Well, first of all, fire hazards are common with any electric appliance. If a Dishwasher can burn your house down, so can your Mobile Phone Charger!
Dishwashers, though ineffective on some Indian-style cooking, like heavily soiled and burned food stuck to the bottom of the utensils, is still useful. Though the cost is a bit high (I've been wondering, why does a washing machine with all the drum and stuff cost less than a dishwasher?), it can be justified.
Let me try to see how it works out:
Bosch SMS40E32EU Dishwasher: at Cromaretail Rs. 32,500
Cost of consumables: (assuming "Detergent + salt+shine cost Rs 600 (finish.co.in). Out of these, detergent and shine will come for 1.5 months and salt lasted us for 3 months" Rs. 4,000 (1,000 x 4 quarterly)
Electricity: (@ ~40 units/month->80 units bimonthly, taking into account the cost including taxes and excluding any other charges or subsidy in TN) Rs. 1,248 (208 x 4 quarters)
Water Softener: Usually recommended as its often hard water that is available at most places in India ~Rs. 3,000
So the total cost comes to Rs. 41,000 (rounded off; consumables and electricity calculated for one year for comparison)
Now, lets see what we get to deal with a maid:
1. Hard to find, let alone a good one.
2. Often unreliable(makes herself absent, especially the morning following a visit from a bunch of friends/relatives leaving the sink full of utensils)
3. Have to give her food, buy her dresses, lend her money every now and then that seldom gets repaid
4. Can't afford to let her face your bad day at work lest she'll stop coming
5. An extent of intrusion of your privacy
6. Gossip
Financially, I guess a maid would cost anywhere between Rs. 300 - 2,000 for doing dishes alone depending on many factors such as the size of family, number of times in a day, geographic location, community type(the rich, apartment-dwellers, college students, etc). So l'm blindly assuming the cost to be approximately Rs. 12,000 (1,000 x 12 months). Add to this, other factors such as bonus, 'loans', medical aid, clothes, educational assistance for her children, etc., which should work around to at least Rs. 8,000 per year. So you're gonna have to spend Rs. 20,000 on a maid per year for washing utensils alone, often at an added cost of dissatisfaction, unreliability, and total loss of peace of mind!
Leave the cost of hardware, and you're only spending just Rs. 5,500 per year on doing dishes with a small effort of arranging the dishes every night into the DW, and remembering to switch it on before going to bed. And complete peace of mind too!
Even if you get a maid for half the cost I have suggested(Rs. 20,000) in this post, running a DW is still cheaper by 50%.
You can also recruit a maid for the rest of the household work if required, and even make her operate the DW and the WM for no additional pay.
wtf.. I always had a thought to buy one but never thought it would be so costly..