There is a certain class of Indians who like to entrust their children to the care of nannies. They used to be called governesses in England, ayahs in India and ammas in East Asia. This dependence wasn’t always there. In the days when mobility was low and joint families the norm, no one worried about the children. There were always enough relatives around in the house with their own children.
But internal migration slowly broke the joint families living under one roof. Even then, children were taken care of as long as only the husband was employed because the wife was always at home. Then came double income families where both the husband and wife were employed. They then needed someone to take care of the children until they were old enough to be sent to nurseries and schools. Then, finally, about 25 years ago came the NRI phenomenon where a couple would come back to India for vacation. Since they didn’t have a moment of rest from their children when abroad, while in India they wanted total freedom from the babies and toddlers. The grandparents were there, of course, but being elderly, they could only do so much. Thus, from being the oddity practised by the British sahibs in India, the nanny, ayah or amma has become ubiquitous. Everyone has them.
All very straightforward, no? Not really. India is a large country and it has scores of languages. Again, in the old days there wasn’t much internal migration at the lower income levels, especially female migration. But gradually that has changed and in the last two decades internal migration, both male and female, has really taken off.
This has meant an increase in the supply of nannies, which is good, right? Well, yes and no. The problem is language. Just as the ayahs during the British Raj had a hard time communicating with the English babies, now it’s the Indian nannies who have the same difficulty. How does a girl from Jharkhand, which is the biggest supplier of these services, speak to a baby whose parents are from some other state? The problem is compounded if the two parents are from two different states because, let alone the babies and the ayah, they find it hard to communicate even with each other. So everyone speaks English — except the nanny. It’s not quite the Tower of Babel but nearly that.
So there is a premium on nannies who can understand English, even if they can’t speak it. They charge anything between ₹1,200–2,000 per day. Obviously, they need a room to stay in with a separate bathroom. Some even demand an AC and a TV in the room. Plus, four meals a day, of course. It all works out to a very tidy sum but apparently not wholly unaffordable, especially if you are an NRI. What the couple spend in a month here they would spend for just a four-hour babysitter there for a mere three or four days.
At the other end of the age range are old people. They also need nannies who are called attendants. But for some reason, these attendants don’t charge quite as much as the nannies even though the duties are exactly the same and even though they have some rudimentary training in nursing which the nannies don’t. This demand from the young and the old has led to a thriving agency business. The agents take 15 per cent of the monthly salary of the nanny or the attendant. So you end up paying two individuals.
That’s when the market kicks in. The service providers simply dump the agent which is why the agents demand an upfront fee. As I said, it is a very expensive proposition.