State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis 9780199468164, 0199468168
This book explores the political economy of women's work in India and its relationship to the Indian state. The aut
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English Pages 348 [279] Year 2017
Polecaj historie
Table of contents :
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-1
Title Pages
M.S. Sreerekha
Title Pages
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.i) State Without Honour (p.ii) (p.iii) State Without Honour
Title Pages
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-4
Dedication
M.S. Sreerekha
Dedication
M.S. Sreerekha
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-6
(p.ix) Tables
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.ix) Tables
M.S. Sreerekha
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-7
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.xi) Acknowledgements
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-8
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-1
Introduction
M.S. Sreerekha
Introduction
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Introduction
Introduction
Background
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Relevance of the Book
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Inside the Book
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Notes:
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-2
Understanding Work
M.S. Sreerekha
Understanding Work
Work, Worker, and the Woman Worker
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Private/Public Sexual/Gender Division of Labour
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Production/Reproduction, Productive/Unproductive, and Paid/Unpaid
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Motherhood, Childcare, and the Maternalists
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Voluntary Work: Private/Public, Paid/Unpaid
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Concept of the Social and the Social Service Sector
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
The Concept of Welfare, Welfare State, and Women Workers
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Understanding Work
Notes:
Understanding Work
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-3
Women Workers in India
M.S. Sreerekha
Women Workers in India
Issues and Debates
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women’s Work Participation in Contemporary India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Informalization and Feminization
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Increasing Need in the Country for Social Welfare of the Poor
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
(p.98) Welfare Schemes, Equality, and the Status of Women in Paid Work in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Welfare, Globalization, and the Entry of Private Capital
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Notes:
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
Women Workers in India
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-4
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
M.S. Sreerekha
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS)
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
(p.124) The Anganwadi Worker (AWW)
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
(p.133) Training ICDS Functionaries
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
Integrated Child Development Services-IV
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
Funding ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
External Assistance to ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
(p.141) World Bank-Assisted ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
USAID-Assisted ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
(p.146) Reviews and Appraisals of ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
Universalization of ICDS
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
ICDS in Mission Mode
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
Notes:
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-5
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
M.S. Sreerekha
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers and Helpers in Delhi
(p.159) The Anganwadi Worker in Delhi
Working hours and work profile
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Work schedule and daily routine
Extra responsibilities
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
The honorarium
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
The Anganwadi Helper (AWH) in Delhi
Working hours
Extra responsibilities
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
The helper’s work schedule
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Other benefits for workers and helpers in Delhi
Housing an AWC
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Getting the job
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
The adolescent girl in the scheme
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the Other Areas of the National Capital Region (NCR)
Uttar Pradesh part of NCR
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Haryana part of NCR
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
(p.178) Rajasthan part of NCR
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Caste Politics around Anganwadis
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
NGO-ization and Privatization of ICDS and Anganwadis
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
(p.192) Gender Politics around the Women Workers in Anganwadis
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Notes:
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-6
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
M.S. Sreerekha
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Prominent Unions
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
(p.205) All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWAH)
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
(p.211) Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS)
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Relevant Acts in the Indian Constitution
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Questions Raised in Parliament
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Prominent Court Cases
Karnataka Administrative Tribunal Order in 1996
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Supreme Court Order, 2001, 2004, and 2006 on the Expansion and Universalization of ICDS
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Supreme Court Order in 2006 on the Regularization of Anganwadi Workers Posts as Civil Posts
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
(p.227) Karnataka High Court Order 2008
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Supreme Court Order 2008 on the Selection of Anganwadi Workers
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
(p.232) Changing Phase of Unionization, Community Participation, and the Public–Private Partnership in ICDS
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Issues and Challenges Ahead
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Notes:
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
acprof-9780199468164-chapter-7
Not for ‘Honour’
M.S. Sreerekha
Not for ‘Honour’
Just for Rights
M.S. Sreerekha
Abstract and Keywords
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
Not for ‘Honour’
acprof-9780199468164-appendix-1
Appendix
M.S. Sreerekha
Appendix
M.S. Sreerekha
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
Appendix
acprof-9780199468164-bibliography-1
(p.268) Bibliography
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.268) Bibliography
M.S. Sreerekha
Books, Journals, and Reports
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
(p.268) Bibliography
Websites
(p.268) Bibliography
Judgments/Court Orders
acprof-9780199468164-indexList-1
(p.279) Index
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
(p.279) Index
acprof-9780199468164-miscMatter-10
(p.295) About the Author
M.S. Sreerekha
(p.295) About the Author
M.S. Sreerekha
Citation preview
Title Pages
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Title Pages M.S. Sreerekha
(p.i) State Without Honour (p.ii) (p.iii) State Without Honour
(p.iv) Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries. Published in India by Oxford University Press YMCA Library Building, 1 Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110 001, India © Oxford University Press 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted. First Edition published in 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Title Pages a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. ISBN-13: 978-0-19-946816-4 ISBN-10: 0-19-946816-8 Typeset in ITC Giovanni Std Book 9.5/13 by Tranistics Data Technologies, New Delhi 110 044 Printed in India by Rakmo Press, New Delhi 110 020
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Dedication
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Dedication M.S. Sreerekha
(p.v) To the women who have learned the tough way to value their own work and who have taught others how to value it. (p.vi)
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Tables
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.ix) Tables M.S. Sreerekha
3.1 The administrative set-up of the ICDS Scheme in the 1980s 123 4.1 Data on the ICDS in India and in NCR in the year 2012–13 158 4.2 The districts which are part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in NCR with data of the number of anganwadi centres, workers, and helpers 171 4.3 The districts in Haryana state that are part of the NCR, with the number of AWCs in the area along with the number of workers and helpers 175 A.1 Monthly Honorarium of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India (1975–6 to 01.04.2011) 261 A.2 State-wise Funds Released and Expenditure under ICDS Training Programme in India (2007–8 to 2011–12-upto 31.12.2011) 262 A.3 Financial Progress under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in India (2007–8 to 2010–11–Upto 28.02.2011) 264 A.4 State-wise Funds Released and Expenditure under ICDS Scheme (General) in India (2007–8 to 2011–12) 265 (p.x)
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Acknowledgements
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.xi) Acknowledgements M.S. Sreerekha
I thank the anganwadi workers and helpers in the National Capital Region of Delhi for making this work possible. Thanks are due to the faculty members at the Centre for Political Studies (CPS) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, especially Professor Anupama Roy who supported the completion of this book, and Professor Gopal Guru and Professor Gurpreet Mahajan for inspiration. I am thankful to the union representatives of the (All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH), New Delhi—Sindhu, Hemlatha, Kamla, Saroj, and others—for arranging meetings with the workers; and also to those associated with the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) union. I am grateful to the faculty members and staff at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi, especially Indrani Majumdar, Savithri, Vasanthi Raman, Indu Agnihotri, and Neetha N., who shared valuable information and insight on the subject of this book. Library staff at JNU, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD), and V.V Giri National Labour Institute were also of immense help. The period between 2010 and 2014 was a time of turmoil for me at personal, professional, and political levels: I am grateful to my friends Biju Mathew, A.K. Ramakrishnan, and Sheeba Mathew who stood by me. Friends at Saheli and People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR), New Delhi, especially Lata Singh, Sadhana Arya, Davinder (p.xii) Kaur, Kalpana Mehta, Nagraj Adve, Shanuj, Shahana Bhattacharya, Santanu, Anupama, Rajesh Gupta, Rajendar Singh, D. Manjit, Reena Singh, Sadhna Saxena, and my lawyer friends Anil Nauria and
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Acknowledgements Sumita Hazarika, made life in Delhi possible. Tarannum Siddiqui, M.H. Ilias, and Mathew Joseph made life at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, meaningful. Ranjana Padhi, Uma Chakravarti, Ilina Sen, Binayak Sen, and Mary John have been consistent sources of inspiration and support. I wish to express my love towards my parents and siblings. I thank the editors at Oxford University Press for their suggestions and support extended during the production process. Finally, I thank my colleagues at the Global Studies Program, University of Virginia, for their support and encouragement.
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Abbreviations
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.xiii) Abbreviations M.S. Sreerekha
AIFAWH All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers AIIMS All India Institute of Medical Sciences ANM Auxiliary Nurse Midwife ASHA Accredited Social Health Activist AWH anganwadi helper AWW anganwadi worker BMS Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh BPL below poverty line CAG Comptroller and Auditor General CBO community-based organization CDPO Child Development Project Officer CHV Community Health Volunteers CII Confederation of Indian Industries CIRCUS Page 1 of 4
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Abbreviations Citizens Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six CITU Centre of Indian Trade Unions CMP Common Minimum Programme CMR child mortality rate CSR Corporate Social Responsibility DWCD Department of Women and Child Development DWCW Department of Women and Child Welfare ECCE Early Childhood Care and Education ECE Early Childhood Education HDI human development index HMS Hind Mazdoor Sabha (p.xiv) ICCW Indian Council for Child Welfare ICDS Integrated Child Development Services IDA International Development Association IEC information, education and communication ILO International Labour Organization IMF International Monetary Fund IMG Inter Ministerial Group IMR infant mortality rate INHP Integrated Nutrition and Health Project ISKCON International Society for Krishna Consciousness LFPR labour force participation rate MHFW Page 2 of 4
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Abbreviations Ministry of Health and Family Welfare MHRD Ministry of Human Resource Development MIS Management Information System MIST Mobile-In-Service Training MLTCs middle level training centres MM Mahila Mandal MMR maternal mortality rate MNGOs mother NGOs MPR monthly progress report MSDP multisectoral development programme NAC National Advisory Council NCAER National Council of Applied Economic Research NCEUS National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector NCR National Capital Region NFHS National Family Health Survey NFTU National Federation of Trade Unions NGO non-governmental organization NHED Nutrition and Health Education NHRM National Rural Health Mission NIPCCD National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development NPC National Planning Committee NSS National Sample Survey NSSO Page 3 of 4
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Abbreviations National Sample Survey Organization PEO Program Evaluation Organization PHC public health centre (p.xv) PPP public–private partnership PSE pre-school education RWA resident welfare association SAP structural adjustment policies SC Scheduled Caste ST Scheduled Tribe SDGs SAARC Development Goals SSWABs State Social Welfare Advisory Boards UNRISD United Nations Research Institute for Social Development UPA United Progressive Alliance VRWs village rehabilitation workers WB World Bank WDP women’s development programme WFP World Food Programme WPR work participation rate (p.xvi)
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Introduction
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Introduction M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords The chapter provides and introductive summary of the book. It provides a review of the important aspects and studies available in understanding the background of women’s work and its devaluation through the history of industrialization and growth of capitalism and patriarchy. The chapter also discusses briefly the need and importance of the study of feminist literature on the question of work, production, and reproduction in the capitalist economy. It explains the relevance of the study of the honorary women workers in India’s anganwadis through the history of the Integrated Child Development Scheme. It discusses in detail the relevance of the study towards a better understanding of women’s work in India. It also provides a chapter-wise brief of all the chapters in the book. Keywords: Introduction, background, relevance, feminist literature, India, summary, chapters
Politics of work as a subject of consistent debate and change demands further investigation and thinking. Within each such inquiry, it is desirable to go back to its core debates with a rethinking of its basic definitions. These include some fundamental issues around what constitutes work, women’s work, and its relationship with the political economy of the state. This book is an attempt towards a fresh understanding of the political economy of women’s work in India and its relationship with the Indian state. In the process, the study critically analyses the concept of social welfare in the Indian context through a case study of women honorary workers and sees how women figure in the state’s social welfare policies, establishing a link between the politics around women’s work and social welfare policies. For this purpose, the study examines the case of
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Introduction anganwadi workers1 (AWWs) of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in India. The subject of the case study, the ICDS scheme in India, and the AWW have a history of more than three decades. In India, the AWWs constitute only women. An anganwadi woman worker gets an honorarium and is considered an honorary worker, which implies that her work is considered honorary or in some ways a partially voluntary work, as discussed in detail in the forthcoming chapters. As of now, the Indian (p.2) government is trying to universalize the ICDS scheme, to expand the reach of the scheme to more people among the disadvantaged sections of Indian society which also means a corresponding increase in the number of anganwadi women workers. The study looks into the issue of why the work in the anganwadis is considered to be suitable for women workers only, why they are considered honorary workers, and what the issues are of workers’ rights vis-à-vis the anganwadi women workers. The study thus contributes towards a better understanding of the broader political framework constructed by the political economy of the state within which women’s work gets defined as honorary. The study is an attempt towards fresh insights into the implications and limitations of a scheme like the ICDS in the area of social welfare from a woman worker’s point of view and also from a feminist perspective in the case of anganwadi work, and other similar contexts. The attempt is also to see women’s work in India in the context of a decline of work in the formal sector and an increase in work in the informal and service sector for women, especially for women from the marginalized sections. Further, the study looks into the concept of social welfare of the state and analyses how and why the notion of women’s work is built into the concept of being social work which could be voluntary. Through the story of these women workers in the anganwadis in India, this book reveals the exploitation of these workers in the name of their own welfare or that of their families or the community. Thus, it facilitates an in-depth understanding of the role of women workers and their contributions in the implementation of the social welfare policies and programmes of the Indian state. The anganwadi women workers are studied in a situation in the globalized Indian economy with its increasing levels of poverty in the rural areas, displacement or eviction of more and more of its rural population, and increasing migration to the urban areas of the country culminating in a decrease in childcare facilities for a huge population both in the urban and rural areas. This is mostly relevant considering the fact that women workers constitute more than 90 per cent of the informal sector workers in India and it is for these women and their families that childcare facilities are most urgently needed. The AWW, who by definition is neither directly a part of the formal or the informal sector, nor a part of the state or the civil society or community, provides a good Page 2 of 15
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Introduction example of the complexity of both state-sponsored social welfare and (p.3) the condition of women workers in the present context of a capitalist economy. The study helps to understand the complexities around the weakening of social sector services with the withdrawal of state support under globalization coinciding with the need and demand for expansion of the horizon of state welfare schemes and programmes like the anganwadi.
