An Indian blogger on why the average Indian is stupefied by the Devyani “slave-wage nanny” and the unbelievable cheek of the US attorney, embassy, and police:
“Sangeeta Richards had a good life on any reasonable benchmark. She was housekeeper to the diplomat Devyani Khobragde. Then she was possessed with a desire to moonlight for more money.
[Lila: She could hardly have wanted a second job, if she was so overworked in the first.]
Not that Sangeeta was not well paid. If accounts are to be believed she made $600 in the US and another $ 500 in India, on top of this
[Lila: the $500 is the amount sent home, which was misconstrued by the jackasses at the Embassy and the police.]
she would have been housed (apparently a two room tenement in NYC), fed and watered.
[Lila: Actually, she had two rooms in the diplomat’s office in the Indian mission, from what I read.]
In all, she could not have cost less than $4,000 a month to the first idiot in this case: the Indian taxpayer.
Here, you can get some details: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/131220/news-current-affairs/article/sangeeta-richard-was-paid-rs-30000-her-diary-says-she-was-happy
Preet Bharara had a problem with that. He says, and frankly he is right, that US regulations require $4,000 per month in NYC.
[Lila: The author is relying on earlier reporting which was based on the USG agent’s misreading of the visa application form. The $4000 was not the salary Devyani intended to pay the maid; it was her salary, which had to be reported.]
I don’t understand this calculation. At $10 an hour, minimum wage should be about $1600 – $2000 per month, but I guess $4,000 is the minimum wage applicable in the context of the Visa.
https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/minwage.shtm
The problem is that this minimum wage cannot possibly apply to people coming on an official India passport. The Indian government pays its staff in a diplomatic office, and it has the discretion to pay whatever it wants.
Preet Bharara’s idiotic definition of a minimum wage at Rs. 24 Lakhs per annum is laughable in the Indian context. Not even the president of India is entitled that amount.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/what-pranab-mukherjee-will-earn-246288Which means that the next time Pranab da is traveling to the US, he could, technically, go to Preet and request him to file a minimum wages claim for the duration of travel in the US.
[Lila: I doubt the Embassy was that stupid that it didn’t understand the Indian context. I believe it acted high-handedly, because it had gotten used to acting that way without reprisals.]
Since Bharara feels he is God’s gift to mankind, he had the diplomat arrested, strip searched, cavity searched and imprisoned in an appropriate cell. This, according to Proper Preet, is standard procedure. Well, I’ll be damned. This is the part of the whole episode that I cannot stop laughing about.
The US has gone nuts. If you have a pay dispute with your housekeeper, then the standard procedure in the US is to strip you nude and poke a (hopefully) vaselined fist up your rear, before the case is even contemplated by adults. This is just too funny to let go.
I mean, think about it: in order to make you feel safe the US arrests you, gets you nanga as a newborn and pokes your butt. If you don’t like it, then you must be a Fascist Terrorist. It must be pointed out that astonishingly, this search is worse than the definition of rape envisaged in India Law. In other words, Tarun Tejpal is in the slammer for a crime that is, in at least its physical aspects, less damaging that the US intake procedure!
The land of the free has a bloody normal process where anyone accused of a serious enough crime has to stripped naked, felt up his or her butt, imprisoned in any slammer available without even having the chance to talk to an attorney.
I see Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta in new light. They must feel buggered! And rightly so. I see every one of the celebrity arrests, Dominic Kahn, Brtiney Spears, Whitney Houston, that Tigerblood fellow, Mike Tyson, Rampage, our very own Toorjo (full of Oorjo) Ghosh, et al. in new light. They would all have had their asses oiled for their own good. Raj Rajaratnam was arrested early in the morning. What could the US Marshalls have possible found in his cavity search?
Raj was just the sort of guy to have crapped on them. Is that the sole reason why they are after him like crazy?
Bharara’s statement is a gem: “The prosecutor in the case is Indian born U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. He also cited procedure as an excuse: “It is true that she was fully searched by a female deputy marshal – in a private setting – when she was brought into the U.S. Marshalls’ custody, but this is standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not … This is in the interests of everyone’s safety.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Strip+cavity+search+simply+procedure+official/9309290/story.html#ixzz2oBWjOU9yIn any half civilized nation, such a practice would be barbaric. I see Delhi and Haryana police in new light now. They are all, every single one of them, civilized and decent men when compared to this idiocy. The US ought to be ashamed.
India was right to reciprocate, though not exactly in kind. While it isn’t standard procedure, it is quite common to get slapped around in an Indian police station if you irritate the officer. So, should that be applied to the US diplomatic staff?
To top his continued moronic excursion, Preet Bharara also had the bai’s family air lifted to the US so that, and I quote: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/maids-family-evacuated-to-us-bharara/article5477828.ece ” Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, the India-born U.S. prosecutor Preet Bharara on Thursday defended the action against her and confirmed that her maid’s family has been “evacuated” from India…. Acknowledging that maid Sangeeta Richard’s family has been brought to the U.S., Mr. Bharara said a legal process was started in India to “silence her and attempts were made to compel her to return to India.”
So, this is new to me. And to a lot of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and Philipinos and Salvadoreans and Ecuadoreans, not to mention all of Africa. Is that all it takes?!! Forget the insult to the Indian legal system; just mull the stupidity of this man’s action! Well, for starters I can guarantee that the family will never be able to come back to India and not face immediate arrest and imprisonment. Maybe we will even throw in a strip and cavity search just to get even. So Bharara might as well now grant them US citizenship.Which is of course the whole point of what Sangeeta Richards was attempting to do all along. The bai has not only had her mistress, she has also outfoxed the Chief Prosecutor of NYC! Here, this is where it all started: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-20/india/45416020_1_visa-complaint-delhi-police. and http://www.asianage.com/mumbai/devyani-case-example-us-misdirected-moralising-735
“…Seven months later, Sangeeta left her job and disappeared. Devyani says Sangeeta wanted to moonlight for more dollars, which was against her visa conditions, and started to blackmail her when she refused to allow this. New York public prosecutor Preet Bharara, who took up Sangeeta’s case, says Sangeeta left because she was being paid less than legal minimum wages, and for this crime, he had Devyani arrested…”
Clearly, Bharara doesn’t know his rear from his face on this case. He will of course pay for his misdirected zeal and stupidity.