The Rude Pundit: Photos That Show That India Should Probably Shut the Fuck Up ...

[meegbear]

When It Comes to the Treatment of Women



First the facts of the case: When Devyani Khobragade, India's Deputy Consul in New York, applied for a visa to come to the United States, she said she was bringing a nanny with her from India. And she agreed to pay her household worker the stipulated figure of $4500 a month, which was in line with New York City's minimum wage. Instead, she paid the nanny $573 for the month or $3.31 an hour. Khobragade paid her what she might have earned in India, where you can pay shit wages because, well, hell, talk to a bunch of U.S. companies about that. Unfortunately for Khobragade, she was in the United States, and you can be pretty sure that if an American went to India and tried to get American wages for domestic work, she'd be laughed at and then probably beaten.

So Khobragade was arrested and processed for violation of a couple of laws there, including lying on her visa application and, you know, paying $3.31 an hour. As part of being processed and jailed, she was strip-searched, which, yes, is problematic on many levels and barbaric for everyone arrested, American, Indian, or whoever. She was put in a cell with other prisoners, and she was swabbed for her DNA. No different than any other prisoner in New York City. She was bailed out within 2 hours of her arrest. Sure, spreading your ass cheeks under duress for strangers is an awful experience. But so is living on $573 a month in New York City.

Indian politicians and diplomats have gotten themselves all worked up about how Khobragade was treated "like a common criminal." Actually, India's lost its shit over this, especially because Khobragade kept yelling that she had "diplomatic immunity" to the U.S. Marshals who arrested and booked her. The Indian government is taking various punitive measures against our embassy and consulate workers, who, one should note, have not been accused of a crime. The Indian government removed security barriers at the embassy because allowing a car bomb to kill dozens of people would apparently be a fair trade-off for making an upper middle class Indian woman sit next to "drug addicts" for a couple of hours. There have been protests in the streets, probably the burning of an American flag or two, you know, the usual shit that sometimes we deserve and sometimes we don't. The protesters are saying that Khobragade's treatment was "an insult to all Indian women."

And that's where you lose the Rude Pundit, India. Because, see, that picture up there is from something that actually matters. It's a demonstration marking the one-year anniversary of the New Delhi gang rape and murder that so horrified the world and brought attention to just how fucked up are Indian attitudes towards women.

You wanna know what's an insult to women? "In Delhi, out of the 754 men arrested on rape charges last year, only one was convicted while the rest were facing pending investigations or trials." That's a fuckin' insult. The entire rape culture of India, while changing by baby steps since last year, is a fuckin' insult.

So between that and the sweatshops and the honor killings and the female feticide and the sexual exploitation and trafficking, you should just shut the fuck up about what degrades women, India.

And let's be honest here. If this had been some random poor woman, India wouldn't have given an elephant's fart's worth of concern. Indeed, in India, there's been more anger about Khobragade taking off her clothes than there has been at the actual charges. As Human Rights Watch reports, &quot M)any commentators have leapt to Khobragade’s defense, saying she could not be expected to pay her nanny US$4,500 per month, more than her Indian government salary."

Yeah, India, by all means, let's have a conversation about who is degrading whom.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

[redqueen]

1. THANK YOU nt

[maxsolomon]

2. 54K/year ($4500/month) is minimum wage in NYC?

At 40 hours/week, that's $25/hour. Something is odd about that number, Rude One.

Was the nanny working 80 hours/week?

[okaawhatever]