Background The concept and history of work has to be seen in the background of the advancement of industrialization in the West, in a context when the meaning of work became synonymous with regular paid work undertaken outside the home. The growth of industrial capitalism separated work into private and public spaces and also differentiated ‘work’ from ‘employment’ in terms of paid and unpaid or profitable and non-profitable production, and the search for cheap labour resulted in a massive increase in the number of women entering the factories. In the history of women’s work during the industrial period there were phases in which women’s access to paid labour in industries increased tremendously, and the complexity and problems related to this was visible both at the industrial workplace and more within the institution of the family. Following this, in some contexts, the industrial capitalists, along with the maledominated workers’ trade unions, had to take measures towards reducing women’s access to paid work, a history of which is clearly part of the socialist feminist debates on women’s work that we will address later in this study. The expansion of production and paid work from geographically confined industries or factories into different arenas and locations of production was followed by changes in the nature and processes of production as well as in the definitions of skilled, unskilled, and paid and unpaid work among women. A discussion on the history of the concept of work considers the earlier debates on work, on the creation and distinction of the private/unpaid and the public/ paid spheres of work. Here, the debate on private/public distinction, the distinction between the domestic and the workplace or work, and the sexual/ gender division of labour are extremely relevant especially in the context of women’s work. A review of these debates helps towards a better understanding of the history of the concepts of household, reproduction, and care work. However, (p.4) instead of an in-depth analysis of the debates on these binaries, the focus here is on the political economy of gender and work from a feminist perspective. The conceptual debates in this study also address the relationship between the family and the state; unpaid household work and unpaid or less paid ‘social’ work; social policy and the welfare state; and social work and women social workers. There have been several writings around the concept and definition of work and the transformation of the nature, type, and value of work in the post-industrial period. Earlier, Ester Boserup (1970), Gayle Rubin (1975), Michelle Barrett Page 3 of 15
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Introduction (1980), Sylvia Walby (1986, 1990), Kate Young (1988), Nancy Fraser (1994, 2013), Nancy Folbre (1994), and others have addressed the issue of sexual division of labour and its implications on the family, work, and the state. Some of these writings were based on the earlier experiences of ‘integrating women into development’ in the context of growing capitalism and also on the experiences from the socialist economies which experimented with state responsibilities of childcare and community life, saving women from domestic captivity. From a feminist perspective, these scholars contributed immensely to the critiques of the politics of production and reproduction in capitalism and its institutions of marriage, family, and private property. Within the different schools of feminist thought—from liberal to socialist and Marxist—they contributed immensely to the debates on women’s work and the responsibilities of the state towards the family and community. A critical study of the concept of work by Stephen Edgell (2006) looked into the continuity and changes in paid and unpaid work both in the private and public spheres. Edgell (2006) addresses in detail the meaning of work in industrial capitalism and it becoming synonymous with paid employment and the debate on productive work from a gender perspective, explaining how an increase in the number of women in unpaid work changed the very meaning of work. Though these are different political perspectives coming from different disciplinary backgrounds, considering the relevance of their work for this study, their contributions are discussed in detail in the forthcoming chapters along with those of other scholars. In the contemporary context there is a major expansion in what is today called the ‘service sector’. Historically, the term ‘service sector’ is used interchangeably to signify forms of work within or outside the industrial set-up. However, it is in the post-industrial capitalist societies (p.5) that a clear shift between the skilled processes of paid labour in the industries and that of less skilled, less paid, or unskilled or unpaid work of the service sector developed. This is followed by a major expansion of the service sector, and in the past few decades, the definition and nature of the service sector have again undergone major changes. However, the service sector always had a huge presence of women workers, especially women workers from developing countries. Today, a good amount of the available paid, less paid, or unpaid work in the service sector is done by women workers. An interpretation of the exploitation of women’s work as feminization of labour, technically replacing the term ‘sexual division of labour’, emerged in the postglobalization context. This interpretation and the phenomena are discussed in a context within the impact of globalization on the role of the state wherein the state, especially in the context of developing economies, withdrew from their responsibilities, particularly from welfare policies for the people in the social sector. Though there are many studies and diverse debates focusing on the changing concepts and definitions around work in the capitalist economy, Indian scholars have focused more specifically on the impact of changes in the Page 4 of 15
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Introduction international political economy of work in the Indian situation. In the Indian context, writings by scholars like Mies (1982), Banerjee (1989), Kalpagam (1994), Majumdar (2007, 2008), Palriwala and Neetha (2009, 2010), and others contributed to understanding the changes in the political economy of women’s work. These scholars have addressed issues related to the impact of globalization on Indian women workers, especially in the informal sector. Conditions of women’s work in the Indian context as it is undoubtedly linked to the developments in the international political economy, particularly in the context of globalization, have witnessed drastic changes and, like in many other developing countries, there has been an expansion of paid work in the informal, unorganized sector and a decrease in the available skilled work, which coincided with and contributed to an expansion of the service sector. Studies also show an expansion in the overall employment opportunities for women for short periods. This also shows increased feminized work participation in the case of urban women, an increase in the number of women workers in the primary sector, a decrease in the secondary sector employment, and an increase in work participation in the tertiary sector. The sphere of (p.6) service sector/tertiary sector jobs is seeing work participation from many women from the lower class or lower class and lower caste women. In the tertiary sector work, the highest increase has been in the field of education, ahead of other sectors like care work, domestic work, or construction work. The decrease in formal and skilled work also has had an impact on pushing more and more women workers into the informal and unskilled, unorganized sector work. In this context, the contribution of women in the informal sector and its impact on both the state’s economy and the rights of these women as workers are a complex issue. India’s economy remains primarily an agricultural economy and its society and economy continue to have many feudal and patriarchal characteristics. In the globalized Indian economy, work-pattern changes in India has coincided with a shift from agricultural economy to the service sector economy, along with increasing levels of migration or displacement. Massive migration to urban areas has increased the pressure on the urban economy and the state to provide for the migrant population. Many more women migrants have joined the work sector in urban areas, carrying out domestic and construction work. Moreover, the expansion of the service sector within the unorganized sector has been mainly in the fields of care work, home-based work, domestic work, and so on. It is in this context of a globalized economy and its ever-expanding informal service sector that the relevance of this study lies vis-à-vis the anganwadi women workers in India. The study of the ICDS looks at the existing contribution of the programme in the area of social policy and social welfare in India with an in-depth analysis of the existing literature on the ICDS scheme and anganwadis. The central government of India launched the ICDS programme in 1975. Implemented through respective state governments all over the country, the programme is meant to contribute to local development in general and specifically to the welfare of Page 5 of 15
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Introduction children. Anganwadis in India come under the ICDS scheme and only women are recruited as AWWs. Workers and helpers under anganwadis are recognized by the government as ‘honorary’ workers who are paid an ‘honorarium’. In India, 96 per cent of the women workers are in the unorganized sector and anganwadi women workers can also be counted as part of this. Anganwadi women workers are women with moderate education, mostly those who stay with their families and prefer a job in their neighbourhood. Many are from poor families and many are (p.7) single women. The most controversial issues around anganwadis and AWWs are around their wages and the temporariness of their work. In 2006, the AWWs’ union lost a legal battle at the Supreme Court of India demanding minimum wages. According to the Supreme Court of India, AWWs do not hold any ‘civil posts’ and they also do not carry out any function of the state, and so anganwadi work should remain ‘voluntary’. By 2006, in collaboration with the World Bank (WB), the Indian government facilitated more direct community participation in the ICDS and introduced the concept of village communities, self-help groups for women, along with existing entities like Mahila Mandals (MMs), with which the anganwadis were to work in collaboration. The government also decided to bring anganwadis under private–public partnership, allowing privatization of a section of anganwadis and also involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the functioning of anganwadis so as to improve the quality of services provided by them. These are important landmarks in the design and implementation of the ICDS and a direct impact on the work of AWWs. Thus, a study of the nature of women’s work in the anganwadis, along with the changes in the ICDS in contemporary times due to public–private partnership (PPP) and the entry of international and corporate institutions in collaboration, gives a complete picture of the issues involved in understanding the anganwadi women workers in the ICDS in India, and provides an opportunity to analyse the condition of women workers in the country in similar programmes in present times.
Relevance of the Book While this book attempts a deeper and contemporary understanding of the nature of women’s work, on the one hand it focuses on a critique of the sexual or gender division of labour and on the other it critically analyses the role of the state in contributing to further expand this in the present economic conditions. The attempt is to contribute to this debate by trying to understand how in the absence of or a critique of gender politics and sexual or gender division of labour, work done by women will be defined or redefined and valued. An analysis of the anganwadis in India shows if and whether such division of work and its devaluation is used as a mechanism to exploit the labour of lower-class (p.8) women workers from this informal sector. The case study of anganwadi women workers in India is thus an attempt to reveal the relationship of the Indian state through its social welfare policies with its women workers. The book specifically looks into both the contributions and the impact of the changes in the policies of Page 6 of 15
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Introduction the state to see if there has been an extension of the ‘domestic’ into the ‘public’ in the context of women’s work and if it is embedded in the logic of the capitalist state and its neo-liberal economy. Here, different terms are used to define women’s work in the welfare policies of the state, especially terms like ‘honorary’ and ‘voluntary’ which are relevant in the context of India. However, this study does not go into the various arenas of the entire service sector economy, such as of women workers in other fields or in education, health, or other forms of care work, which will then have to address larger debates on the economy of care work or domestic work. Instead, the focus is on the conceptualization and politicization of what is called ‘honorary’ in the case of AWWs in India in order to see how and where it fits into the debates on the politics of work in India in general. Here, an attempt is made to critically analyse from a feminist perspective the meaning of the concept of an ‘anganwadi’. It examines the role of women workers as ‘mother substitute’ in the anganwadis and their labour hence as an extension into the public of the domestic, unpaid/less paid, ‘natural’ skills of women. It attempts at a deeper understanding of the broad history of anganwadis in India and on the basis of this it analyses the debates around the conceptualization of women’s work in the anganwadis as ‘honorary’ work. From a gender perspective, the attempt is to be able to provide a conceptual and political analysis of the conditions under which the Indian state specifically involves women workers from local communities in this welfare scheme. The study also looks into the Indian state’s policies of defining and shaping the anganwadis and to explore if and how there is a conflict between the interests of the Indian state and the workers involved. It tries to investigate the attempt by the Indian state and its interest in connecting different forms of social issues and social responsibilities, with the anganwadi scheme revealing the ‘benefits’ for the state from this scheme. Most importantly, the study looks into the question of the workers’ rights of anganwadi women in the context of rights guaranteed to workers in the Constitution of India. While recent (p.9) government reports show the inadequacy in the number of anganwadis and workers, and the need for more, there is also pressure from the government to cut down on the number of workers in the anganwadis through retirement schemes. These contradicting positions and steps by the Indian government are reflections of the changes and demands of the growing economy under the present phase of globalization. In this context, this study is a step towards understanding the complexity of this state welfare programme from a feminist perspective. The different forms and definitions of women’s work is the research area of this study. However, what constitutes a social welfare policy in a capitalist state, and for whom and why such policies are adopted are important research questions. This brings in the debates on the nature of the welfare state and its role and interest in the economy of reproduction and family welfare. The following questions are relevant in this context: What is the history and politics of social Page 7 of 15
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Introduction welfare policies of the Indian state and what has been its relationship with the family as a social institution and women as workers? As far as the debate on women’s work is concerned, can all forms of women’s work be paid work? What are the different levels of devaluation that takes place with women’s work? Conceptually and politically, what constitutes and distinguishes a worker from a woman worker? What is the history of the economy of women’s work in India and how have women workers in India responded to the policies around the politics of reproduction and the institution of family? An analysis of the role and functions of anganwadis in India brings us directly to the question of valuing women’s work and the debates around it. Are AWWs workers at all? Where do we locate anganwadis in the history of women’s work and what is the politics of work as far as the AWWs are concerned? What are the roles expected from women workers in anganwadis by the Indian state? Is it a ‘strategy’ of the state to consider AWWs as ‘honorary’ workers to keep them invisible from being counted?2 What are the contributions of such a social policy towards the empowerment of the society in general and the family in particular in India? And what is its contribution towards the disempowerment of (p.10) women if that is the case as far as the women workers in the anganwadis are concerned? What is the role and relevance of anganwadis in the context of globalization and the withdrawal of the state from the social sector? What happens with the privatization of anganwadis? In the context of the increasing importance of the service sector–care work economy (both paid and less paid) and the new discussions around the value of unpaid domestic work in the capitalist economy of today, other relevant questions include: Where do we locate the anganwadi experience in the Indian context? Is it possible to perceive the value of work by women in the anganwadis against the value of total paid work for the same in our market economy? Could it be possible then to draw a comparison between the value of total paid work versus the value of total less paid/unpaid work for the same? However, addressing some of these questions, though relevant, is beyond the scope of this work. Nevertheless, from a feminist perspective or understanding of the welfare state and its interest in integrating and mainstreaming gender into the process of development, how do we make sense of the increasing interest of the Indian state in sustaining a scheme like the anganwadis for more than three decades? Does the anganwadi programme help the Indian state to access the cheap labour of women to its benefit, reducing its burden on ‘social’ development expenditure? Is the focus of social development only ‘the family’ or does it/can it focus on women? Is anganwadi work being increasingly used as a tool for easier access of private capital to the country’s local communities? These are some of the relevant questions which are addressed for a better understanding of the role of the Indian state in shaping the politics of work in the context of women workers in India.
