My earlier post Maid in India 1.0 described the method of operations and the impact of the project. An interesting distinction is that is financially sustainable in the long run and also scalable. Though the organization needs grants for supporting some activities, Decimal Foundation wants MII to run independently. The project has received Pearson Fellowship for Social Innovation.To know more about MII namely its financial sustainability, scale of operations, challenges etc. read on.
Financial Sustainability
From each monthly salary, MII deducts some amount. Out of this amount, a portion goes to the club, some to the maid’s medical benefits, PF and gratuity and a small amount to MII. The amount deducted varies according to the total wage earned by the maid. Since maids earn higher wages through MII, the net amount they receive from MII is greater than their gross previous wages.
e.g. If a maid earns ₹3500, ₹3000 go to the maid, ₹125 to the club, and out of the remaining ₹375, MII pays for their replacements for two days of paid leave at the rate of ₹100/110 per day.
If a maid has been working for some time, say 6 months, MII starts their pension fund and gratuity, with monthly contributions of ₹12 and ₹8 respectively.
Scale of Operations
The project was on paper since the last two years but it began operations only last year in October. They started with just 4-5 maids and work with 60 maids today. In the beginning, they focused on one-day cleaning jobs and providing servers for parties. Now, permanent maid placement forms a major chunk of their service.
The age of these maids mostly varies from 20 to 40. In some cases, even older women are employed but only for jobs that they can do comfortably namely cooking and child care. Though, in India, school-going age girls often work as housemaids, MII has a strict policy of not working with minors.
Challenges for MII
- To get clients is the biggest challenge that MII faced when they started and continues to be a problem area. Households pay less to the maids than what they are asked to pay by MII. To justify this increase in cost, MII shows that they are spending on the maid’s health care and most importantly, MII ensures that every time the maid takes a leave, a replacement is provided.
- Another is a pervasive human resource problem of motivating employees to perform effectively. MII conducts regular training sessions and provides counseling to maids to overcome this.
- Convincing maids to invest even a small portion of their income is difficult. Due to lack of awareness, they sometimes refuse to even open a bank account.
- Making them understand the benefits of the salary cut every month is also a hardship. They are more interested in immediate cash rather than investing for pension or gratuity.
They are legally registered as a trust in India with Trust Registration number E-26562 in Mumbai with main executor of the trust as Dr. Kamal Shankarlal Jethvani. Dr. Kamal Jethvani did his MBBS at KEM Hospital, Mumbai followed by Masters of Public Health at Harvard. He’s currently a practitioner in Boston. He is assisted in managing the NGO by other members of his family, namely his father, Mr. Shankarlal serving as the financial consultant and his mother Mrs. Neelam, being a trustee. Mrs. Neelam has given loans to Decimal Foundation which are being paid back. Their younger son, Pankaj is also in medical school. While Kamal’s inclination is towards public health care, Pankaj leans towards business acumen. So, Kamal is more interested in how much maids’ hemoglobin went up after MII’s supplements provision while Pankaj is interested in the percentage increase of their wages after joining MII. Khushbhu Ramani is a cousin to this family. She has done her B.Tech and M.Tech. in Computer Science and worked for three years as a database analyst in Pune before coming to Decimal. The foundation office sees only two people every day, Khushbu and Sarita while the others drop in sometimes.
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