as part of our
Secondary Research. The findings from our secondary research set the tone for our primary research. We had
numerous sessions of brainstorming that led us towards various aspects of the househelp’s life that further
attracted our attention. We came up with questions that reflected our curiosity. These questions cover various
aspects of the house help’s lives:
With these objectives in mind, we set the tone for our primary questionnaire. We formulated and
reformulated the questionnaire until we were satisfied that it could not be perfected further. The task of
administering the questionnaire was divided among individual members. For the sake of convenience, we
conducted the survey on househelps living close to our residences. So the areas we have covered include
• Dadar
• Fort
• Mazagaon
• Malabar hill
• Cuffe parade
• Mulund
Once the survey was conducted, we all had our individual experiences to share. Experiencing the way
they look at life astonished us, while the reasons for which they worked touched us and the way they treated us
inspired us. But measuring these in numbers was difficult but still we tried to collate their responses into
percentages and pie diagrams which facilitated the inferences. Some of the observations that the numbers can’t
speak of have been presented separately.
As we have come to the end of our research, we realize that the time horizon over which the entire
research is spread is not sufficient to analyze long term trends. However, since the process has been initiated,
we believe that with time, we will be able to follow trends and their implications as a consumer market. We
have only just begun!
INDEX
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY................................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................................7
GROUP MEMBERS...........................................................................................................................................7
INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................................8
PROJECT............................................................................................................................................................8
OUTLINE OF THE PROJECT...............................................................................................................................9
What we would like to know about the household helps?...................................................................................9
How do we look at them?....................................................................................................................................9
How can we reach them?...................................................................................................................................10
Secondary Research.......................................................................................................................................10
Primary Research...........................................................................................................................................10
What we are looking from the Secondary Research?........................................................................................10
Which are the areas can we cover?....................................................................................................................10
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................11
Type of Research...............................................................................................................................................11
Research Design................................................................................................................................................11
Descriptive Research.........................................................................................................................................11
Sampling Design................................................................................................................................................11
Primary Data......................................................................................................................................................11
Limitations of Primary Research.......................................................................................................................12
Secondary Data..................................................................................................................................................12
Method of Data Collection................................................................................................................................12
Screener Questionnaire......................................................................................................................................12
Main Questionnaire...........................................................................................................................................12
SECONDARY RESEARCH AND INFERENCES..............................................................................................13
What we are looking from the Secondary Research?........................................................................................13
Total Maids in Mumbai.....................................................................................................................................13
Demand and Supply...........................................................................................................................................13
Migrant Household Helps..................................................................................................................................13
Gender And Age Group.....................................................................................................................................13
PRIMARY RESEARCH.......................................................................................................................................14
TYPE OF PRIMARY RESEARCH AND SAMPLING...................................................................................14
OBSERVATIONS ,FINDINGS AND KEY INFERENCES................................................................................15
Spending Habits.................................................................................................................................................15
Individual Experiences..........................................................................................................................................27
RECOMMENDATIONS.......................................................................................................................................28
New Questions Added After Recommendations...................................................................................................29
ANNEXURE.........................................................................................................................................................31
QUESTIONNAIRE...........................................................................................................................................31
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................31
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................................43
Web Sources..................................................................................................................................................43
Books.............................................................................................................................................................43
Books
INTRODUCTION
GROUP MEMBERS
Anisha Agarwal
The tension queen who motivates everyone to work before time and acts as a good co-ordinator.
Anuja Misra
The introvert girl who takes every challenge as an opportunity to improve the group’s performance and
acts as a good motivator.
Nidhi Pande
The energy booster of the group who is task oriented and helps in detail analysis.
Rushabh Nisar
The group equalizer who helps in dividing the work equally and at the same time pleases everyone with
his warm smile and food.
Sanal Gupta
The techie of our group who is a good team player .Whenever he takes up a responsibility he fulfills it.
Saurabh Agarwal
An easy going guy with warm nature and good team spirit.
Sonam Pawar
A very creative person who does not shy away from work and holds the group together and acts as a
team leader.
Tasneem Kapasi
A self motivated girl who knows what is to be done. She is an Idea Generator always full of energy.
INTRODUCTION
PROJECT
Brainstorming about the topic for the project, we started discussing how our household helps become a
part of our family and are an integral aspect of any effective and happy family functioning. This was the
moment when the idea of this project was conceived. With this project we intend to extend a helping hand to the
unheard and unserved section of the society.
Lastly Prof. Victor Manickam had given us the freedom to choose any topic that interested us, & unlike
other courses we wanted to do something that may have an impact on the society , something what we have
never attempted before, something challenging & this topic gave us all that & hence we went ahead with the
project.
We carried out the research over the last four months (October 2009 to January 2010). This included
secondary research followed by primary research, which was conducted in tune with the findings of the
secondary research.
OUTLINE OF THE PROJECT
What we would like to know about the household helps?
1. Their spending habits.
2. Their saving habits.
3. Their children’s educational level.
4. Their preference in terms of:
a. Nature of work.
b. Nature of relationship with employer.
c. Community of the employer.