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Introduction Inside the Book The book includes an in-depth analysis and review of the literature on defining and understanding women’s work and analyses the issues on the defining features of paid work and the distinction between paid and less paid work in the context of women’s work. The discussion on the definitions and debates on work is followed by a review of the literature on women’s work and political economy in India which helps us to understand the contours of the debates around women’s work and women workers in India. Though one cannot arrive at a universal (p.11) theory on women’s work based on the specific experience of AWWs, the study aims at devising an analytical framework for understanding the case of women workers in India’s specific context and of other countries where similar polices like the ICDS exists. The literature review on work, women’s work, and the state policies around women and family is strengthened by the case study on AWWs in India. What makes the case of the AWW interesting and at the same time complex is the fact that an AWW is part of both the formal and informal sector, she can fit into the category of both paid and unpaid, she is a volunteer and a worker, and she is a worker and a woman—in this case in precise terms a woman worker— who is professionally a part of the family, society or community, and the state. Considering her being part of the family and the local community, the state has produced her as a specific kind of worker. Being a volunteer worker, enjoying some privileges, and carrying out duties more as a government employee, she is powerful and hopeful of a better future with her experience as an AWW. But she is exploited with specific forms of unpaid work within her work profile, consistently increasing workload and with fewer benefits, and also with the increasing number of rules and regulations which controls her from gaining any benefits; for example, some state governments like Kerala had disqualified anganwadi women from contesting in local elections. So, when it comes to controlling her powers, the government employee status seems to apply and when it comes to any advantage or privilege for her as a worker, it seems to work the other way around. The rationale and complexity of these issues and positions make it more interesting and relevant. Existing literature on anganwadis include many government-sponsored research projects and independent research works into the functioning of anganwadis and childcare, central government status reports on the ICDS, reports including that of the Commissioners for the Supreme Court of India, reports published by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD), the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the Planning Commission of India, and so on. There are other well-documented reports, studies, and articles by anganwadi trade unions like the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH). (p.12) Alongside, the case study has used the qualitative Page 9 of 15
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Introduction research and purposive sampling method by visiting and interviewing a selected number of AWWs and helpers. Though very few studies have been undertaken in the past on anganwadis and its workers, a multi-sectoral analysis is still missing. Even when the majority of its beneficiaries were from the rural areas, the situation has been changing drastically. In recent years, Delhi has been experiencing increasing levels of migration to the city, which coincided with a large number of women joining the informal sector. The percentage of people living below the poverty line (BPL), along with that of women working in the informal sector, has gone up tremendously. With increasing migration to cities like Delhi, the demand and the number of beneficiaries of a scheme like anganwadi is much higher. Anganwadis in India is well researched from the point of view of the ICDS, childcare, children’s education, and so on. A feminist critique or analysis of the concept of anganwadi, with its focus on workers, is relatively new. In the past, studies have been limited to the success or impact of the ICDS in terms of its reach, its contribution to improving levels of nutrition among the beneficiaries, or community participation in the ICDS scheme. However, there has not been any serious attempt to study the AWW or helper, who they are, what they do, why, and how. Most of the government documents or government-supported studies again focus on the scheme and they include little information on the status of the AWWs other than basic information given in a very few reports about the details of the training programmes for them. However, trade unions in the National Capital Region (NCR), especially the AIFAWH have documented well on the status of AWWs and their struggles for workers’ rights. Since the ICDS is a central government scheme which is implemented with the help of the state governments, the features of the scheme and the tasks of the workers are largely similar in all the states. However, striking differences, as can be seen in the analysis of the interviews, are visible in the cases of wages/ honorarium, funding for the payment of rent and the processes of distribution of food in the anganwadis. As explained above, alongside the differences among the states, there are also visible differences among communities or areas within the states in terms of being urban, rural, or tribal areas, and also among the slum areas, lower-middle-class areas, or areas dominated by one particular (p. 13) caste or community. Such differences among states or within a state would reveal the specific conditions and needs of the anganwadis and its workers. The fact that the scheme itself has different terms and procedures for functioning in rural or urban areas will also reflect in the study. Otherwise, on many terms there are major similarities in the work profile, functioning of the centres, and the rules and regulations for the scheme, and this made the need for qualitative interviews more relevant in the context of this study.
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Introduction Again, the rules and procedures and the detailed information or data regarding the ICDS scheme are borrowed from the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). Most of the policy-level information and data related to the ICDS in each state and at the national level are available on the official websites of the ministry and the department. Each state has separate websites which provide specific details regarding the number of anganwadi centres and workers, their wages, and so on, and also specific policies and programmes run by the state governments. This facility has made it easy to access basic information regarding the programme. Thus, the fact that state-specific quantitative data are available has also contributed to the possibility of a qualitative research or an analysis comparing both the quantitative and the qualitative data. The NCR includes areas or states which pay the lowest possible ‘honorarium’ to its AWWs/helpers, certainly much lower than the minimum wage. A study of the NCR brings in four states including the union territory of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan; a comparison of the workers in these areas brings the diversity and disparity in the implementation of the anganwadi project in these states and the condition of the workers and the ICDS scheme. Whatever differences are there in the implementation of the ICDS among these states reflect the experiences of the workers in the respective states, such as issues of differences in their wages, their workload, or other matters. Such an analysis can contribute towards a better understanding of the problems both in the scheme and for its workers. The research includes qualitative detailed interviews of a total of 55 AWWs and helpers from different parts of the NCR. The NCR is a good case study since it is possible to look into the experiences of the ICDS and AWWs of different states within a small geographical area. As far as general data or information on the AWWs and helpers, the ICDS, or any other issues related to the (p.14) scheme is concerned, the websites of the Ministry of Social Welfare and other relevant sites have been most useful and updated. The fact that the very nature of the work of anganwadi women includes keeping everything recorded in detail in different forms of registers creates the possibility of access to information on them to some extent. In the contexts of the experiences of AWWs from the NCR, the general data on the ICDS give a broader picture of the implementation and features of the ICDS scheme in these states and the different polices and plans for the workers and helpers. Most of the interviews took place in the anganwadi centres during or after working hours, and a few immediately after a meeting or a protest organized by the unions of the AWWs. Workers’ unions, especially the contacts through the AIFAWH, helped to gain access to the workers in different parts of the NCR, while some contacts were also made through the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) union. In many cases, getting the interviews done was not easy since the workers and helpers, being temporary employees, feared or were suspicious due to their unfamiliarity with a survey like this and the unknown outcome of it. The Page 11 of 15
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Introduction number of helpers interviewed is lower compared to the number of workers interviewed, since on many occasions the helper was not available or was unwilling; moreover, the presence of one of them for the interview invariably meant the other being busy with some task at the anganwadi. The superior position of the worker and her involvement with some specific tasks, unlike in the case of the helper, is also a reason for the lesser number of interviews with the helpers. Other than the interviews with workers, the primary resources also include interviews with anganwadi union activists in the region, study of the court cases, judgments lost and won by AWWs, and so on. The court cases fought by the workers on different issues including that of minimum wages are discussed. The primary documents and data are also available with the Planning Commission which looks into the ICDS scheme. Documentation is also available in respective libraries of the questions raised on the issue in parliamentary debates. Studies conducted in the NCR reveal the changes in different states which come under the region that mainly has to do with wages and other financial allocations, along with the existence of certain state-specific policies initiated by the state governments whether as part of the ICDS programme or otherwise. Thus, the choice of the NCR area (p.15) has helped in terms of comparing divergent conditions in states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana, which show different levels in their development indicators and also by way of specific social issues related to each state. The details of each specific interview are not given as part of the text of the study here. It is in order to avoid repetition of issues raised or not to dwell much on the specificities of work profiles of the workers, and so on, that the details of the interviews have been avoided. However, through a deep and thorough analysis of the interviews an attempt has been made to address and analyse the relevant issues raised by workers and helpers in each context. One complex part of the research was in addressing the caste angle of the issue in terms of the implementation of the scheme as an impact both on the beneficiaries and on the workers or the staff of the ICDS. The study has not attempted an understanding of the implications of the caste practice on the beneficiaries. As far as the impact of caste politics on the workers is concerned, the study did not raise the question of caste of the workers and caste politics directly but the issue of caste hierarchy and caste politics did come up during the interviews and other discussions. Questions related to caste were also part of the qualitative interviews, though mostly these questions were not encouraged or responded to by the respondents of the study. It was mulled over as to what kind of approach should be used to address and discuss the issue of caste and caste relations, and its impact on the programme. The initial intention was to ask the caste of the interviewee directly; however, after the first few experiences, it became clear that it was not going to be an easy task. Addressing the issue of caste posed two types of problems. While the interviewees did not Page 12 of 15
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Introduction prefer to be asked directly about their caste identity, they did in some way or the other believe in and practise caste hierarchy; there were many occasions when they were proud of referring to their caste identity if they belonged to an upper caste. During the interviews, in the case of upper-caste women workers, they were forthcoming in mentioning their surnames so as to emphasize that they belonged to the upper caste. But this was true only in the case of the workers and not in the case of helpers. A caste hierarchy between the worker and the helper became visible on many occasions during the interviews. Here, the caste hierarchy could possibly go along with the hierarchy in class status too between the helper and the worker and the clear link between the two becomes obvious (p.16) through the study. While this was an issue that became visible during the interviews in an individual context, the larger issues of caste and religion were certainly equally important for the study to reveal how the caste factor plays a role in the ICDS programme. Thus, the study has its limitations in providing more elaborate data on the issues of caste, religion, or the class of the AWWs merely due to lack of information or data on such matters, since further remarks or suggestions on the basis of this would have led to inconclusive generalizations in the absence of detailed studies on the same. Further extension of the study into these areas and issues and also the specific details of the same and other issues in other parts of the country will be extremely useful, but it is beyond the scope of this book. However, in this context, the study can also be seen as a step towards the same, more so in the context of universalization and privatization and the entry of the corporates into the ICDS field, with details of such case histories from each state, other than the issue of addressing differences on the core issues raised, as in wages or the schematization of the AWWs. The first chapter of the book is divided into six parts in which the first section discusses the politics of work historically while trying to distinguish the definitions and conceptual meaning of work, worker, and the creation of the woman worker. Here, the discussion is focused around the literal meaning of the term ‘work’ and attempts an analysis of the development of the concept of work through different schools of thought. In the second section of this chapter, the private–public distinction is discussed in the context of sexual/gender division of labour and the corresponding debates in political economy from a feminist perspective. The third section discusses the impact and contribution of this division of labour on the distinction between the meanings of production and reproduction, and further on the devaluation of women’s work through the creation of the distinction between productive and unproductive, and paid and unpaid. The discussion on reproduction in this section also includes an analysis of the debates on motherhood and the position of maternalists on this in the context of the debates on motherhood and childcare in feminist theory. The fourth section of the chapter addresses the term ‘voluntary work’ and its gendered meanings, and contextualizes it within the debates on paid and unpaid work; and private and public division of labour in feminist theory. The fifth Page 13 of 15
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Introduction section discusses the meaning and origin of the term ‘social’ and the creation of (p.17) the social-service sector, followed by the last section which addresses the concept of welfare and women workers in the welfare state. The discussion on the definitions and debates on work is followed by a review of the literature on women’s work and political economy in India which helps us to understand the contours of the debates around women’s work and women workers in India. In order to understand the concept and politics of honorary workers, it is important to know the history of women’s work and women workers in India. The second chapter of the book examines the changes in the nature and politics of women’s work in the context of women workers in India. It contains a review of some of the writings on women’s work in India, addressing issues like the status and growth in women’s paid work, the process of feminization and informalization, and the ramifications of these on women’s work in the informal sector. The chapter also briefly discusses the increasing need for more social welfare policies especially women specific social-welfare policies and programmes in contemporary India. It discusses the status of women in paid work in welfare schemes in India and critically analyses how the Indian state has seen women workers as part of its social-welfare policies and such an analysis will contribute to a critical understanding of the meaning and relevance of social-welfare policies in India. It also briefly reviews how women in paid work have figured in the state-welfare policies while trying to understand the relevance of these policies in the context of economic restructuring, globalization, and the entry of private capital. Chapter 3 includes a detailed chronology of the history of honorary/AWWs in India. Though the history of AWWs is integrally a part of the history of the ICDS in India, here the focus is on the women workers—both workers and helpers—as part of the scheme, instead of an analysis of the impact of the ICDS on the beneficiaries (as in the case of child nutrition, infant mortality, pre-schooling, or care for the young mother). However, the everyday functioning of the anganwadi and the problems around the functioning of the ICDS will be a part of the history of AWWs. Chapter 4 includes the primary data collected on anganwadis in the NCR, and a study of the interviews of the AWWs in selected areas of the NCR. The chapter is based on qualitative interviews with the workers and helpers of the anganwadis in the selected areas. It also includes information and views based on the interviews with anganwadi union (p.18) leaders. This chapter has a critical analysis of the findings from the primary literature and from the field work. This is studied in the light of the secondary literature, especially government policy reports, court judgments and union reports, other documents and information on
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Introduction the selected regions of the NCR, especially on the policies, procedures, and experiences of workers in the different states of the NCR. Chapter 5 discusses union activities among the AWWs in the country. It covers a review of issues raised in earlier chapters on the ICDS, through the anganwadi unions, the reports, pamphlets, and other documents of trade unions working with the AWWs and an analysis of the various activities of the unions among the AWWs. It also attempts a brief review of the most relevant judgments from various courts and of the debates or questions raised in the Indian parliament on issues related to AWWs. It reviews briefly relevant Constitutional Acts in the context of worker’s rights of the AWWs broadly relevant to the implementation of the ICDS. Though some of these information and views have been gathered through meetings and interviews with policymakers, government officials, and union leaders, mostly the information and views discussed in these chapters are from primary sources as in the form of documents and reports. Chapter 6 is based on the study of women’s work in India and the study of the case of AWWs; this concluding chapter discusses the relationship of the Indian state with its women workers, the possibilities for improving the status of women workers, especially in the area of social welfare and addressing the limitations of the present policies, and suggestions for improvement in their implementation. The chapter analyses the story and struggle of the honorary workers in the anganwadis in the light of the study of the secondary and primary materials in earlier chapters and contributes to a critical understanding of the concept of honorary worker, argues for their workers’ rights and also stimulates rethinking the notions around women’s work and women workers towards politicizing women workers’ rights. Notes:
(1) In the context of this study, anganwadi workers include both the worker and the helper. (2) Estimates show that the government saves around 1,000 crore rupees every year from the unpaid/less paid labour of the AWWs (The Hindu, 4 December 2005, 4).
