Though such facilities have been available in metros for the past several years, urban centres like Chandigarh and its satellite towns have only recently grown up to this trend.

Before professionally run private or sarkari agencies stepped in, in a big way, to provide services at the doorstep of residents, people in and around City Beautiful only enjoyed certain localised services. These sector-specific or locality-specific enterprises did substitute for the household Ramus or Shamus, but in a small way.

For instance, there was always the friendly neighbourhood kiryanawala, who would home deliver provisions at a mere phone call, saving one the bother of trudging across each time one ran out of dal, chini or atta. Slowly, this role too has been assumed by hi-tech players, like online shopping malls, where you can order your monthly rations, groceries and much more just at the click of a mouse. Besides ushering in the concept of shopping from home, these online marts have brought not just the provision store but an entire supermarket at the consumer's doorstep. And, they even offer discounts that the local baniya would often begrudge.

A big online supermarket is Glidemart run by SAB Infotech. It has about 100 orders to service daily and the home delivery is done within 24 hours, claims Sandeep Sharma, a Director in the company. " We make sure that items are not short-weighed. Besides, the customer, when shopping online, can view the orders placed by him/her in the past 12 months," adds Sharma.

Not to lag behind and realising that change was the need of the hour, the sarkari Markfed also joined hands with privately owned Adhiraj Biotech Private Limited (ABPL), over a year ago, and began home delivery of organically grown, farm-fresh vegetables and fruits. This has in a big way helped in saving people the time-consuming task of going to the mandi, often with their mundu in tow, and sorting and selecting fruits and vegetables. Managing Director, Markfed, G.S. Channy, says this is not a profit-oriented venture. Orders are taken on the phone, a day in advance. A proposal to start instant supply is pending. The same facility might be tried out in other cities of Punjab. Markfed, which was so far famous for its tinned sarson-ka-saag, now directly procures the vegetables and fruit from a farm, thus giving farmers a better price and consumers a better quality at prevailing rates. The vegetables are washed, graded and packaged in its grading house near Zirakpur and are supplied in vans to various households and even sold through retail outlets.

Though metros like Chennai and Bangalore have long since had a chain of supermarkets which provide vegetables that are not only freshly procured, but even neatly chopped and peeled into ready-to-use sizes, for cities like Chandigarh the Markfed home delivery facility could be a beginning in this direction. Prof Swarnjit Mehta of the Geography Department, Panjab University, vouches for the convenience of this service. "Why should we spend time and fuel to go to the apni mandi, especially in this heat, when we can get good quality, graded vegetables at home? As for the local rehriwalas, one is never sure about their timings or the weights they use," she feels.

If there are services to bring raw veggies to your home, there are also the tiffin providers that save people the bother of buying and then cooking the subzis. Besides doing away with the need of employing a whole-time Ramu to cook and serve meals, which only puts extra burden on the monthly ration bill, this kind of service is a boon for bachelors, old people, working couples and those who suffer from temporary ill-health. Says Mahima, whose working mom has to travel a lot and was recently advised bed rest following a surgery, "We have discovered a home tiffin service, which sends us hygienic ghar jaisa khana at very reasonable rates. They even ask whether we'd like any special dish. This has saved us the hassle of keeping a cook and then supervising his work."

Now, to augment the role of single-service companies there have arrived agencies who offer to shoulder multiple domestic chores and outdoor errands. For instance, organisations like Time Value Service cater to this growing need for outside help to do routine household jobs. Inspired by a similar organisation in Bangalore, it opened its office in Chandigarh with a modest membership of 50 in year 2000. Part of its package were services like payment of school fee, electricity, phone, water and other bills, provision of a plumber and electrician for various repair jobs and weekly visits by a gardener—all these on payment of an annual fee. Facilities for which an additional service charge is imposed include provision of a driver, procuring cinema or rail tickets, car washing, and sending a cook or cleaner on demand.

In two years, its membership has jumped to 700, indicating people's preference to pay an outside agency for various odd jobs rather than putting themselves through the grind of running around or employing a Man Friday to attend to these tasks. And the best part of the bargain is that these outsiders in no way lack the personal touch which a loyal family retainer is expected to possess. "Many of our members are old, retired people of infirm constitution. So we even send our staffers to accompany them on hospital visits, if they so desire,'' claims Bipan Chhina, who along with co-partner Nitin Datta, launched this service.

Interestingly, tasks which were hitherto part of the servant’s unofficial, unscheduled duties too have been taken over by outside helpers. "One of our female member was once stranded somewhere following a car puncture. On getting her call, we immediately sent one of our boys to do the repair job," adds Chhina.

Though there are several factors that have ushered in this trend, it is the increasing rate of crimes being committed by servants that has primarily contributed to this role substitution. With a number of upper middle class and rich city dwellers turning into preys of avaricious servants and with loyal family retainers becoming a rare breed that exists more in Sooraj Barjatiya's reel-life sets than in real-life urban homes, it was but natural for people to turn to outside agencies.

An increasing number of urbanites now prefer to have outsiders run errands for them as it lessens the risk of making a full-time servant privy to all the household secrets and details and is also more affordable in the long run. It's like having your cake and eating it too. When facilities like payment of bills or school fees, provision of cooks, drivers or repair men and supplies of veggies and groceries are available at the doorstep, where is the need to hire a full-time errand boy, who may only be a prospective murderer?

Besides, this increasing dependence on professionally run agencies for household chores is a reflection of the growing social emphasis on time management. Most working couples weigh the time saved in utilising home delivery services against the energy and man hours lost in running around for these errands. Even if working couples can afford full-time help, they are not around to supervise them. Unlike the servants, outside agencies can't afford to dilly-dally over a task or shirk responsibility as their credibility is at stake. Thus, for this tribe of professionals, for whom time, not money, is a scarce commodity, not only are these outside helpers the safest bet, they make economic sense too. Dr Pallav Ray, Additional Professor, Department of Medical Microbiology, PGI, whose wife, Reena, is Associate Professor, Department of Haematology, in the same hospital, sums up the benefits of such services. "With our hectic work schedules, we don't get time to run around to pay the children's school fee or the routine bills. It is convenient to have an outside agency shoulder these chores."

The fast-expanding network of social infrastructure has spurred not just working people to shift allegiance from domestic help to outside service providers. Aged people, retired professionals, and single women, be it widows, divorcees or wives of merchant navy officers, too, are beneficiaries of this infrastructural support. These sections of society no longer need to feel help-less, literally and figuratively. From mundane indoor jobs like scrubbing floors to outdoor tasks like time-consuming bank work, there are a whole array of facilities one can get for a price.

With so many institutions to meet the domestic needs of people, there is hardly any need for domestic help. With helpful shoulders available outside, there is little sense in leaning on the full-of-airs Man Friday.