In the torrent of national outrage following the plight of domestic worker Nirmala Bonet being aired over the news, there have been the inevitable calls for harsher penalties against maid abusers as well as for this particular perpetrator to be punished with the utmost severity.

While some in this country and abroad have apologised to the 19-year-old Indonesian victim for the 'inhumane' treatment she suffered, others prefer to delude themselves that this cruel assault is an isolated case. Really? Horrendous abuses have been reported before, as I recall.

Is this sorry incident a criminal aberration or symptomatic of a sick segment of society at large? From newspaper reports, it appears that the alleged abuser is the wife of a 36-year-old managing director living in an upper-middle class neighbourhood. They are, presumably, an educated family.

Let's look at the larger picture beyond Nirmala. I would suggest that grubby yuppies who have been privileged with too many opportunities to acquire wealth too easily have not the grace in personal conduct to match their quick-gotten gains. And at the end of the spectrum, we have the accused housewife who seems to think that she can get away with torture.

Taking a look around her in Cronesia, she might certainly have caught the impression that if you're rich enough and well-connected enough, you can get away with almost anything.

She may have noticed that while the poor man gets a five-year jail sentence for stealing a pair of shoes, the CEO (chief executive officer) who commits CBT (criminal breach of trust) is let off with a slap on the wrist. Or noted those high-profile road rage incidents resulting in the death of a 50-something Chinese accountant and an Indian office boy, where the offending drivers in the expensive cars were more or less 'excused' for their actions by the courts.

It pays to be audacious if you've been caught with your fingers in the cookie jar. Who knows, the housewife may just take a leaf from our former prime minister's book and claim that the maid's injuries could have been self-inflicted.

While I've never personally witnessed an occurrence of physical abuse on a maid (thankfully not belonging to the social circle where members have a retinue of attendants), I've seen some unpalatable tableaux in public places.

One scene was at a swimming pool. The mother and two children, aged about 6 and 8, were happily walking along empty handed while trailing behind was the maid laden with bags, towels and floats, and looking like a poor beast of burden.

Another two instances were of Mister, Missus and Juniors all preoccupied with licking their ice-cream cones while the maid went without; and a maid bending over to tie the shoelaces of a child who could almost have been 10.

Why couldn't the mother have let her precious offspring carry the towels and floats? These are not heavy items beyond the capacity of children. Or she herself help carry one bag? Neither is a child old enough to be left alone with the maid too young to tie her own laces.

Broadly speaking (and I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush), what we see here is a self-centred yuppie generation raising a next generation of spoilt brats in the care of maids. What values will the children learn from looking at their parents who treat maids with such a scarcity of respect? How will these Little Maharajahs behave and interact with others when they're older?

Maid abuse has its roots in attitude problem. Nearly as reprehensible as actual assault is the mindset that figures for a measly RM300 a month, the imported maid has signed over body and soul to her employers. That she is to be at their beck and call seven days a week, without rest.

Bringing on more legislation will not deter abuse, just as the proposed death penalty, if implemented, will not stem the number of rapes. Cronesia is a tremendously over-legislated country with a proportionate under-enforcement of the countless laws already in place.

Same with domestic violence, hitting a maid represents an ego trip. In our class-riven society that kowtows to wealth and power and where the elite lack no hubris, maids are unfortunately viewed as of a 'lower order'.

In the developed countries, jobs like house-cleaning and babysitting are at least paid far more generously than the below-subsistence wages the workers in these areas here are given. Neither is the exploitation of cheap labour as rampant in developed societies; thus we don't hear of an influx of Indonesian maids to the Scandinavian countries.

Ask ourselves this: Do we as a society condone the outlook that maids are to be worked to the bone so that employers can get their money's worth? Do we censure the bosses who task their maids with a seemingly inexhaustible list of chores from dawn to dusk?

Therefore is the case of Nirmala's ill-treatment an extreme manifestation of the ills of our class-powered, materialism-driven social dynamics?

Unless and until we are willing to accord more dignity to lowly-paid manual labour, Nirmala will just be a seven-day wonder in our national consciousness. Without a shift in our mindset, we will - after the outcry dies down - still have to live with ourselves as a less than enlightened community made in Cronesia.