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Understanding Work
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Understanding Work Work, Worker, and the Woman Worker M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0002
Abstract and Keywords The chapter discusses the politics of work historically, while trying to distinguish the definitions and conceptual meaning of work, worker, and the creation of the woman worker. There is an analysis of the private–public distinction, sexual/ gender division of labour, and corresponding debates in political economy from a feminist perspective. The chapter also discusses the distinction between the meanings of production and reproduction and further on the devaluation of women’s work through the creation of the distinction between productive and unproductive. The chapter examines the concept of ‘voluntary work’, its gendered meanings and contextualizes it within the debates on paid and unpaid work and private and public division of labour in feminist theory and also the meaning and origin of the term ‘social’ and the creation of the social-service sector, the concept of welfare, and women workers in the welfare state. Keywords: Private–public distinction, women worker, division of labour, production, reproduction, Maternalists, voluntary, social, social service, welfare, social welfare
If all housewives were to die at once, and the men were forced to buy everything for use, wages would have to rise immediately.... —Wibaut (1895, cited in Gardiner 1997: 8) To understand the politics of work, it is important to keep in mind that broadly what exactly constitutes work is defined and shaped by many historical factors. These include the market, the state, the creation of the private and the public, Page 1 of 44
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Understanding Work and the sexual/gender division of work in each society. These factors shape and attribute diverse meanings to work in each society by which it assumes different definitions and values. Sometimes, the concept of work in one context has different meanings, and at other times there are different contexts in which it is used with similar meanings. Defining women’s work has had a long history of disputed meanings or meaninglessness, where in each social and political context its meaning had to be defined and redefined. In order to understand the story of women’s work, one has to attempt an in-depth reading into the existing literature on the concepts and definitions around work, worker, and women workers. It may perhaps be possible to see a literal meaning and understanding of what is work, which is different from attributing a political meaning or economic value to it. Seeing the literal meaning of what is work would then reveal different meanings and interpretations or the use of different terms in local languages. The existence and use of such multiple vocabulary or terms and different meanings attributed (p.20) to it would also reveal the political journey and history of the term. Kalpagam (1994) explores the journey of the term through its different usages in the Tamil language. In one of her earlier works in 1994, she gives a brief analogy to different meanings in the use of words like ‘work’, ‘labour’, ‘employment’, or ‘job’. She further brings in the gendered nature in the use of these terms through the use of local linguistic practices. She describes the meanings of terms like ‘work’, ‘labour’, ‘employment’, and ‘job’ as follows. There are a number of words in Tamil to denote various ‘activities’, with each of the categories like ‘work’, ‘labour’, and ‘employment’. Though there are common words in each of the sets indicating that language use did not sharply differentiate amongst these, some words existed prior to the emergence of new activities. Thus, according to her, … in the assignment of denotative words, there are probably instances of both an excess and a deficiency of ‘significance’ with the ‘signifier’ performing more or less than what is supposed to be ‘signified’. The words that are not common or present in the other sets often help to differentiate the context in which these words are used. ‘Work’ is more general and is often used in the sense of ‘doing’… [wherein] labour carries with it connotations of ‘effort’ and employment denotes occupation, work in offices and activities that are modern in nature. (Kalpagam 1994: 15) Kalpagam further argues that these linguistic practices have implications for cognizing women’s work. Women’s housework is always referred to as ‘work’ and is not considered ‘labour’ which connotes ‘effort’ or ‘drudgery’, and so on. While there are very few words relating to ‘work’ referring only to the feminine gender, most words have masculine endings and words that are applicable to both are quite neutral. For her, ‘the lack of a vocabulary for women’s work in Tamil is suggestive of the probable discursive silences surrounding much of Page 2 of 44
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Understanding Work women’s activities ... [and] this feature may be present in other languages as well’. (Kalpagam 1994: 15) Here, I use the word ‘work’ without addressing these possibilities of the different implications and meanings of these terms and I prefer the word ‘work’, as mentioned earlier because of its ‘general’ nature. However, the image and meaning of work and worker in its first assumption is that of work which is paid and done by a man. Likewise, the subject women bring in is the image of women doing unpaid work at home. Women and women’s work, whether paid or unpaid, are (p.21) generally seen in relation to the private world called family, household, or the domestic. It is at a stage of capitalist industrial development that some women as workers entered the world of paid work. Capitalism and industrial development has different histories in different parts of the world, especially in the West and the East. However, capitalism and its association with industrialization and the creation of the worker are being studied in general in the context of the development of the economy of work. In the contemporary world of capitalist economy and its economy of work, it is clear that it is not the type or nature of work which determines whether it is paid, unpaid, or less paid. A change in the forms and meanings of the service sector and the substantial increase of paid work in this sector shows that the classical conventional division of work into productive and unproductive work (which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter) has no meaning today unless seen in the new light of the present capitalist economy. The possibility of transformation of unpaid work from its earlier form to new forms of paid or less paid work is imminent in the contemporary capitalist political economy. An analysis of this transformation is an important part of this study. There is enormous amount of literature debating women’s work and its contribution towards the capitalist economy. Women workers and their work has been an important theme of study for feminist social sciences especially feminist economics belonging both to liberal and socialist traditions. The debates on the history of women’s work whether among the feminists or others surround patriarchy in its wide range of meanings and women’s reproductive capacity and the many forms of work which women do under different forms of patriarchy. The feminist critiques of the concept of work take us to the fundamentals of capitalism and its relationship with patriarchy. In order to understand whatever has happened to women’s work under capitalism, it is important to follow the changes at different stages of capitalist patriarchy in the creation of the concept of the private and the public, and household work, and the sexual/gender division of labour and the moving out of women’s work from unpaid to paid work.
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Understanding Work The products of work or labour is also termed as ‘goods and services’, differentiating goods from services. While production of goods is considered to be a productive activity which has to be paid work, services (p.22) are not always meant to be productive or paid. The value and wages for the work women do have a lot to do with the place or location where it is done and its politics is defined through the social and emotional values of relationships between people. The creation of the social realm has to be directly seen in relation with the creation of the family and the issues around women’s lives, women’s work, and the issues of the family thus become a social issue to address. The distinction between the social and the political also has the same trajectory and there is a close relationship between the social and the service involving only women. The service of women is expected to be used to support men who do political or economic work (not social work) and the society in general. Terms and concepts like goods and services or the distinction between the social, political, and the emotional are all important themes that emerged in different historical contexts in constituting women’s work in the changing nature of capitalist economy. Karl Marx (1884, 2010) in his chapter ‘The buying and selling of the labour power’ in Capital, Vol. 1, discusses in detail the concept of labour and the production of labour. He defines labour power or capacity for labour as ‘the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description’ (Marx 1884, 2010: 164). For him, the value of labour power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction. He elaborates that the production of labour power consists in the individual’s reproduction of himself or his maintenance, and for this he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore, ‘the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer’ (Marx 1884, 2010: 167). He further points out that the value of labour power varies with the value of these means or with the quantity of labour requisite for their production (Marx 1884, 2010: 169). An understanding on the creation of value and the process which leads to it has to have a link with the means of subsistence which is necessary for the maintenance of the labourer. However, though Marx uses terms like ‘means of subsistence’ or ‘maintenance of labourer’, he does not count women’s unpaid labour here. His discussion on the production of labour is followed by a discussion on the relationship between the value of labour power and the market. Here again, the (p.23) role of the maintenance of the labourer through means of subsistence and its shift from the private space to the public as in its entry to the market as labour with value, too, is left unexplained and uncounted. A feminist perspective on terms like ‘the means of subsistence’ has to bring in different meaning to the debate on the production of labour and its value. Otherwise, the question remains on what exactly will the required given quantity Page 4 of 44
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Understanding Work be of the means of subsistence or how does one achieve it or what kind of labour is behind the very production of this means of subsistence. Braverman (1974, 1979), too, attempts to define labour in the capitalist economy. He, however, does not move much forward from where Marx left it off. Braverman’s study is considered a landmark in understanding labour and capital in the growing stages of monopoly capitalism. He explains that work is a purposive action when labour reproduces itself with its own means of subsistence and work by the labourer beyond reproducing itself. It is just an extension of work time where the labourer is producing for the capitalist. In his study, Braverman defines work as an activity that alters materials of nature from their natural state to improve their usefulness (Braverman 1979: 43). He further explains that … work as purposive action, guided by the intelligence is the special product of human kind. But humankind is itself the special product of this form of labour (Braverman 1979: 46–7). ... While the purchase and sale of labour power has existed from antiquity ... a substantial class of wage workers did not begin to form in Europe until the 14th century and did not become numerically significant until the rise of industrial capitalism in the 18th century. (Braverman 1979: 50) According to him, ‘the capacity for surplus labour ... is merely a prolongation of working time beyond the point where labour has reproduced itself’ (Braverman 1979: 53). With the labourer producing for the capitalist and work moving from the private space of subsistence and reproduction of the labourer to the market space, the question of value of labour resurfaces in a different form where one needs to see work as paid work with a value unlike the work of reproduction. This process has a history as mentioned above in Braverman’s words. What is called ‘work’ today, as of paid regular employment has a comparatively short history of capitalist industrial development. (p.24) Among the scholars who have contributed in the recent past to the debate on the history of labour in the capitalist economy, Stephen Edgell’s contribution is relevant. In a recent study in 2006, Edgell explains how industrial capitalism contributed to counting only regular paid employment as work. According to Edgell: [In industrial modern capitalism,] work is a productive activity involving machines … undertaken outside the home ... involves monetary payment … agreed in advance in relation to time and/or output and is part of a market system in which productive property is privately owned with a view to make profit … where everything has a price including labour. (Edgell 2006: 1)
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Understanding Work While this is the modern conception of work, a pre-modern conception of work, for Edgell, included heterogeneity of work activities and beliefs with reference to the meaning of work and division of labour (Edgell 2006: 1–2). This means workers ‘cooperatively working on a minimally differential basis, to a degree of gender and class specialisation culminating in some social groups being exempt from productive work’ (Edgell 2006: 5). Here one is not sure what exactly he means by ‘productive work’. However, he particularly mentions the variation in terms of gender, ranging from women taken as trophies and enslaved, to women owning land and managing production. So, the gendered or classed specialization becomes part of the premodern conception of work which has heterogeneity in nature and beliefs, with reference to meaning of work and division of labour. He supports the ideas of Boserup (1970) and Walby (1990) (both of whose views on women’s labour I shall discuss in the later part of this chapter) that in general, the development of industrial society enhanced the liberation of women with all its complexities, and further argues that occupational specialization along with a complex division of labour and multiplicity of meanings attached to work created a radically new and elevated meaning of work within industrial capitalism (Edgell 2006: 5). Edgell’s study addressed a combination of the class and gender dimensions of certain forms of work. He explains that generally useful work is not highly valued, and physical work, especially unclean work which is essential, never enjoyed the wealth and status of non-manual work. There is a shame associated with certain kinds of work, for particular social groups which is not unique to any society, and there is a historical (p.25) persistence to the indignity of manual work (Edgell 2006: 6). For him, capitalism and industrialism which are inextricably linked without giving priority to either (Edgell 2006: 7) reinforces the aspects of work of each other, ‘thereby accentuating the impersonality of the new work situation and the contrast between this [workplace] and family relationships’ (Edgell 2006: 8). Explaining the changing phases of capitalist industrial development and nature of work and workers, Edgell argues that since initially the whole family was recruited to work in the factories, this led to the disappearance of alternative sources of income and to the increasing significance of non-family sources of labour and relationships in general (Edgell, 2006: 10). Unlike the earlier thinkers whether Marx and Engels or Braverman, Edgell, who appears much later, while studying the history of labour directly addresses the politics of gender wherein the earlier scholars left it at being called ‘subsistence work’ or ‘maintenance of labour’. While many male scholars in the absence of a feminist politics left the issue of gender totally unaddressed, many feminist scholars who contributed to the debate on labour in these two decades have specifically discussed the gender division of labour without going back much into the history of the origin of the concept of work and worker within the capitalist economy. Understanding the history and politics of work within capitalist development will certainly help in Page 6 of 44
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Understanding Work developing an in-depth understanding of the history of who is the worker and the story of the women workers. An attempt to unravel the story of the woman worker should begin with a brief analysis of the history of sexual/gender division of labour, the distinction between the private and the public, production and reproduction, the productive and the unproductive, and paid and unpaid labour.