10. That is something I questioned too. It appears there are two laws/rules that come into play. The

first being the Vienna convention that sets rules for diplomatic staff and their employees. Apparently it states something to the effect of "prevailing wage" and "abiding by local laws". That is independent of the United States and not being questioned. I'm not sure if New York has the same caretaker laws as other parts of the country, but in-home caretakers often don't even need to meet minimum wage requirements. Also, paying minimum wage satisfies US laws. The number being quoted in this story is taken from what she claims she put on the Visa application. That doesn't have anything to do with minimum wage laws, but is a number used to determine visa status and to comply with Vienna convention guidelines. Also, the story I read on Reuters has said since the beginning the number used on the visa application is $9.73 an hour. Again, that's above NY minimum wage, but that number may have been the minimum needed to not be questioned under the Vienna guidelines since she was seeking a diplomatic staff support visa. So basically, the story isn't being reported correctly (quelle suprise) which is what makes me question the whole thing anyway. Someone like her being arrested is India is unfathomable. In India the authorities would have a hard time arresting her for murder much less this sort of thing so the Indian folks don't understand. Now people are given this anti-American b.s. about how she's required to pay her maid 40k per year. She's not required to pay her that, even under Vienna, so why is it in the story? Also, the pay issue isn't so much about the pay as about the fact that she lied about it on the visa application. Again, why would this woman even put 40k on the visa app? That part is likely bogus.

[AllyCat]

19. 24/7 job? maybe it's not a 40 hour week?

[gcomeau]

22. May be a mistake in the article.

Most visa requirements I'm familiar with require paying *prevailing* wage for whatever position the person is coming in for, not minimum wage.

[Voice for Peace]

24. that's not unusual wage for nannies in NYC.. good ones anyway.

$20/hour plus benefits is not unusual, if you
have a fair employer.

(my source is a nanny in NYC earning 850/wk
plus taxes, for a 25 hour -- plus transport time
which can be a lot in NYC -- work week)

[Marrah_G]

30. Pretty sure the Nanny was expected to work 24/7

[joeglow3]

36. Wish I got paid to eat, sleep and shit

[lumberjack_jeff]

38. Then you want to be a fireman. n/t

[ctsnowman]

51. That's not what the post said.

Last edited Thu Dec 19, 2013, 11:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Actually I can see where it's worded badly and it does seem to indicate that.

My Bad.

Sorry and peace to you and yours.

[malaise]

3. Excellent Rudie

I she couldn't pay the nanny she should do like most people in New York - don't hire a nanny.
She lied on her visa form. Nothing else matters to me.
Diplomacy does not mean slave labor.

[BlueJazz]

4. I went to India once. Women there are (mostly) like mistreated pets. What can I say??

Oh, I know...I didn't like the fucking place. I've always wanted to express my feelings toward that country and I finally get the chance.

Sorry if I hurt any Indians feelings.

[Warpy]

6. Worse, they're servants to their inlaws

the fiction being that MIL is "training" them to become part of the family.

[BlueJazz]

9. I asked 2 women when I was there about various things...like you speak of..

...ah,,,it was in a little Tea house. They said "We do not speak of some things"
And they looked sad when they said it. Rather distasteful feeling.

[mopinko]

56. i was there once. might get to go back in march.

dunno if i can take it, tho. it is a hard place to be.
children are treated even worse than women. they are props for tips and panhandlers. women in intersections take turns using whoever's little baby is around to lay over their arms. i swear i saw one that was dead, but then i swore my own babies were dead when they were sleeping sometimes, but……

not goin back to mumbai, ever, tho. ever.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

5. EGGGXACTLY!!!

[Proud Public Servant]

7. Things I've been wondering about this case

I'm perfectly willing to believe the Indian diplomat in question behaved reprehensibly. But in all the coverage I've read of this story, I still find sevral questons unanswered.

1) Where did the $4500/month number come from originally. It's sure as hell not NYC minimum wage, which is $9/hour (unless she was working 16 hours/day, 7 days/week, which I suppose is possible buy must surely violate other NYC labor laws).

2) How much do Indian diplomats get paid? I'm a diplomat, and I couldn't afford a $4500/month maid. I'm betting Indian diplomats get paid less than American diplomats; why didn't someone look at her salary and do the math befor issuing the visa?

3) Was she a live-in maid? Did anyone factor that into an evaluation of what she was paid?

Like I said, not questioning the overall justice of the arrest; just wondering about those things.

