Cook is charging 8000 per month for coming twice a day -half an hour each- 4 dishes per day. Sundays off. For one time cooking, most cooks charge around 3500-4000 for 2 dishes, half an hour. They will cook in a hurry with lots of oil and spices and go.

Cleaning lady is charging 2500 for coming twice a day, 15-20 minutes each for washing dishes for a couple and twice-a-week mopping.

Quality of cleaning and cooking is also not good.

This is in tier 2 city, where educated people in most white-collar jobs outside IT are earning 25-30000 Rs. / month after investing lots of years and money into their education. They are typically working for 9 hours and 1 hour commute to the city centre.

People in IT jobs are mostly employed in WITCH companies where the starting pay is 3 lakhs per year, and working hours are typically 11-12 hours plus one-two hours commute. Have to take permission to take off on Saturdays. No family life.

No afternoon siesta or going home from 12 pm to 5 pm to have lunch with your spouse and kids. You don't get to raise your own kids unlike domestic workers.

Salary will go up but that depends on your effort and skills and learning, and by giving up on family life and health and sleep. Even if your health suffers, you cannot take a break- because later you won't ever get a job due to gap in resume. That's not true for domestic workers. Nobody is tracking their career and their every movement for 3 decades continuously.

It is only in IT industry where salary improves, and then people move to posh apartments and domestic workers there charge a lot. Most people other than doctors/IT workers with double income and rich businessmen can't afford domestic help at all.

Domestic workers are not underpaid.

People also pay huge taxes in India- which does go to provide many services to domestic workers from govt. Free healthcare, education, and many amenities related to housing.

Somehow people forget that India is a socialist country, and our taxes are spent a lot on the lower-income-group families.