Private/Public Sexual/Gender Division of Labour Scholars of Marxist and socialist feminist politics have discussed in detail the history and politics of women’s work. It is important to study the discussions among a selected few of these scholars here. In the 1970s and 1980s, feminist scholars made important contributions to the debates on the creation of the domestic within the capitalist mode of production, domestic labour, and the interest of the capitalist market in the private–public distinction. Feminist politics in these and the following (p.26) decades also critically looked into the relationship between the state, women’s work, and issues of childcare, discussing the invisibility of women’s care work and its role and contribution to the development of the capitalist state. Knowing the trajectory of work which is unpaid, voluntary, subsistence, or of social service in nature, its definitions and formations are important to understand the shifts in women’s unpaid voluntary, unpaid, or less paid work in the public sphere. In the works of the socialist feminists, the story of sexual/gender division of labour begins with discussing different political positions on the institution of marriage, family, and private property. Though the institution of marriage, family, and private property are much discussed in most of the feminist discourses in detail, the discussion here is focused only around the debates on the politics of women’s work. The feminist debate on the politics of work in the later decades is followed and influenced by the theories on the concept and construction of gender and gender roles on the development of patriarchies and capitalisms. These analyses contributed to an understanding of what makes a woman and woman’s labour or gender-specific forms of labour. These analyses have also shown that the creation of distinction between the home and workplace and private and the public have a common history, which in turn have framed the distinction. The same is true about men’s primary or only role in the public, and women’s in the private. These works have pointed out that women’s work is integral to the private and the private is associated with women. They have also pointed out distinctive notions of work in order to examine the historical constitution of women’s work, and its location in the private domain. Here, in the context of this study, it is important to see how concepts like work, care, and leisure are differentiated from each other in these works and it would be interesting to see how these differences are also an outcome of sexual/gender division of labour.
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Understanding Work The word ‘domestic’ is widely used today replacing the ‘private’, especially in the context of work. Along with the development of capitalism into its advanced stages, there is increasing relevance to the domestic. The increasing relevance of the domestic and the purity around it, keeping it safe from the impurity of the commodification and marketization of care and emotions owned by the domestic became an important issue to look into. The change in the nature of women’s domestic work from unpaid to paid, under contemporary developments in capitalism (p.27) contributed to the expansion of the domestic sector as an important part of the service sector. Studies on the domestic or the household by feminists has helped develop a better understanding of the private–public distinction and the sexual/gender division of labour. And in the contemporary phase of capitalism, women are still associated with unpaid work in the domestic space and to some extent in the public space as well. So, the question remains that while the family and the domestic has changed in many ways, why is it that it is only the women who still do or are responsible for unpaid domestic work (Gardiner 1997: 4)? The sexual division of labour in the private has a direct impact on women’s paid work in the public. While there have been changes in the world of women’s access to paid work, there has not been the same level of changes facilitating men’s entry into unpaid work in the private space. In the advanced stage of capitalism, women contribute much more to paid work in the market while continuing with equal or more than necessary, their contribution to the unpaid work in the private space. Baldock and Cass argue that these two roles of women are mutually reinforcing. According to them, the continued importance of domestic labour and the allocation of women to it reduce women’s opportunity to have access to paid work. In this context, what constitutes and reinforces the unequal sexual division of labour in paid work is the sexual division of labour in unpaid work in the domestic. The maintenance of productive forces (labour power) and the maintenance of the social relations of reproduction are the two main aims of the capitalist economy. Changes in women’s position occur at those times when these two main aims of the capitalist economy become mutually contradictory. While capitalism increasingly provided paid work to women, the entry of women into paid work was on specific terms, as in during war or only when there was a need for more labour power. There was no change in the ideological support for the maintenance of the family and the unpaid domestic labour in it. They critically looked at the pressures on women to support the ideology of motherhood and home life, and at the same time fight for equal opportunity in the workforce. Most importantly, Baldock (Baldock and Cass 1983: 51–2) raises the question, could capitalism, for example, in a period of vast economic expansion and labour shortage, condone or even free women for full participation in paid work? (p.28) Is it possible to argue that both the maintenance of productive forces and the maintenance of the social reproduction of labour power are equally parts of the process of production? In 1884 Engels wrote that history is the Page 8 of 44
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Understanding Work production and reproduction of immediate life and of social institutions, conditioned by both kinds of production—by the stage of development of labour and of the family on the other (Engels 1884: 6). He further explains that ‘according to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life’. And this has ‘a twofold character; on the one side, the production of means of existence, of food, clothing, and shelter and the tools necessary for that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species’ (Engels 1884: 71–2). For Engels, the first division of labour is that between man and woman for child breeding, and the first-class antagonism which appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first-class oppression with that of the female sex by the male (Engels 1884: 65–6). Engels, however, held the view that once women become paid workers in the factories, the family system will go through changes and slowly disappear, leading to an end to patriarchy which many socialist feminists find a naive assumption (Dale and Foster 1986: 124). The difference between Engels and Marx in framing the characteristics of the labour process is that while Marx focuses on the use value of the product by seeing the functioning of the labour process in it, he does not enter into the details of the varying characteristics of this labour process and the labourer (Marx 1884, 2010: 178). However, while discussing the material factors which the labour consume, he makes the distinction between productive consumption and individual consumption where ‘the latter uses up products, as means of subsistence for the living individual, is enabled to act. The product therefore, of individual consumption, is the consumer himself; the result of productive consumption is a product distinct from the consumer’ (Marx 1884, 2010: 179). Marx discusses the capitalist who can produce a commodity by using labour which is of use/exchange/surplus value. Here he leaves the individual consumer and does not see the need to explain more on what exactly is the labour beyond the so-called productive consumption which the individual does and (p.29) also leads to the production of the consumer, and how the distinction between the productive and unproductive/individual consumer can be explained in terms of the different processes and characteristics of labour involved in the subsistence production of producing the consumer. Beyond this, the question of division of labour for Marx comes only in the context of factory production, especially within the manufacturing of products. He makes a distinction between the division of labour in manufacture and the division of labour in society. The division of labour in society which he calls the social division of labour for him forms the foundation of all production of commodities (Marx 1884, 2010: 331). For him, division of labour within a family is a natural division of labour caused by differences of sex and age, a division that is consequently based on purely psychological foundation. He further explains that it is just that ‘different Page 9 of 44
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Understanding Work communities find different means of production and different means of subsistence in their natural environment’ (Marx 1884, 2010: 332). Of course, what is actually ‘natural’ and what explains the natural division of labour with a purely psychological foundation and defines a ‘natural environment’ has been a subject of debate with a long history now and does not need to be reiterated here. However, within the context of industrial production, Marx was concerned about the increasing number of women and children entering the labour industry—every member of a workman’s family, without distinction of age or sex (Marx 1884, 2010: 372). He saw the situation created through modern machinery from a class conflict perspective, as only one of increasing exploitation of workers/including more and more women and children joining the workforce compulsorily to do paid work. While both Marx and Engels, in a simplistic way, took the sexual division of labour as ‘natural’, and considered it so in the absence of ‘exchange relations’, later many who are part of the school of Marxist feminists went beyond this, trying to explain the ‘unnaturalness’ of this ‘natural’ division of labour, keeping a distinction between use values and exchange values of commodities in production. Among the different schools of feminists, the socialist feminists have made major contributions in studying women’s work and its relationship with capitalist patriarchy. The history of socialist feminists and their contributions include women like Alexandra Kollontai and Klara Zetkin who were part of the political history of the Soviet Union. (p.30) The Marxist theorist Lenin found housework restricting women’s lives; however, interestingly, he also found it ‘unproductive’ in whatever way. He, in conversation with Klara Zetkin (1934), argued that ‘as long as women are engaged in housework their position is still a restricted one ... Most of this housework is highly unproductive, most arduous, and it is performed by women’ (Foner and Davis 1984: 10). Zetkin, in response, quoted from Engels to show ‘the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over wife in the modern family’ and ‘the necessity of creating real social equality between them’ and that ‘the first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry’ (Foner and Davis 1984: 10). Zetkin spoke against the special protection of women workers. Emphasizing the centrality of female labour, Zetkin argued, ‘the question of women’s emancipation … in the final analysis is the question of women’s work’ (Foner and Davis 1984: 10). She further explained that ‘because we do not want to separate our cause from that of the working class in general, we will not formulate any special demands. We demand no other type of protection than that which labour demands in general from the capitalists.’ (Foner and Davis 1984: 23) On the condition of women workers, she took the position that she had no intention to talk about the situation of female workers because their situation was no different from that of male workers (Foner and Davis 1984: 45).
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Understanding Work Among the debates on women workers and their rights, Alexandra Kollontai’s work is considered another important landmark within the category of communist thinkers. Kollontai in her work1 Communism and the Family (1977) discussed the need for women to be independent, liberating themselves from family, and the need to change family itself from its moral principles. She looked forward to a change in the institution of family once women start doing paid work. Once women entered the market of paid work, they would take over the role of the ‘breadwinner’ and this according to her would bring radical changes in family life and in the idea of family itself. She went on to say: Capitalism has placed a crushing burden on woman’s shoulders: it has made her a wage-worker without having reduced her cares as housekeeper (p.31) or mother. Woman staggers beneath the weight of this triple load ... all that was formerly produced in the bosom of the family is now being manufactured on a mass scale workshops and factories. The machine has superseded the wife. Thus the family economy is gradually being deprived of all the domestic work without which our grandmothers could hardly have imagined a family. What was formerly produced in the family is now produced by the collective labour of working men and women in the factories. The family no longer produces; it only consumes. (Kollontai 1977: 3–6) Kollontai’s description of the changes in the family paradigm shows the role of women who are into paid work and the impact of capitalism and its new technological innovations on the family. Though she says that the machine has superseded the wife, she also thinks that women continue to bear the burden of care work. Did the family ever escape from all domestic work? What was it then that the family continued to produce? Like Braverman, Kollontai too lamented the change and was critical of the shift in the family from being a place of social production to a place of consumption. Addressing the question of class in the context of the family, Kollontai argued that the problem and the solution to class differences and discrimination which people experience in a capitalist society is linked to the issue of sexual division of labour in the family and so the solution which socialism will bring will address both the question of class and gender discrimination, and the family in the end will be taken over by the society. Kollontai argued for a state which will take over the responsibility of the family and not the small cooperative community. Imagining how this change will take place in the family, she explained: ... under capitalism only people with well-lined purses can afford to take their meals in restaurants, while under communism everyone will be able to eat in the communal kitchens and dining-rooms ... Special clothesmending centres will free the working woman from the hours spent on mending and give her the opportunity to devote her evenings to reading, Page 11 of 44
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Understanding Work attending meetings and concerts. Thus the four categories of housework are doomed to extinction with the victory of communism … But even if housework disappears, you may argue, there are still the children to look after. But here too, the workers’ state will come to replace the family; society will gradually take upon itself all the tasks that before the revolution fell to the individual parents. (Kollontai 1977: 6) (p.32) Further, within the debates on sexual division of labour and the politics around the institution of family by feminists, Eli Zaretsky (cited in Sergent 1981: 6–7) gives another interpretation that, when women reproduce labour, they are labouring for capital and not for the benefit of men. It is the separation of home from the workplace and the privatization of housework brought about by capitalism that creates the appearance that women are working for men privately at home. Women themselves should recognize that they are part of the working class even though they work at home. Though Zaretsky accepts the feminist argument on sexism and male supremacy, he does not question the division of labour on the basis of gender; on the other hand, he considers the role of men and women as complementary and separate. He only sees privacy, women labouring privately, as the reason for their oppression. He stands for the community life of families in the pre-industrial capitalist society. Like Kollontai, Zaretsky too goes back to some fundamental assumption seeing women as real care workers and thus with a special responsibility to provide subsistence to all by producing what is needed for further production and reproduction. Another scholar who has delved though superficially into debates on the story of women’s work is Braverman (1979). He discusses the sexual division of labour and his view on women’s labour is also in many ways limited to addressing its meaning in the context of work in the public space. He considers the sexual division of labour within the public space as something which was originally and fundamentally a principle of capitalism and industrial organization (Braverman 1979: 69). For him, the sexual division of labour within the private and public spaces can be explained as social and manufacturing division of labour. He explains it as follows: ‘While men or women may habitually be connected with the making of certain products, they do not as a rule divide up the separate operations involved in the making of each product’ (Braverman 1979: 70; emphasis mine). ‘This form of division of labour, characteristic of all societies … called the social division of labour ... the social division of labour is apparently inherent in the species character of human labour as soon as it becomes social labour, that is labour carried on in and through society’ (Braverman 1979: 70–1). According to him, this division of labour is different from the manufacturing division of labour. He further explains that the two practices, the social and the detailed division of labour create great confusion in discussions (p.33) on this subject. While the social division of labour is characteristic to all known societies, the division of labour in the workshop is the special product of a capitalist society. He elaborates that while the social division of labour divides Page 12 of 44
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Understanding Work society along occupations of production, the detailed division of labour destroys occupations considered in this sense where the worker remains inadequate. ‘While the social division of labour subdivides society, the detailed division of labour subdivides humans, and while the subdivision of society may enhance the individual and the species, the subdivision of the individual, when carried on without regard to human capabilities and needs, is a crime against the person and against humanity’ (Braverman 1979: 71; emphasis as in the original). So, for him, social division of labour enhances the individual through its division of the society according to occupations, while the dividing of humans which is what is happening with the detailed division of labour works against humanity. While discussing the labour power of the working class, Braverman says that the working class sells its power to capital in return for its subsistence (Braverman 1979: 376). However, from a feminist perspective it is not clear what constitutes subsistence here. Where does the worker get it from and what all can include the capacity for subsistence provided by capital for labour? Does it exist without the household? Does it include women’s unpaid labour? When Braverman (1979) discusses labour, he does not include women’s labour. Even a reference to working-class labour does not specify working-class women’s labour though there is a reference to ‘subsistence’. In his discussion on the structure of the working class, from discussing the working class in the manufacturing sector, he moves on to workers in the service sector and other unorganized sectors. A direct reference to female labour comes in only when he discusses them as the ‘reserve army of labour’ (a concept which is discussed later in this chapter). It seems reproduction here only means the labourers reproducing their own means of subsistence. One can also assume that the labourer and the capitalist here are both men, though the labourer reproducing himself does not explain anything related to the entire process of biological and social reproduction. The labourer who is presumably a man here is able to produce more than he consumes, which is the surplus labour. And this is actually only a mere prolongation of the working time of the labourer ‘beyond the point where labour has reproduced (p.34) itself’ (Braverman 1979: 53). He does not directly address what constitutes this reproduction process and the requirements of subsistence. For him, the surplus labour after the labour has reproduced itself is the peculiar capacity of the human labour, to produce for the capitalist. While he admits that there could be changing requirements of ‘subsistence’, however, beyond this admission, the process of production and reproduction are completely distanced from each other in this context and it is not clear what all is included and excluded in the process of reproduction, which later results in preparing the labourer for production as an extension of the work time. Throughout his discussion on work, Braverman uses the concepts of ‘social’, ‘society’, ‘alienation’, and the ‘social division of labour’ without directly addressing the unpaid labour of women. Though Braverman brings in a detailed analysis of the labour and the labourer and his relationship with the capital and Page 13 of 44
