Devyani row: Why India invoking Vienna convention is hypocritical

by Sonal Sharma The Khobragade-Richard controversy is refusing to disappear from the headlines.

Most Indians know who they want to support and what and who is actually wrong in the entire dispute. Every other day there is a new ‘fact’ that is shared to challenge any existing narrative.

There has been a recent revelation by the diplomat’s lawyer that the promised salary found through the VISA snapshot of the passport, is not of the domestic help but of her employer, the diplomat herself. Advocacy groups in favour of Richard and the US administration have responded by rejecting this as sufficient evidence to justify the charges against Khobragade be dropped.

But it is imperative to remind ourselves that there is more to the entire controversy than just the details of the Khobragade-Richard relationship gone wrong. The bigger lesson we can learn from the incident lies in how we collectively responded to it, whether or not the charges against Khobragade are true. It is a moment for India, as a nation and a society, to reassess its position on some important issues.

The case has shown us how various laws and international Conventions are not just tools for the State through which it intervenes in certain situations but also frameworks which give visibility and legitimacy to particular kinds of victimhood.

One of the reasons why it was obvious for a number of Indians to recognize the treatment Khobragade received as unacceptable was because it was all over the media that this kind of treatment was a violation of the Vienna Convention (1961). It was quite surprising to see that everyone was talking about this Convention and diplomatic impunity and how it was allegedly violated by arresting Khobragade.

The Convention was used by the Indian government to call out the US administration on their treatment of Khobragade. It was being argued quite furiously, in most forums online and offline, that even if Khobragade was guilty, she was to be punished by Indian law and not that of the US. But many people did not realize that India, except in a handful of its states, does not have any legal provision on minimum wage for domestic workers. For the violation of non-payment of minimum wage to exist in the eyes of the state, it has to set a minimum wage first. Despite the strong movement of domestic workers across the country, the government has not recognized domestic workers as ‘workers’ by enacting relevant legislation. This special legislation would not only recognize domestic workers as workers but it would recognize them in the particularities of the nature of their workplace, their employer’s private space.

The Government of India based its retaliation on the violation of the Vienna Convention but nowhere does it seem to be considering another major international Convention, the ILO Convention on Domestic Work (2011), which it signed but shamefully never ratified.

Article 11 of the Convention clearly states that it is the member countries’ responsibility to ensure that domestic workers get minimum wage. The fact that India did not ratify the Convention despite its huge number of domestic workers and that it has no comprehensive legislation to regularize this form of work and its conditions, makes the idea of a minimum wage violation in India impossibility.

How do you violate something that does not exist in the first place? India by signing the Vienna Convention and by not ratifying the ILO Convention has allowed Khobragade to claim her victimhood while denying the same to Richard. This is a fact, irrespective of whether charges against the diplomat are proved or not. The reality is that, as a society, we aim for modernity, but often end up conveniently picking and choosing its contents which already align with some existing inequalities.

The Vienna Convention imagined the modern world on more equitable terms among nations in the aftermath of the violent Second World War. The ILO Convention also aimed to make this same modern world more equitable among different working populations. If we are to claim for ourselves modern statehood, it has to be with every dimension of equality, not only some.

The case has exposed the vulnerabilities of a society that desperately wants to be modern but grapples with modernity itself. It is a society that lives intimately with an extremely large population in informal sector work, including paid-domestic work, and a comparatively smaller population of formal sector jobs with labour protection and recognition. Laws and Conventions if enforced and adopted by governments with strong political will can foster the creation of a much-needed language of claims and belongingness over our streets, workplaces and our bodies. Domestic workers lack that language of claims on various aspects of their work, ranging from workplace to living-wage. Can we think of creating that language for domestic workers by creating relevant laws?

But, what if all the charges against Khobragade are found false? What if Richard actually did all this to get a green-card for her family? What if Khobragade was actually a ‘good-employer’ who was breached by Richard?

Even if in the investigations, Khobragade is found innocent, that should not deny Richard a fair chance to fight for her rights. More importantly, it should make us realize that we urgently need a comprehensive and effective law for domestic workers in India. Unfortunately, Richard and many other workers have been denied that opportunity by a society that has still not come around to the concept of minimum wage for domestic workers. Let us start there.

The author is a researcher at Dr. B.R, Ambedkar Univeristy, Delhi. He is thankful to Dr. Akhil Katyal and Saumyajit Bhattacharya for their comments on the article.