[JI7]

15. she owns some property in india, including getting it through fraud with her father

her father was in govt. i think it was some program where the govt provided subsidy for these homes and there is a limit to how much you can get .

and there were some that were supposed to be for military families but a bunch of corporate types, corrupt govt types and others ended up taking it .

i'm sure she has a lot of money that she stole from the people.

[joeglow3]

37. That answered exactly zero of the questions

Thanks.

[Egalitarian Thug]

27. You'd lose the bet. India takes very good care of its upper caste.

It's easy to look at the absolute squalor and deprivation in India and then conclude that everyone is poor, but that's not the case at all.

[arikara]

8. $4500 a month is minimum wage in New York?

Somehow I find that hard to believe.

[Whisp]

11. Probably not based on an 8 hour day

and most likely every waking hour of service besides sleep time.

but that is a good question and should be made clearer.

[JI7]

13. when you count overtime . i'm guessing this wasn't just some 9-5 type thing

that she probably wanted her to be there to care for the kids whole days at times also.

[Kaleva]

33. That's about norm for a live in position where one is on call 24/7

[SoapBox]

12. Super K & R

[JI7]

14. it should be made clear that what she was doing was pretty much Slavery

[riqster]

16. Screw the promised amount. What she actually paid is a crime.

What she said is not as important as what she actually did.

[pampango]

17. Perhaps I misunderstand. The fact that the diplomats home country mistreats women, their diplomats

are fair game for mistreatment in other countries.

It is possible for both India and the US to be wrong in this instance.

[JI7]

20. she was not mistreated , mistreated is what she did to the woman she didn't want to pay

for work.

also it's about the level of outrage.

it's like when republicans were outraged over things like memorials closing during the govt shut down but cared nothing about people who were not able to get paid and had to worry about basic things like food.

[RC]

25. Please, a foreign national woman was involved.

Only the woman's mistreatment in her homeland counts. India mistreats their women worse then the US, and we live in the US, and the US is the Greatest country of all and don't forget the Rah-Rah stuff, so her treatment here, mis or not, doesn't count nearly as much, as she may have been a terrorist with a dirty bomb hidden in one of her orifices. Can't be treating ferineers as good as we do our own, now can we?

The reality is, BOTH countries were wrong. But you will have trouble telling the perpetually outraged here that. Unless she was a female, US citizen living here, then the police mistreated of her with the strip search. Otherwise, not such a big deal.

[redqueen]

28. As stated in the fucking OP, there are obviously big problems with how we treat people

As a member of the "perpetually outraged", pardon the everloving fuck out of me for not getting all teary-eyed because a middle-class woman (oh no! this can't be happening to middle class people, oh no!) was subjected to a routine strip search... and for seeing the SICKENING hypocrisy of the idiotic overreaction on the part of the Indian government.

You want to cry about something, cry about Renisha McBride.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024195505#post5

[ctsnowman]

52. Exactly!

And seeing some of the responses here reminds me of the fact that a large percentage of the American people supported the King during the Revolution.

[onlyadream]

18. Can't we do the X-ray thing

Like the TSA does instead of a strip search? I mean, really, if you're innocent, what a thing to go through? Even if you are guilty of a crime, it seems very animalistic and degrading.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

21. Rude Pundit, you are one of the best voices calling out misogyny evar!

I get pissed when people mistake his language for sexism.

Nooo. His vulgarity is equal opportunity. His AWARENESS of hypocrisy and anti-woman policies is astute. And rare.

I love this guy. Fuckin love him!!

[TwilightGardener]

23. The Rude One nails it.

[mike_c]

26. spot on, as usual....

Autorec for the Rude Pundit.

[Fred Sanders]

29. Rude Pundit misses the point entirely as

Khobragade had diplomatic immunity. Now the focus is on a diplomatic row and not the plight of the domestic worker so much. Same attention could have been accomplished without ignoring international law.

Way to go, NYPD and America, way to shift the blame.

[Marrah_G]

31. No she didn't

Not everyone who works in an embassy has diplomatic immunity.

[Penicilino]

32. +1 nt

[Leith]

34. Maybe Not

CNN is reporting that Khobragade has "consular immunity," not "diplomatic immunity." That means that immunity covers her when she is performing the duties of her job, not otherwise (like hiring domestic help, for example).

See:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/17/politics/india-us-diplomat/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

under the heading Immunity Dispute. But there seems to be a debate on this.

[stevenleser]

54. She had limited diplomatic immunity that did not extend to this issue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/12/18/why-india-is-upset-about-devyani-khobragade-and-why-its-wrong/

[leftynyc]

59. Diplomatic immunity

doesn't apply when you lie on a visa application. No idea why you think that but you're very wrong.

[TRoN33]

35. Bam! All the way to point!

[lumberjack_jeff]

39. Dear India;

Please don't send your kids to the hell holes and dens of iniquity that are US colleges. Think of the children.

[Liberal_in_LA]

40. harsh - the status of women in a country should not exempt them from complaining

About unnecessary strip searches

[Bonobo]

43. +1 nt

[Kurovski]

41. K&R. (nt)

[fujiyama]

42. The Rude Pundit

misses the point entirely.

Fuck the diplomat. In my mind, this shouldn't even be about her. This is about deeper problems with our criminal "justice" system altogether. First of all, why are non violent offenders, strip searched in the first place? Why are they being held with violent offenders? What kind of country is this? A police state is what. We now find it absolutely routine and are now desensitized to the fact that for any offense we can be humiliated by law enforcement. And if we think this is how a diplomat is treated, how about one of our own?

Minor traffic incident? Get a strip search. Light up a joint? Get strip searched. Steal a candy bar? Get strip searched. And thanks to Roberts, Scalia and the merry band of thugs, this is all "constitutional". And guess who sided with the police department in that case? It was our wonderful DOJ headed by Holder.

It doesn't fucking end. This whole rating about India and its perpetual misogyny misses the point entirely. But that said, I would be shocked if the Rude Pundit or others on this site would be dismissing this incident so nonchalantly if it were a white woman from a Western European country being treated this way. But because India treats women poorly, we can treat their's poorly too. I get it.

[JI7]

44. having slaves is not a non violent offense

the poorly treated woman in this case is an indian woman but it's the slave this "diplomat" had.

[XemaSab]

45. +1

n/t

[marble falls]

46. Exactly right: slavery is a form of violence.

[redqueen]

55. No, you really don't get it.

Did you even read it? Cause he acknowledged that the way we treat people is shitty. But that's not the point of this article.

I get that you want to ignore his point (about the Indian government's massively stupid overreaction and how fucking hypocritical they are). What I don't get is why you want to change the subject.

[rpannier]

47. The only issue involving her arrest is Did She Have Diplomatic Immunity?

If she did, then she shouldn't have been arrested.
I live in a country outside the US and using your logic, if a person with diplomatic immunity was breaking one of our laws we should be able to arrest them and when the US protested just repeat over-and-over Abu Ghraib and Iraq as justification for us not obeying our obligations under treaty.

[Hekate]

48. Wow

[cstanleytech]

49. The issue though atm isnt the treatment of women in india or if this women is or was a douchebag its

about diplomatic immunity and if she actually had it? If she did have diplomatic immunity then the police should not have arrested her and she should have just been expelled from the US and this issue then could maybe have been used to push for better treatment in the long run for more women in India by the US.

[redqueen]

57. Apparently she only had consular immunity.

Which is more limited and does not cover the kind of crime she committed.

[cstanleytech]

58. If thats true then hopefully this can be used to push for better treatment for more

women then.

[99Forever]

50. Hell yes, Rude.

Out of the park again.

[jsr]

53. Recommend

[gtar100]

60. They should be protesting the low wages paid to the nanny, not the arrest.

Why aren't the protesters siding with the US law on this one? Do they like making dirt wages and being used by their upper class? I wish they could all get an earful of this op.

[Xipe Totec]

61. So the strip search and body cavity search were justified? Is that the point here?

That India's treatment of women in that country give the US authorities the right to strip search women?

[redqueen]

62. No, that's not the point.

Which you'd know if you read the OP.