Tipping in a country like India

Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash

Should you leave a tip?

The service charge was introduced in India in 2017, before which the tipper was given complete freedom to decide the value of the tip. This was based on the server, the ambience, the food and the overall experience. It also sometimes depended on whether the customer was in the mood to tip. Before the compulsory service charge, tipping in India was a choice. A choice not everyone made in the favor of those serving them.

For me, growing up, tipping was always the norm, as I was brought up to appreciate the service that was given and not to take advantage of it. I had a general rule with myself that wherever I went, if I spent enough time at the establishment, I tipped Rs.100. The total of the bill didn’t matter. To be fair, my family owns a salon, and we know the dirt of the service industry. The current narrative often suggests that the client is a sort of God, and having the opportunity to give service should be our pleasure. I know many people that do not share those sentiments.

Tipping in India is tricky as there aren’t any hard or fast rules and everything depends on the tipper. If someone leaves a tip, it’s a token of gratitude and this may not have anything to do with the service. Many customers also believe that paying tips can mean that they are paying extra money on food that is already overpriced at restaurants, but what they are actually paying for is the ambience and not the service.

Tipping language is different across the globe and is often discriminatory or arbitutory. For example in America where tipping is a culture, workers can receive different levels of gratuity based on factors such as age, sex, race, hair color and even breast size, and the size of the gratuity is found to be only very weakly related to the quality of service.

In a country like India where tips are so irregular, it really has me wondering – where and who do they go to and on what grounds do people get tipped ?

I spoke to Darayus Bathena, the current owner and partner of Bubsterr’s Bar & Kitchen, Pune, to answer a few of these questions–

“Even after the introduction of the service charge, if the customer really likes his experience he does still leave a tip. On the flip side, a customer isn’t obligated to pay the service charge if they were dissatisfied with what we offered them.”

Darayus then went on to tell me that the charge on service gets split amongst many areas and most restaurants have different percentages allotted to each.

A percentage of the service charge is also used to cover the damage costs incurred by the restaurant’s staff.

“When it comes to service at a restaurant there is the front and back of the house i.e. the serving staff and the kitchen. It takes a whole team to serve a customer and I believe that tips and service charge should be split equally, ”  he added.

In contrast, there are many local restaurants including street corners where you get the most delicious street food. Generally in places like that, cash is used as a form of payment, and the change may or may not be tipped.

It is also important to note that the average server in India does not belong to an upper caste family, and most of them don’t get paid or tipped handsomely. If one is going to a five star hotel to get a meal, the staff hired is someone who most likely comes from a higher strata of society and speaks English, enough to be their ticket to a higher tip, even if the need is less severe. Is this fair? I’ll let you decide.

While I have allotted most of this piece to service at restaurants, what we often fail to see is that the backbone of India is the service industry. Cleaning staff, personal cooks, koolis, caterers, bartenders, beauticians, massage therapists, dubba walas, delivery guys, taxi drivers, rickshaw drivers, peons, baby sitters, this didi and that didi, etc., all comprise of people who work tirelessly so our lives can run easier. Technically, while it is not the current norm, a tip could benefit all of them.

Regardless of the industry though, all labor in India is often looked down on. Plus, since a majority of our service staff come from marginalised communities, they don’t have the privileges we do when it comes to moving up the ladder in the work space–sometimes service is all that society allows them. Infact, the minimum wage in India is at Rs. 176 a day, that’s really not a lot of money and a tip could always go a long way.

Whether it’s an extra 10, 20, 50 or 100 rupees, try sparing a couple of rupees extra when you can. You never know who you might help!