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Understanding Work the capitalist, he is criticized by feminists for not including housework in his analysis of work, and his debates on skills which do not address the deskilling of work, treating women’ work as traditional and static (Baxandall, Ewen, and Gordon 1976: 3). Braverman does refer to the question of ‘unpaid household labour’ in the context of capital accumulation and what can make it into paid labour. In the chapter titled ‘The Universal Market’, Braverman explains that in the early stages of industrial capitalism, ‘the role of the family remained central in the productive processes of society … the family was the economic unit and the whole system of production was based upon it’ (Braverman 1979: 271). Braverman regrets the change of the household into a ‘universal market’ by capitalism. For him, the change is visible in the fact that the population no longer relies upon social organization in the form of family and friends, but there is increasing dependence on the market for almost everything, including not only food, clothing, and shelter, but also for recreation, amusement, security, and for the care of the young, the old, and the sick. He is visibly concerned about the fact that even the emotional patterns of life are channelled through the market. The family changed from ‘a key institution of social life, production and consumption’ into a unit of consumption only and there too it tends to break up into component parts that carry on consumption separately (Braverman 1979: 276). So, the trouble here for Braverman seems to be more with the entry of the market into the domestic space and the possibility of transforming (p.35) the private space into only a space of consumption and not for production or reproduction. The other possibilities of changes in the private domestic space if the very concept of women’s work has to be changed or moved away from care work can be taken up for further debate later. Though Braverman touches upon the issue of alienation along with social division of labour, he does not go into an in-depth analysis of the same which could be possible from a feminist perspective. Like many others who followed Marxism like Braverman, for that matter Marx himself, do not seem to have made it possible to look at the concept of alienation from women’s experience as a critical perspective. It would have been interesting to think about the concept of alienation in the context of women’s domestic/household work. To see if and how women experienced alienation from what they produced in terms of household subsistence production as a regular and almost permanent part of their everyday work. While the entry of the market to the family space and household production is seen as a problem, it will be important to see the process of alienation as part of productive and reproductive spaces including that of care work within the family. The very concept and debate on work and alienation that a worker experiences could possibly be looked at from a different standpoint altogether—from a feminist perspective.
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Understanding Work In the 1970s and 1980s, many feminist thinkers wrote about and campaigned for the need for the economic independence of women and the professionalization of household work and childcare. Scholars like Ester Boserup, Gayle Rubin, Heidi Hartmann, Christine Delphy, Michele Barrett, and Mary McIntosh looked at women’s work from a feminist point of view. Boserup in her work ‘Women’s Role in Economic Development’ explains the stages in capitalist economic development, how industrialization and modernization contributed to sexual division of labour, and how women moved from their subsistence activities in the family to commercial paid work in the industry and became part of market production (Boserup 1970). She explains the phenomenon of female home industries and the changes brought into the economy and labour market with the growth of larger industries, driving home industries out of business and women losing their jobs. She argues that as part of the industrialization process, women tend to prefer work in home industries or in service trades rather than in wage employment in large-scale industries. Women lost their jobs because the type of (p.36) products they were making were replaced by factory-made products by a labour force composed of many more men than women (Boserup 1970: 106–16). This pattern of sex roles in the modern urban sector, she says, [W]ith men doing the skilled and supervisory work and women in the unskilled and subservient jobs … dominates the developing and industrialised countries alike, that it is often regarded as ‘natural’ by both men and women ... this kind of polarisation and hierarchization of men’s and women’s work roles is only found in modern, urban economy and not usually either in family production for subsistence or in market production in home industries at the village level. (Boserup 1970: 140) Following Boserup, Gayle Rubin’s study on the development of the ‘Political Economy of Sex’ (1975) analysed the economic relations and linkages between marriage, sexuality, and kinship. Rubin uses both works in Marxism and psychoanalysis to study the domestication of women and their oppression through relationships in the family. She calls it the ‘sex/gender system’, using this to explain the relationship between housework and the reproduction of labour. She further studies the ‘historical and moral elements’ which shape the housewife and, moving a step forward from Engels (1884), she argues that there is a need to further pursue the issue of subordination of women in development within the mode of production. In order to do this, she brings in the importance of social organization of sexuality and kinship systems. For her, in the political economy of sex, women are objectified and trafficked, and she problematizes this ‘exchange of women’ using theories on marriage, kinship, and social relations of sexuality and, to be more specific, on compulsory heterosexuality, and argues for the need for recognising recognizing the mutual interdependence of sexuality, economics, and politics. Rubin’s (1975) discussion on women’s work is within the framework of what she called the political economy of sex and through the institutions which have contributed to its constitution such as Page 15 of 44
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Understanding Work marriage, kinship, and so on. Thus her contribution is mainly through a structural analysis of the creation of women’s work in the capitalist economy. With the recognition of the relevance of the relationship between sexuality, economics, and politics, feminist thinkers have attempted and explored a deeper understanding of the state itself and its fundamental correlation with patriarchy. Writings of feminist thinkers like (p.37) Barrett and McIntosh (1982), Mackinnon (1989), and Walby (1990) are fundamental to a feminist reading of the state while all these scholars along with many others have come up with different interpretations of the capitalist state and its links with patriarchy. McIntosh’s work ‘Women’s Oppression and the State’ is an in-depth analysis of the direct and indirect intervention of the state in different aspects of women’s lives. Through her work she has elaborated on how the capitalist state and patriarchy work hand in hand and how the state uses many of its institutions in which family remains one of the primary ones through which women’s oppression is instituted. Mackinnon (1989), in her study on the relationship between patriarchy and the state in the 1980s, opined that feminism has no theory of state, no specific theory, and it has not confronted on its own terms the relation between the state and the society, and it lacks a theory on the substance of law between the state and the society. The state, according to Mackinnon, is male in the feminist sense. The liberal state, its social order, and its special protection of women help or hurt women and contribute to keeping them as second-class marginal members of the workforce (Mackinnon 1989: 155–70). However, scholars like Walby clarified how the liberal welfare state with the active involvement of women in the labour movement and their engagement in the welfare services typecast women once again into the care giver role confining them to ‘women’s sphere’ (Walby 1990: 165–8). As discussed earlier, many earlier studies in feminist thought and politics were strongly influenced by Marxist and socialist ideologies. While some of them attempted developing a linear feminist understanding of patriarchy, searching the roots of patriarchy outside capitalism, others tried for a better and critical understanding of these ideologies to develop a feminist perspective from within. Marxist feminist Hartmann (1981) gave predominance to Marxist theory of capitalist productive relations over feminist theory in understanding the relationship between the capitalist state and patriarchy. In her study ‘Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism’, Hartmann says, ‘Marxism and feminism are one and that one is Marxism’ (Hartmann 1981: 2). Hartmann assumes that the development of capitalism undermines male dominance over women: ‘The theoretical tendency of pure capitalism would have been to eradicate all arbitrary differences of status among labourers, making all labourers equal in the (p.38) marketplace ... and so, only the operation of a separate system of patriarchy can explain women’s continued subordination and unequal status.’ Hartmann also argues that women’s subordination has its source in a separate system and it existed before capitalism. Only that women’s condition Page 16 of 44
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Understanding Work deteriorated with the development of capitalism (Hartmann in Eisenstein, 1979: 207–11). However, many others brought capitalism and patriarchy together and considered socialist feminism as a project to address a unified system of capitalist patriarchy (Hartmann 1981: xxiii). Hartmann’s work on capitalism and patriarchy looks into the exploitation of women’s work by men both in housework and wage labour through a sexual division of labour. Hartmann explains how women are segregated to doing certain types of paid work by the patriarchal powers and how housework remains entirely the women’s responsibility. Hartmann sees it as a vicious circle, reinforcing each other in which women’s unpaid work keeps those at a disadvantage in paid work, while disaggregation in paid work devalue their position in the family. Going beyond Hartmann (1981), Walby2 analyses the periods of tension and accommodation between the two systems of capital and patriarchy. In her work ‘Theorizing Patriarchy’ (Walby 1990: 5), through an analysis of what is called the dual systems theory—addressing the relationship between the systems of capitalism and patriarchy—Walby explains that the increase in women’s paid work due to capitalist expansion has created increasing contradictions in the position of women who are both housewives and wage labourers. For Walby (1990), though the housework of a housewife changes over time and varies according to the family’s class status, the essential nature of the relations of production holds constant. Women’s wage labour too is in some ways determinant of her class position, while there is a difference between the class status of single women in wage labour and married women who have a dual class position by possessing both a class position derived from their paid work and as housewives in relation to their husbands, just like married men. According to Walby (1990), the gendered features of work in a capitalist patriarchal economy include women typically earning less than men and women engaging less in (p.39) paid work than men and women doing different jobs from men. For her, there are variations in the relations between the two systems of capitalism and patriarchy, and these in some periods are marked by greater tension and during others by greater accommodation. Walby’s work has been more in the area of stratification; she feels that the existing stratification theories do not provide adequate theoretical frameworks to understand gender inequality and there is a need to place analyses of the household division of labour and work strategy within it. This means an economic analysis of the category of women and the relationship between their work and market situation, and political action. Analysing the state’s interventions in the regulation of gendered labour markets, Walby argues that the position of women in the labour market is a reflection of the relations between the household and the labour market which is mediated by politics and the state, and in this context, it is important to understand the nature of the regulation of the labour market by the state (Walby 2000: 166). Like Rubin, scholars like Delphy, Barrett, and McIntosh3 too followed Engels, Page 17 of 44
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Understanding Work seeing women as a class and the patriarchal relationship between men and women within the institution of the family. Delphy too has contributed more in the field of gender and stratification. She has used the concept of class to theorize gender relations, seeing women as one class. Marxist feminist scholars Barrett and McIntosh studied the history of gender division of labour and the subordination of women. In her work on gender and economics, McIntosh explained the creation and recreation of the wage labour market, contributing to the perpetuation of women’s subordination and how capital and capitalism extracts profits through the division of its workforce, as in the case of sexual division of labour. McIntosh’s work does a comparison between unpaid housework and subsistence agricultural production both contributing to the standard of living of the capitalist labour force. For her, it is important to move beyond the benefits of women’s work to capital to explain sexual division of labour since it predated capitalism, and to widen (p.40) the concept of the ‘material’ beyond economic processes to include the area of sexuality (McIntosh 1981: 3–17). However, Barrett argued against seeing women’s oppression as an integral part only of capitalism and not independently determined. For her, patriarchy functions to the benefit of the capitalist class. Further, the creation of the category of skilled work itself is ideological and this makes women’s work culturally devalued. Thus, occupational structure has contributed to a ‘sex blind’ operation of the capitalist labour market. Sex segregation of jobs and low female wages are intimately connected here. Feminist economist Veronica Beechey (1977) analyses the relationship between the family and the organization of capitalist production. According to her, the relationship between the two has contradictory tendencies: the tendency to draw married women into wage labour under the direct domination of capital which has indirectly contributed to the production of more labour-saving devices for domestic purposes, and to produce some of the use values which were previously produced in the home within the system of capitalist commodity production. ‘This tendency coexists with the tendency towards the maintenance of the family as a unit for the reproduction of labour power and of the woman’s role as a domestic labourer within it’ (Beechey 1977: 59). Through these contradictory tendencies, women have enabled women to perform both forms of labour, domestic labour outside the direct domination of capital and wage labour under the direct domination of capital. However, for her, both are vitally involved in capital’s attempts to extract a high rate of surplus value out of women’s labour. Beechey argued that ‘the specific position of women as part of the industrial reserve army can be explained in terms of their labour power being paid for at a price below its value; the existence of the family and women’s dependency within the family and the ideological assumptions which surround this’ (Beechey 1977: 56–7). As pointed out by Beechey (1977), capitalist production contributed to major changes in the nature of women’s labour both inside and outside the family. However, these changes did not necessarily mean Page 18 of 44
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Understanding Work adding any additional value to women’s productive or reproductive labour or a change in the gender/sexual division of labour. Would replacing or changing the family mean an end to the gender division of labour? A more relevant question here would be, would women stop doing the ‘family’ work and would the work contributing to reproduction be paid? (p.41) The expansion of capitalist production led to increasing importance for institutions like the state and the market. Changes brought in by capitalist forms of production on women’s labour have had major impact on both these institutions and also on the family. Kalpagam (1994) extends her analysis of these three institutions which define women’s work in the modern context. For her, state, market, and household institutions are three significant institutions of any modern economy. They shape each other, influence each other, and compete with each other for ‘economic space’. Households, for her, as a group can influence the state and the market, through political and economic processes. Elaborating on this, she explains that the influence of households on market forces depends on their resource endowments. And households that merely possess unskilled labour as a resource are the worst affected, along with nonlabour supplying households producing at subsistence levels (Kalpagam 1994: 29–31). With the expansion of industrial capitalist production, sexual division of labour and specialization in work is ‘directly linked to the development of markets’. And it is important to see that there has been a redefinition of the relation between the state and the civil society with the growth of industrial capitalism and the markets. Expansion of the scale of production, technological changes, or the emergence of new lines of activities, all have contributed to the changes in sexual division of labour and changes in the valuation of work itself. The work or activities done by women contributing to the production of these marketable goods remain invisible and ‘unproductive’ with no marketable output, making a distinction between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ work (Kalpagam, 1994: 19). Seeing the complexities of the activities involved in the structures of gender division of labour, she adds that anthropological perspectives on gender have explored the conceptual distinctions between family and the household, the changing sexual division of labour and its implications on women’s status, the constitution of women’s identities, etc. and how micro processes at the family-household level link up with macro processes in the economy and society. It questions ‘the category of “women”, the “essentialness” of attributed qualities across cultures, the “naturalness” of the domains of activities ...’ universally relegated to them and how ideologies of gender are constructed’. This way, for her—as seen in Marxist feminist literature—‘a household is both a productive and reproductive unit, (p.42) working at three levels, reproduction of labour power on a continuing and daily basis, biological reproduction and social reproduction’ (Kalpagam 1994: 51). She rejects the simplistic notion of gender division of labour and characterizes the division of labour in terms of the form of Page 19 of 44
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Understanding Work production organization and how capitalism and patriarchy interact in each of its form. She examines how patriarchal division of labour is modified by market conditions, how the patriarchal division of family labour changes the position of women where women become a commodity, and how the position of women workers worsens in production organizations with prolonged working hours and deplorable working conditions, while it increases the surplus value of their labour (Kalpagam 1994: 86–7). Borrowing from Marx and Engels, she explains that it is the introduction of machinery in the factory system that added to the complexity of the institution of family, reversing the gender roles or dissolving the family itself by employing all. This contributed to increased production and consumption along with the need for more women workers, reversing the gender division of labour in the family (Kalpagam 1994:122–3). Since the history and definition of women’s work is fundamentally linked to the origin and development of the relationship between patriarchy and capitalist industrial development which contributed to the sexual/gender division of labour, the attempt here has been to look into some of the debates in this theme which have helped to understand the history of the relationship between women’s private unpaid work and paid work in the public space. The discussions above however have not yet looked into the outcome of this division of labour which is directly linked to what is being produced or reproduced by or through women’s work. Here it is important to specifically look into the concepts of production and reproduction and their relationship with the qualification of work into productive with a value which makes it paid work, with an entry into the market, or unproductive with no market value.