5. Their purpose/motive of working.
6. Their literacy level.
7. Distance between their workplace and home & how they travel.
8. And other problems faced by them.
Primary Research
1. Maids at our places.
2. Maids working in the colony.
3. Maids working at our relatives’ place.
4. Help from our mother and aunts.
Research Design
Considering the time constraints descriptive research is the most suitable design for this research since
descriptive studies seek to portray accurately the characteristics of the population. These studies attempt to
make generalizations about the attributes of that population by studying a small sample of the population.
Descriptive Research
This research is designed to describe characteristics of a population. This research is used when the researcher
has a general understanding of the situation, the conclusive evidence that answers questions of facts necessary
to determine a course of action has yet to be collected. For the purpose of our research project we have used a
Descriptive Research Methodology.
Sampling Design
Target Population: We targeted a cross section of people, across sexes, across various age groups and across
different work areas.
Sampling Frame: We mainly conducted the surveys at the various places in Mumbai covering the vicinities of
Cuffe Parade, Colaba, Haji Ali, Mahalaxmi, Fort, VT, Mazgaon, Sion, Matunga, Mulund and Thane to gather
responses from diverse set of population sensitivities. In addition to this, we visited a few Bureaus as well as
self employed people.
Sample Size: A sample size of 114 people was chosen, as, the trends being highly variable and differential
amongst different age and work groups required a relatively considerable sample size, in order to facilitate the
analysis.
Primary Data
For collecting Primary Data, questionnaires were administered to the samples in order to segment the target
group based on their response to the questions pertaining to their psychographic profiles.
Limitations of Primary Research
The respondents which were selected mainly comprised female respondents, this phenomenon has caused the
data to be gender biased with 70% of the respondents being women.
Secondary Data
After the research problem in marketing has been identified and selected, the next step is to gather the requisite
data. Use of various publications, journals, articles and the Internet was made to garner various statistics and
insights into the life of Mumbai’s household helps.
Screener Questionnaire
This questionnaire was very short and simply was in order to qualify the respondent to the next level (Main
Questionnaire).
Main Questionnaire
This questionnaire was designed to judge the perception of the household helps of Mumbai with regards to
their work preference, income group, investment pattern, psychological issues and lifestyle as a whole.
Source: Report : Migration In India – Trade Union Perspective by Sudershan Rao Sarde.
The purpose or motive of working will form the part of our confirmatory research.
The following points will come under the exploratory primary research as we would like to know more in detail
regarding the house-help. Also this data is not available in our secondary research.
Spending Habits
Clothe
1
80
No
30
25
Gradua
8%
HSC
3%
Gadgets
3%
Employer n
satisfied
19%
Employer n
P
32%
Domesti
Individual Experiences
• Political parties issue ration cards and voter ids to the inter-country migrants so that during elections,
these migrants vote in favor of them.
• It is noted that they do not prefer to work in houses when the lady of the house is not present.
• Most of the women fear to mention whether they are a victim of domestic violence or not.
• They live in constant fear of local goons and do not want to mention about them.
• The cooks/Maharajas are aspiring to go back to their native and continue agriculture as although they
are highly paid but do not consider this job as dignified.
• Widows, who do not have a male child, have to live alone or with a distant relative and work for their
sustenance.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Develop a small scale or cottage industry in the rural areas for the migrants who come to Mumbai for
work. This way they will get the same pay in their hometown and may not shift to Mumbai.
• Major issues faced by housemaids are housing and civic problems. So a housing complex can be build
or an accommodation can be provided at a reasonable rate where they can get their basic civic facilities.
This way approaching house-helps will be easier. Also we should keep in mind that the expansion of
slums where maids reside should be controlled.
• As a major chunk of maids save around Rs 500 to Rs 1000 a month, certain private sector bank or
nationalized bank or a micro-finance organization can tap this opportunity and even maids can hence
benefit financially.
• More labour laws pertaining to house-helps should be enforced so that the rights of house-helps are
protected and exploitation can be minimized.
• As many house-helps are addicted the harmful substances like drugs, tobacco etc, so an awareness
campaign should be organized.
• Some political parties provided voting cards and ration cards for inter-country migrant workers so that in
turn they vote for them during elections. Such unhealthy practices should be abolished and an equal law
should be maintained for all.
New Questions Added After Recommendations
do
ANNEXURE
QUESTIONNAIRE
Form No: ___________
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
STUDYING THE LIFESTYLE OF HOUSEHOLDS
HELPS
Name of Interviewer:_______________________
Interview Date: __________________________
Interview Time:___________________________
Interview Location:________________________
Interviewer’s Signature:_____________________
Comments, if any:_________________________
_______________________________________
SCREENER QUESTIONNAIRE:
1) आप कया काम करते हो?
खाना बनाना
सफाई
नसर
अनय
हा, िवदेशी
नही
MAIN QUESTIONNAIRE
1) आप सुबह िकतने बजे उठते है ?
