Are Bangladeshis the only people who can cook Indian food?
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- Susan Harwood
- It's one of those odd things . . . I live in my little house by the sea and listen to the radio and reckon I know best about more-or-less everything . . . as I keep telling the news-casters, the policiticians and all the experts interviewed there. I shout quite loud - but I'm beginning to suspect they can't hear! Sometimes, I write to my MP . . . but there's always more to say. So, here it is!
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8 comments:
There's a Welshman called Brynn who lives on Corfu and travels every year to the Far East to study the cooking and when he's here cooks the best Indian food I've eaten, and I'm from Handsworth in Birmingham.
Are Bangladeshis the only people willing to work for low wages in poor conditions as chefs in England's Indian restaurants? Probably yes, by and large. Does it matter if we lose Indian restaurants as part of the English cultural landscape because of a shortage of labour? Probably not.
Sibadd . . . precisely!
I'm wondering what would happen if we said only English people are capable of cooking egg and chips.
And can only Italians cook pasta?
And I'm really perplexed by the way the news reports are associating this 'issue' with the number of people moving here from Poland . . . implying both that Poles can't cook curries and that people who were born here can't cook at all.
Maybe, as Anthony suggests, this is to do with low wages and poor conditions . . . but I don't think so. Immigrants aren't the only people who work in low paid catering jobs . . .
Good to hear from you!
Susan
Anthony . . . I don't think it is just about low wages . . . but about cultural expectations . . . see what I said in my 'reply' to Sibadd.
And I, for one, would miss 'Indian' restaurants. If I were rich, I would buy food every day from the one nearest to where I live.
(Though I've always enjoyed the contradiction between the way it describes its food on the notice outside . . . 'Contemporary Indian Cuisine' . . . and descriptions of food in the menu . . . for instance . . . 'The closest to truly unique Bangladesh dish'!)
Susan
In London, the people who work in low paid catering jobs are overwhelmingly (albeit not exclusively) immigrants. I suspect this is true of many other conurbations in England - and it is in the conurbations where the bulk of the population and the bulk of the Indian Restaurant industry is found.
I've discovered through my job teaching English to young foreigners that chains like Pret a Manger, Caffe Nero and even MacDonalds have highly intelligent, educated, graduate workforces - young people from Brazil, Columbia, Argentina and all over Central & South America as well as Poland, Spain, Italy, France - who are here to improve their English and (possibly) do a post-graduate course at an English university . These large companies pay the minimum wage; some pay more than the minimum wage.
I think there must be considerable doubt as to whether many Indian restaurants pay the minimum wage or give their workers many of the basic employment rights. The average Bangladeshi immigrant waiter with possibly limited English is unlikely to be able to know or enforce his rights (and they are always male - I don't think it would be difficult to prove that Indian restaurants don't comply with equal opportunities legislation).
In the 1980s, I visited a number of Indian restaurants in the West End of London when I worked for Westminster Homeless Families. The single male workers often lived in shabby and cramped conditions in dormitories above the restaurant. My job was to establish that the accommodation was indeed unfit for the wife and children when they arrived from Sylhet in Bangladesh.
I doubt much has changed since the 1980s. That's why Poles or native English people are unlikely to want to work in Indian restaurants (though it's true that some non-Bangladeshis work as waiters outside the big conurbations, but they are a minority). I wonder if many Indian restaurants would be economically viable if the owners had to provide decent wages, conditions and live-in accommodation.
Anthony . . .
I found your comments really interesting.
Two thoughts came to the top of my mind.
One . . . I feel even more firmly that occupation should not be accociated with nationality.
Two . . . I am surprised that you approve of 'live-in accommodation'.
The accommodation provided for the Chinese cockle-pickers who died in Morcombe Bay was pretty dire.
Similarly, the accommodation provided for low paid Polish workers can also be crowded and expensive.
Susan
I'm not sure how you have read from my observations my approval of live-in accommodation. On the contrary; when it's of the sort I used to inspect attached to Indian restaurants, I thoroughly disapprove. But I suspect that the economics of some Indian restaurants work only with this sort of arrangement. That's a neutral observation.
And, by-the-by, like you I like eating in Indian restaurants. But I could never again eat in any restaurant where I had seen the dormitories. I felt the likely low standards of personal and general hygiene generally were just too off-putting. Of course, many many restaurants have poor standards - Indian and others. But what the eye doesn't see...
Incidentally, you're right about the Polish workers who,for example, sustain the building trade in London. The economics of their jobs work for the individual workers only because they are prepared to live cheaply and sleep four to a room. I wonder whether many of their Polish gangmasters pay them the minimum wage. Poles employing other Poles who don't speak English can set their own employment rules.
It is also the case that many of the bright young graduates from south America and Europe who work in places like Pret a Manger can afford to live in London on their low wages only because they live in cheap accommodation. I have a Brazilian friend who shared a bedroom with two other Brazilians (one male, one female) in a tower block in Bermondsey. Their bedroom was actually the living room. There was a couple sharing the double bedroom and a single person in the box room - not too bad for them, but the only communal space for six people was a tiny kitchen. The (council tenant) landlady was getting an income of 3 x £50 + 2 x £60 + 1 x £65 = £335 a week, £1,440.50 a calandar month. She was buying her own flat to live in...
This arrangement is typical of many of the young people I taught at language schools last summer. It helps to explain why many born-and-bred Londoners prefer to sign on as unemployed rather than work for very low wages (in Indian restaurants for example). They have different expectations in terms of quality of life from the young (and not so young) people who flock to England from all over the world.
Last Autumn the Economist had an interesting article about how the Bangladeshi community was becoming more successful. For example, among children receiving free school meals, 26% of white children manage five good GCSEs. For Pakistanis this rises to 40%; poorer Bangladeshis rack up 50%. Increasingly Bangladeshis will want to leave the kitchens of indian restaurants for other, better paid jobs.
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10024877
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