Production/Reproduction, Productive/Unproductive, and Paid/Unpaid The conceptual and political distinction between production and reproduction has contributed to the distinction between the paid and unpaid or productive or unproductive work. The term ‘reproduction’, (p.43) the production of human being, is also addressed as ‘social reproduction’, that is, the reproduction of the labour force or human reproduction. The term ‘social’ thus is closely linked with the concept of reproduction. While production is productive in its paid value, the process of reproduction is traditionally not counted as productive and varies its status from being unproductive or unpaid to being productive or paid depending on the context. (However, this has changed in the contemporary context when human reproduction can also be possible as production with a paid value, as in the case of surrogacy and surrogate motherhood.) While in many situations, unpaid is also considered as unproductive, there is a history with a critique of the processes of production and reproduction through sexual/gender divisions of labour as shown earlier in this chapter, and one can see important debates discussing this political process. This history and its political processes include different phases in which the processes of reproduction have been both paid and
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Understanding Work unpaid. It depends both on the context and also the form of labour involved in the process which defines the value of labour. In his work Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (1974, 1979) Braverman asks the question: Which labour is unproductive? All productive labour which produces commodity value is exchanged against capital. This excludes all labour which is not exchanged against capital. The excluded forms of labour are not productive ‘because their labour is not exchanged for capital and does not directly contribute to the increase of capital’ (Braverman 1979: 409). He further points out that the very same labour may be either productive or unproductive, depending on its social form. Here, as discussed earlier in the context of a debate on the origin of sexual and social division of labour, Braverman explains social division of labour as habitual among the humans. For him, the change from unproductive to productive form of labour is within this social division of labour, where there is a ‘transformation from self-employment to capitalist development, from simple commodity production to capitalist commodity production ... the transformation of unproductive labour into labour which is, for the capitalist purpose of extracting surplus value, productive.…’ For him, whatever contributes directly to the increase in capital is productive. And capital is created by labour which produces commodity value and ‘so commodity value is the ultimate foundation (p.44) upon which all forms of value ... depend’ (Braverman 1979: 410–11). Here, the process of reproduction will remain unproductive till the time a human being is developed into the capacity to contribute to production, unless such labour is marketized. Classical bourgeois economics found unproductive labour/ women’s labour in the household wasteful and urged its reduction to the minimum. However, Braverman further explains that labour which takes place outside the capitalist mode of production is unproductive and it is used by the capitalist in his drive for accumulation for unproductive rather than productive functions. He elaborates that ‘while unproductive labour has declined outside the grasp of capital, it has increased within its ambit’, because the needs of capital for unproductive labour has increased remarkably (Braverman 1979: 413; emphasis as in the original). In one of the more contemporary studies through a socialist feminist interpretation of the processes of production and reproduction, Johanna Brenner (2006) sees the contradiction between the two in a capitalist system as apparent. For her, the biological facts of reproduction—pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation —are not readily compatible with capitalist production. It is in order to make them compatible that the capitalist system requires capital outlays on maternity leave, nursing facilities, childcare, and so on. However, capitalists are not willing to make such expenditures. In the absence of such expenditures, the reproduction of labour power becomes problematic especially for the workingclass women (Brenner 2006: 26). When there is no change in the division of labour within the domestic space and in the absence of better facilities, women Page 21 of 44
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Understanding Work in working-class families will suffer the brunt of extra workload and expenditure with the expansion of the family. Brenner raises questions around why certain aspects of working-class reproduction, especially childcare, remain outside capitalist production and a division of labour in the domestic space is developed in such a way that one person in the household becomes primarily responsible for this necessary labour (Brenner 2006: 28). Brenner argues that it is against the interests of the capitalist enterprise to provide quality childcare and to allow parents to organize their work around the demands of child rearing since this leads to a substantial increase in the state’s expenditure (Brenner 2006: 38). The politics of capitalist production demands the prevalence of the distinction between the processes of production and reproduction based on sexual/gender division of (p.45) labour, both in the private and public space. While patriarchy in general contributes to the sustenance of this division of labour and the domination of men within the domestic space where men do not have to contribute to domestic labour, it adds to the reality that men can earn more by paid work in public space where women cannot under these circumstances. Both patriarchal institutions of marriage and the family contribute to the women’s need to be part of these institutions where, as labourers, they remain contributors to both the processes of production and reproduction. Earlier, feminists like Benston, Dalla Costa, and Harding who contributed to the analysis of women’s unpaid work and its relationship with the institution of family from an economic/materialist point of view, had argued for considering housewives as productive workers and to socialize housework and childcare. It was in the 1970s that Mariarosa Dalla Costa provided a theoretical analysis of housework, ‘housework as productive work’ in the Marxian sense, explaining the role of housework in capitalism, demanding wages for housework and creating a consciousness among women of the importance of housework (Dalla Costa in Sergent 1981: 204). Though Dalla Costa recognized the existence of sexism and male domination, she saw women’s struggles as fundamentally revolutionary and anti-capitalist. Harding argued that the material base of patriarchy and capital is not only rooted in the economic aspects of the division of labour by gender in the family, but also in the biological and psychological birth of a social person (Harding in Sergent 1981: xxv). Feminist writings on the creation of a family and the paid and unpaid housework have contributed to better understanding of what could be called a gendered capitalist labour market. The works mentioned earlier discussed the psychological birth of this social person and the practice and training of the person through sexual division of labour from the private domestic space which contributed to the development and expansion of a gendered capitalist labour market. Though women did/could not leave the domestic, they joined or had to join the wage labour market. However, domestic work did move into the wage market along with women. There also came the need for more childcare facilities within the vicious circle of women’s
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Understanding Work paid and unpaid work. What did not change much was the nature of the existing sexual/gender division of labour. To know why the domestic or household work done by women remains unpaid work, it is also important to know the difference (p.46) between production and consumption. The definition of consumption and its inclusion and exclusion of things and the market of consumption which might include both paid and unpaid forms of work have to be understood. According to Gardiner, Consumption or leisure activities are those that has to be carried out by consumers themselves, production implies the possibility of transaction and separation between producer and consumer ... it is this separation that makes possible the development of markets, a social division of labour and of specialisation. (Gardiner 1997: 11) The question here is the creation or the very coming into existence of this consumer. It is the possibility of the very existence of human being as a consumer which creates the need for production. The separation between the producer and the consumer has happened only beyond this and of course it is the separation between the producer and the consumer which makes possible the development of markets and the social division of labour. It is clear that the Marxists view reproduction as a process given by nature while production as man made. However, many feminist scholars have been unable to address this binary. While there have been attempts to understand and change the condition of women workers under capitalist development, these attempts were still unable to escape from seeing the process of reproduction as natural and women as primarily responsible for the family or children. Baldock and Cass (1983) have analysed the changing relation between production and consumption in order to understand the changing position of women under capitalism. For them, the expansion of the consumption sphere has created new forms of work which are to a great extent performed by women, largely unpaid, and ostensibly relegated to ‘private’ life. The development of capitalism has seen the expansion and progressive separation of both the spheres of production and consumption, and both producers and consumers have different and conflicting interests. As production was gradually removed from home, the space was filled with new consumption activities. They argue that the development of capitalist markets depended on the promotion of consumption as a ‘way of life’ and the superiority (and relative cheapness) of the ‘bought’ over the home made, and the split between production and consumption paralleled the split between public and personal life (Baldock and Cass 1983: 88–91). For them, by raising standards (p. 47) of consumption, a new social virtue came to be attached to household management, and women of all classes got substantially occupied with consumption activities taking place in their own homes, and the skills associated with these activities became a defining characteristic of femininity.