6-77-88-95 – 6
6–7
7–8
8–9
पानी भरना6-77-88-9
खाना बनाना
कपदे धोना
साफ़ सफ़ाई
अनय
6–7
7–8
8–9
9 – 10
दोपहर
शाम
खाना बनाना
बतरन धोना
कपदे धोना
साफ़ सफ़ाई
अनय
5) आपने कौन सी उम से काम शुर िकया?
5 – 15
16 – 20
20 – 30
30 अिधक
हा
नही
खेती मे असफ़लता
आथीक कठीनाई
अनय्
खाना बनाना
बतरन धोना
कपदे धोना
साफ़ सफ़ाई
अनय
9) सब से पहले घर कहा था ?
दकीन मुमबई
उतर मुमबई
नवी मुमबई
आप का गाव
कोई और शेहेर
ओटो
तकसी
बस
पैदल
कम तंखवा
उतपीडन
दकीन मुमबई
उतर मुमबई
नवी मुमबई
आप का गाव
कोई और शेहेर
दूसरी बाई से
सहेली से
एक बयुरो से
घरके सदसयसे
14) वहँ आप कौनस काम करते थे?
खाना बनाना
बतरन धोना
कपदे धोना
साफ़ सफ़ाई
अनय
हा
नही
6 महीने
6 - 12 महीने
1 - 3 साल
3 सालसे अधीक
उतपीडन
18) अगर आपके साथ कोई बूरी तरह से पेश आये तो आप कया करते हो?
घर बदल देते है
पूलीस मे कोमपलैँट िलखाते है
अनय्
19) कया आपको पता है की सरकार ने आपको युिनयन बनाने का हक िदया है?
हा
नही
हा
नही
खाना बनाना
बतरन धोना
कपदे धोना
साफ़ सफ़ाई
अनय
ओटो
तकसी
बस
पैदल
कामवाले घर मे
चाल मे
झूगगी मे
24) आपको घर के पास कौन सी समसया होती है?
पानी की कमतरता
िबजली की कमतरता
गूंडे
सफ़ाई का ना होना
अनय
25) कया आपको पता है की इस् बारे मे कौन से अिधकािरयो को समपकर करना चािहए?
हा
नही
माधयिमक िशका
बारहवी
सनातक
नही
27) कया आपको लगता है की आपके िशकण का या अिशिकत होने से कोई फरक पडता है ?
हा 6-77-88-
नही
28) अगर आपको रात सकूल की सुिवधा उपलबध की जाये , कया आप लेगे?
हा 6-77-88-
नही
6-77-88-9 तमबाकू
धुआं
पान
पीना
और कोई
हा 6-77-88-9
नही
माधयिमक िशका
बारहवी
सनातक
नही
6-77-88-9 नौकरी
िबज़नस
और कोई
6-77-88-90
1-3
3-5
>5
नही 6-77-88-9
पाइवेट सकूल
सरकारी सकूल
रात का सकूल
माधयिमक िशका
बारहवी
सनातक
नही
हा 6-77-88-9
नही
2-3
4-5
6-7
7+
2-3
3-5
की सब
हा 6-77-88-9
नही
40) घर के मािसक खचे मै सबसे जयादा कौन पैसा देता है ?
6-77-88-9 आपका
पित / पती का
बचचो
6-77-88-92000-4000
4000-6000
6000-8000
8000-10000
10000+
6-77-88-9 खाना
कपडा
मोबाइल
दवा दार
और कोई
43) आपके मूलय खचर कहा होते है ? िकतना पैसा रपया लगता ?
6-77-88-9 खाना
दवा दार
कपडे
गहने
पढाई
और कोई
44) कया आप के पास समपित है ?
मुंबई मे ज़मीन
गाव मे घर
मुंबई मे घर
45) अगर आप वहा नही रह रहे होते , तोह वोह पोपटी िकस चीज़ के िलए इसतेमाल होती है ?
रेट पे िदया है
नही
6-77-88-9 टीवी
रेिफगेराटर
मोबाइल
मोटर वेिहकले
कंपयूटर
कूलर
<1000
1000-2000
2000-3000
3000-5000
5000 +
पढाई
अनुसूिचत बैक
सहकारी बैक
लोकल बैक
िचत फु ंद
और कही
6-77-88-9< 5000
5000-10000
>10000
6-77-88-9 घर मे शादी
पढाई
सहकारी बैक
लोकल बैक
िचत फु ंद
और कही
53) एक इंिसटटयूट ससससससस सस ससस ससस सससस ससस सससस ससससससससस सस 11-12%
ससससससससस ससस सस सससस to सससस सस ससस सससस सससस सससस . सससस सस सससस
ससस सससससससस सससससस ?
6-77-88-9 हा
नही
Bibliography
Web Sources
1.www.consumertipsreports.org/hiring_household_help_an_agency_or_an_ad.html
2. www.censusindia.gov.in
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
5. http://urbanhealthupdates.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/india-census-estimates-of-slum-
populations/
6. www.informaworld.com/index/903827870.pdf
Books
Census 2001—By Government Of India.