Mr. Important Man in a very Important Job is looking for an Executive Domestic Affairs Officer to look after his household. Candidates with a minimum of x years of experience in washing clothes, cooking, cleaning and organizing the lives of messy family members qualify for an interview. Salary commensurate with experience. Ability to look like a supermodel while cleaning the toilet will be a definite plus.  Interested candidates, please apply immediately.

My beloved lady applicants, this is a fulltime job, a fantastic opportunity to finally show what you’ve got. The Indian government desperately wants its women at home to get some benefit out of spending all day under their roofs, looking after their children, washing the dishes, clothes and decorating the house. According to the new proposal, husbands will be required to pay a salary to their wives who look after domestic affairs while they go to work.

Applying for the job wouldn’t be so difficult, since matrimony websites, social networking and urban dating rituals have already established the ways and means to find a girlfriend one may eventually marry, but one needs to define the basics. If the wife has to have a salary, what percentage of the husband’s salary would that be? Would she get a contract? And what kind of a contract would that be? Would there be a training period for six months within which husbands could decide whether they really want this woman in a permanent position and will women be able to resign without notice? How would economic activities in the household be defined? What percentage of his salary would a husband be willing to invest in, say, washing or dusting, vacuum-cleaning or looking after the children? And what if richer households have enough resources so that the wife really does not need to do the washing and cleaning up? What are her duties then?

Will men now choose their wives more carefully? Will they have more expectations? Will they now search for someone with more experience in looking after domestic affairs? What happens to divorced women who want to remarry and are looking for the perfect household? Will they have an advantage because they have some experience as a housewife, at least more than single women do? Will they be at a disadvantage because their previous ‘employers’ didn’t like the way the marriage worked?

And what about the economic repercussions, what kind of guarantee will the state provide? If the husband loses his job, is there any means by which the government ensures that the lady of the household would keep getting her salary? What about taxes? Does she pay taxes? And how much tax should her husband pay? How will pension work? And will the husbands also get free time to look after the children so that the duties of both the parents are equally shared among each other? Once all housewives get a contract for full-time labor, they will be part of the labor force and economic indicators; does this mean that the country’s per capita income would get a boost?

And of course, the most important question- what about love? Will men now choose domestic efficiency over love? Will women look for richer husbands and better salaries? What if love’s labor does get lost, when the marriage breaks down, will it no longer be a divorce, but a Voluntary Retirement Scheme?

Author: Manasi Gopalakrishnan

Editor: Grahame Lucas

Manasi Gopalakrishnan is a member of the editorial team of Womentalkonline. You can post your comments at the end of this article or write to Womentalk@dw.de.