They live in glitzy mansions, have parties and bashes that cost a bomb, splurge on designer labels that are more than a month’s salary of a middle-class professional. But when it comes to paying the domestic help, or behaving with him/her in a humane manner, these high-flying Bollywood celebs show a mendacity that’s almost matchless.

BookMyBai.com, an online portal that provides household helps – “bais”, in popular Marathi/Hindi parlance – has put a blanket ban on extending services to Bollywood celebrities.

In a blog post on the site’s blog page, it has been alleged that at least 20 cases of extreme exploitation, non-payment of salary and service charge, mistreatment of the maids, unduly long hours and even physical abuse of the household helps have compelled the portal to take this strong and stern decision.

BookMyBai.com says that about 20 Bollywood celebrities in Mumbai have behaved so badly with the domestic helps provided by the portal that they had to terminate their services in the interest of the helps’ well-being and basic dignity of labour. The portal also says that even though they have supplied maids to over 10,000 households across India, the 20 Bollywood celebs remain a unique instance of “harassment/exploitation” of the domestic helps.

Bizarre and barbaric

Without taking names, BookMyBai.com lists out five celebrities and how despicably they behaved, issuing threats and intimidation tactics when the portal raised the issue on behalf of the helps.

Credit: BookMyBai.com

While “Celebrity 1” didn’t even allow the help to attend his mother’s funeral, “Celebrity 2” offered no food to the maids, and the mental cruelty, physical exploitation was so acute that maids left every 7-10 days.

The help enlisted to work at “Celebrity 3’s” sprawling residence showed marks of physical bodily abuse, but such is the grinding force of poverty that she didn’t want to miss work and day’s pay by doing the rounds of police stations. Not only that, “Celebrity 3” threatened BookMyBai.com that she’d post bad reviews of the portal on Twitter (apparently, she has four lakh followers on the micro-blogging platform) and would launch a smear campaign against its services if they didn’t give her a free replacement.

“Celebrity 4” indulged in regular verbal and physical abuse of the help, traumatising her enough that she ultimately ran away to her own village. In addition, “Celebrity 4” threatened BookMyBai.com with legal action and the portal had to refund and close the case.

“Celebrity 5”, who sought a live-in maid, refused to pay upfront the service charge (Rs 15,000 per month), and when BookMyBai.com started calling her for the dues, she threatened them saying that “she would file a case of harassment and extortion with the crime branch”.

Disgusting hypocrisy

It’s quite evident that BookMyBai.com had to close its doors to a seemingly profitable source of income from the section of upscale Mumbai that’s swimming in riches. Yet, the mendacity and small-mindedness on display from Bollywood celebs, who flaunt their social media following and jump on to the rent-a-cause bandwagon for free publicity drives on Twitter, taking holier-than-thou positions and seeking political brownie points, is unimaginable.

Comments in the BookMyBai blogpost are interesting since many of them point out that all five celebrities have been referred to as “she” in the write-up, indicating how well-to-do women too often become complicit in perpetuating sickening exploitation of their poorer brethren. The rank hypocrisy of B-Town celebs and the miserly approach to paying the very salaries of the household helps while splurging lakhs on designer wear and cars and jewellery is morally and ethically noxious.

Modern-day slavery

The alleged inhuman treatment of the household helps by Bollywood celebs is in fact on a par with the ritual abuse that South Asian, Mexican and Filipino maids face when they go abroad to work and earn. There have been cases in which household helps have been incarcerated, left without food and water, made to work for inordinately long hours, not been given proper accommodation, and even physically abused and sexually harassed.

Even the infamous Devyani Khobragade episode brought to fore how Indians abroad often misbehave with their household helps, even as they lecture others on racial abuse and other issues.

Could it be that some of these very celebs from Bollywood had sent out pious tweets of moral revulsion at those incidents in faraway lands, but didn’t have qualms about perpetuating similar exploitation in their own homes?

What can be done?

It’s brave of BookMyBai.com to impose a blanket ban on extending its services to Bollywood celebs, and stand by the very people who make its online business possible. The blog-post says: “For BookMyBai the safety and security of our domestic help is the highest priority. We are fine if we do not earn money from a certain employer. The least that we expect is that he/she can treat a person like a human should be treated. I also hope the legal system of this country improves for the better so that these ladies who work as a domestic help feel empowered and do not feel scared to report a case of abuse.”

This is good thinking, but isn’t it time we need come together and ensure action against these ruffians in fancy clothes? A social media campaign to name and shame these Bollywood bandits should be the first step, and we cannot expect just BookMyBai.com to ensure that this happens.

If we really want justice for the abused maids, we should ensure that the celebs get the message. Perhaps, their righteous peers can start a petition to #StopAbusingMaids?

Also read: Why man needs a maid and must thank her every day