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Understanding Work While Marxism took women’s reproductive work as natural, providing a critique of the Marxist understanding of the political economy of reproduction, Thomsen argued that ‘capital does not directly exchange with labour as part of nature; rather nature is appropriated by means of work, in both the production and reproduction of human life’ and since the valorization of labour power by capital is based upon the expenditure on reproduction, subsistence production must be included in the analysis of political economy (Thomsen in Young and others (eds) 1984: 42). For Thomsen, a basic contradiction within the capitalist mode of production is the separation of subsistence production from social reproduction. She argues that both housewives and peasants are subsistence producers, they both reproduce labour power for capital and both are integrated into the capitalist mode of production through their marginalization (Thomsen in Young and others (eds) 1984: 41). The domestic production of housewives is generally dependent on the wage which reflects their subordination to capital and consequently to the capitalist valorization of their labour (Thomsen in Young and others (eds) 1984: 42). Thomsen further elaborates that ‘capital cannot operate without subsistence production, for extended reproduction is based upon subsistence reproduction; products from the latter area are essential to the former.’ (Thomsen in Young and others (eds), 1984: 44). While in all modes of production prior to capitalism, subsistence production was also social production and vice versa, a separation developed with the emergence of sexual and class-based division of labour. With the emergence of generalized commodity exchange and socially determined wage work, subsistence production became relegated to a sphere which is considered to be either not properly social or even outside or apart from social work. It is this process of separation, for Thomsen, which led to the changes in social structure, with the decreasing size of the social unit which manages subsistence production, finally ending up with the creation of the housewife and the patriarchal nuclear family in capitalism (Thomsen in Young and others (eds), 1984: 47). Thomsen raises the question as (p.48) to how the production and reproduction of the human capacity for labour has been excluded from the analysis of capitalism which is the basis of capital accumulation itself, and how Marxism accepted the separation of social production from subsistence production as something real, and how it avoided an analysis of social reproduction, calling it ‘pre-capitalist’ or ‘non-capitalist’. (Thomsen, in Young and others (eds) 1984: 48) It was expected that with the advancement of capitalism, there will be progressive dissolution of unpaid, subsistence work, housewifization, and proletarianization of women. On the contrary, it reappeared in a major way. Feminist scholar Nancy Folbre has done extensive work on labour, family, and its political economy.4 Her work raises questions around the interpretation of women’s work as unproductive both at the household and at the state level. She
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Understanding Work addresses the history and the political development of capitalist patriarchy, narrating the changes in the form and value of women’s work. According to her, … the concept of the unproductive housewife—gradually coalesced in the 19th century censuses of population of England and the US. In 1800, women whose work consisted largely of caring for their families were considered productive workers. By 1900, they had been formally relegated to the census category of ‘dependents’, a category that included infants, young children, the sick and the elderly. (Folbre 1991: 464) She elaborates on the several factors that shaped the attitudes towards household labour during the nineteenth century which include a new enthusiasm for female domesticity in the family and the growth of paid domestic service, thereby helping the upper-class women in domestic chores. She explains that the male trade unionists who were influenced by gender politics argued that housewives were—or should be—‘dependents’. In her work, she recognizes a praise of domesticity which can be attributed to its role in nineteenth-century social thought, a ‘cult of domesticity’ which contributed to the emergence of a distinctively female culture and become an important strand of (p.49) nineteenth-century feminism. However, Folbre feels that ‘while feminist scholarship has focused on the social and cultural aspects of this phenomenon, the economic implications have been largely ignored ... Ironically, the moral elevation of the home was accompanied by the economic devaluation of work performed there’ (Folbre 1994: 465). Folbre further explains that … despite a strict sexual division of labour, many men as well as women produced goods and services for household use … as male participation in the market economy expanded, however, production for use rather than exchange became identified as a distinctly female activity. The home was often described in feminine terms—stable, reassuring, altruistic. The market, by contrast, was a masculine, dynamic realm, characterised by competition and the pursuit of economic self-interest and there was a new emphasis on domestic virtue rather than domestic work. (Folbre 1991: 466) For Folbre, there was a move by the end of the nineteenth century against the term ‘unproductive’; however, paid domestic servants continued to be considered part of the labour force, while unpaid domestic workers were not. Unpaid domestic labour continued to be counted as unproductive and thus women, who were part of family or marriage institutions, thus became dependents of men who were productive or paid (Folbre 1994: 470). Further, women who did paid domestic work were termed ‘housekeepers’ while women doing their own housework were considered as women ‘keeping house’ in the United States Census (Folbre 1991: 475). New technologies in fact contributed to the labelling of housework as ‘unproductive’ and the feminist demand for Page 25 of 44
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Understanding Work more efficient organization of domestic labour, including collective facilities for meals that could take full advantage of new cooking technologies, were not met. Folbre explains how ‘the concept of the unproductive housewife was a by product of a new definition of productive labour that valorised participation in the market and devalorised the nonmarket work central to many women’s lives’ (Folbre 1994: 481). Folbre and others who described the concept of the domestic and unproductive housewife helped evolve a better understanding of the political history and development of these terms. As discussed earlier, the origin of the term ‘unproductive’ is based on the work within the private family space and women’s unpaid labour at home and their reproductive work; both are directly allied to sexual division of labour and also to (p.50) the role of women in childcare. The debate on the unproductive and unpaid natural processes of reproduction thus takes us to the concepts of motherhood and childcare. Moreover, the ideas of motherhood, the role of women in the family and childcare are thus fundamental to the questions around the distinction between production and reproduction, productive and unproductive, and paid and unpaid labour.
Motherhood, Childcare, and the Maternalists The sexual division of labour and the understanding that it is ‘natural’ for women to be interested in motherhood and therefore in childcare changed with the invasion of the market into the areas of motherhood and mothering. A better, directly active role of the state in the welfare of women and children, especially from poorer sections of society, has been a demand from women’s movements all over the world. However, feminists belonging to different political ideologies differed in their views on how exactly the state could play this role. Both socialist-feminist and liberal-feminist debates on women’s labour in the context of family and motherhood and the role of the state in childcare contributed in different ways to this cause. While the socialist feminist demand is more for a direct intervention in the institution of family and in childcare by the state, the liberal view stands for welfare policies and offers for poor families in society. The increasing demand for state intervention in childcare was followed by an intense debate on the concept and politics of motherhood: should motherhood be considered a ‘natural’ full-time work or not, and is motherhood or mothering unavoidable to mothers? A school of maternalists are part of the liberal-feminist thought. Their views in many ways reflect the liberal views on family, motherhood, and childcare. The value of childcare in a market and non-market context is an issue of debate. While in most cases, childcare is never considered marketable when mothers are involved, childcare by anyone else, that is, outside the family or marriage context, or in the market, makes it a work of value. It has been rare even among the feminists to provide a staunch critique against the institution of family and the insistence on women to be mothers or to provide childcare. For many who were supporters of the liberation of women, it still seemed women’s Page 26 of 44
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Understanding Work responsibility to be good mothers or wives and it was considered normal for women to be (p.51) part of the institution of marriage and family, and again to consider it their primary responsibility to take care of the household. It was the private to which women were primarily part of. However, a few among the socialist and radical feminists provided a strong critique of this understanding and the politics of family and childcare. They contributed to the debate on taking the private to the public, by making childcare a responsibility either of the community or the state. Some among the liberal feminists too talked about the possibility of liberating women from the household, though they were never against family or marriage. The important proponents of the maternalist school include scholars like Ruddick and Gilligan. For Ruddick, maternal practices are central to caring labour, and maternal thinking can be considered as a feminist standpoint which can be given an epistemological and political base. Ruddick sees a strong opposition between women’s caring labour and men’s masculine concepts around body and of control (Ruddick 2004: 161–6). Maternal practices are seen by her as an achievement for women who are mothers. There is something in maternal love, a pleasure in reproductive powers, and competence in this power which, according to Ruddick, survives the patriarchal society. ‘Maternal’ is a social category which can be expressed by women in various ways, which is, however, different from men, and which includes the maternal practice towards the preservation, growth, and acceptability of children, and it contributes to distinctive ways of conceptualizing, ordering, and valuing. This maternal thinking and practice needs to be brought into the public realm from the private realm of individuals, and feminists, according to her, should incorporate this maternal thinking and contribute to this (Ruddick 1997: 584–603). Carol Gilligan, in her famous work In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’ looks at women’s experiences and voices through an empirical observation. For, the social context has an important role in the differences between genders, and women’s experience here does interact with both women’s conceptions of self and morality and their responsibilities to the society. Women’s psychology is seen as distinctive and oriented more towards relationships and interdependence. For her, women perceive and construe social reality differently from men, and women’s sense of integrity is ‘entwined with an ethic of care’, and if we could listen to the different voices of women, we can see in women’s voice ‘lies the truth of ethic of care, the tie between relationship and (p.52) responsibility’ (Gilligan 1997: 149–50). Further, for Gilligan, ‘when a woman considers whether to continue or abort a pregnancy, she contemplates a decision that affects both the self and others and engages directly the critical moral issue of hurting’ (Gilligan 1997: 558). For her, ‘women’s insistence on care is at first self-critical rather than self-protective’ (Gilligan 1997: 577). ‘… women impose a distinctive construction on moral problems, seeing moral dilemmas in terms of conflicting responsibilities … [and] the development of women’s moral Page 27 of 44
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Understanding Work judgement appears to proceed from an initial concern with survival, to focus on goodness, and finally to a principled understanding of nonviolence as the most adequate guide to the just resolution of moral conflicts’ (Gilligan 1997: 581). This is what shows the difference in the feminine voice. This school of maternalist feminists were very active in the child-welfare movement in the United States in the 1920s. The debate was followed up by other feminists like Folbre though in a completely different direction much later in the 1980s and 1990s. We will now see from the views of Folbre why and how it is different from the traditional maternalist perspective. In her paper ‘Children as Public Goods’, Folbre defines children as ‘consumer durables providing a flow of utility to their parents, investment goods providing income, and public goods with both positive and negative externalities’ (Folbre 1994: 86). She points out the need for economists to analyse the contributions of non-market labour to the development of human capital. She sees that as children become increasingly public good, parenting becomes an increasingly public service. In an interview published in 1998, titled ‘The Neglect of CareGiving’, she explains ‘public good’ as: ... public goods are actually of much greater importance and value in the overall economy than private goods because public goods comprise the environment, which is mostly non-produced good. Children are also public goods. People do not rear children and then charge everybody who comes into contact them for the benefits that result from their having been well brought up. She further elaborates that there are public bads and there are public goods. Clean air, a highly skilled labour force, children being brought up in a nourishing, nurturing environment, are all public goods. However, for neoclassical economists, ‘public goods will be (p.53) under-produced because everyone, every self interested person, will want a free ride on other individuals who will be providing them’ (Folbre 1998, 51–2). Folbre engages herself further in the debate on the importance of household work and the value of it. What will be the value of childcare, if it is to be considered not a moral or social responsibility of parents, but as work which has to be of value? Will it be valued at least close to minimum wage? Folbre feels that if childcare is remunerated, it may in turn in the long run cause the weakening of values and norms. However, she further argues: Most economists ridicule socialist vision of a society based entirely on altruism. Is a utopian vision of a family sustained by love alone any more realistic? Those who believe that commitments to children can be efficiently sustained by pure parental (or maternal) altruism may simply
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Understanding Work call for the reinforcement of traditional family values (particularly for women). (Folbre 1994: 88) Unlike Kollontai, Folbre speaks from a liberal perspective in the context of the United States. However, both discuss the possibility of moving childcare out of the private world to the public, and the issues around the state taking over. In the context of the United States, Folbre argues: Parents should be compensated for their efforts through a greater tax exemption or credit for raising children. And families with children should be guaranteed the means to obtain a minimum income above the poverty line. While there are good reasons to encourage all capable adults to engage in job training or paid employment, it is important to remember that non market work is still work, In fact, it is probably the most important work we do. (Folbre 1994: 89) However, beyond the story of the United States, in a capitalist market, while the poor working class may need state support for childcare, the state, if at all it provides, will provide only the bare minimum. Moreover, once a woman’s role in the family changes into that of a breadwinner, her motherhood responsibilities will have to change. Here, the class factor takes over to see if a mother is economically stable enough to get help through a paid domestic worker, or is able to provide private childcare support to her child or is poor enough to demand state support in public childcare. This situation is a bit more complex than the private individual choice versus the community collective. (p.54) The changing forms of reproductive labour from unproductive to productive which can in the contemporary context be exchanged against capital and can also contribute to the increasing value of capital; the possibility and realities around the existence and increase of unproductive labour along with the increasing needs of the capital for it; the incompatibility of capitalism with the new needs and requirement around childcare and maternity; the advancement of capitalism contributing to the increasing unpaid subsistence work; the increasing relevance of the possible differences or disputes between the maternalists and the socialist feminists around questioning the structures of patriarchy, private property, or the institutions of family and marriage; and the consideration of childcare as part of the public good.
Voluntary Work: Private/Public, Paid/Unpaid Historically, in the sphere of work, voluntary work is slotted with social work. Social work, both as an academic discipline and as an entry into the field of activism, is in most cases taken to be of a voluntary nature. Not only is social work equated with voluntary service, it is also seen to be associated with the welfare of the community and the family. The term ‘social work’ does not have a gendered connotation directly and while it is related to helping the poor and the weak, most of the studies on social work do not go into who is the social worker; Page 29 of 44
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Understanding Work instead they focus on whom it is meant for and why. However, social work has a long history of being associated with childcare or child welfare. And it is the middle-class women social workers not into paid work outside homes who got themselves engaged in child or family welfare or what is broadly considered social welfare. Further, it is important to see the meaning of social here, since the social is relegated to a world which otherwise consists of those who need social support, including families or women and children and other weak sections of the society. Volunteers and voluntary work are unpaid. It is morally valued high and is expected to contribute towards the improvement of society. It is assumed that who can afford to do voluntary work do it out of their goodwill— thus showing the class nature of it. So, it is not expected that poor people will do voluntary work; instead, it is expected that voluntary work will be done for the poor people. Though both men and women are engaged in voluntary work, there have been many studies on voluntary work (p.55) showing the gendered nature or dimensions of voluntary work, how men and women were perceived or expected to do different kinds of voluntary work or how they were treated differently within the sphere of voluntary work. Among the feminists, many focused on studying women’s unpaid work in the private, and not on women’s unpaid or less paid work in the public space. The few feminist writings on voluntary work have been critical of the gendered nature of voluntary work, mostly done by women. Oppenheimer, in her work, defined voluntary work or unpaid work as ‘work carried out by people within structured organisations in the public sphere’ (Oppenheimer 1998: 1). For her, it was productive work which has to be counted as part of labour history. There is a need to define voluntary work, volunteers, and voluntary organizations, and to understand the voluntary principle or voluntary action which underpins these constructs. According to her, volunteers can be found in many varied groups and are generally associated with the improvement of the community and larger society. They give their own time to an organization of their choice, without being paid for their services, and many of them work on an informal basis, either full-time or part-time, in an area of their own choosing. It is altruism or a feeling of social concern and responsibility for others which inspires people to do voluntary work (Oppenheimer 1998: 3). Voluntary work by definition is within the framework of what is considered within the public space. Work which is done in a so-called private space, that is, in the family by women, and is unpaid is not described as voluntary. However, the differentiation and the debates making a distinction between the private and the public do not come into picture with the definition of voluntary work. While the moving of the unpaid, household, or domestic work into the paid, public space did not have anything to do with voluntary work, the fact that in general, voluntary work had a lot to do with women, children, or the poor or vulnerable sections of society, and also the fact that it was generally not meant for men or done by women for women placed it close to the politics of gender Page 30 of 44
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Understanding Work division of labour. As we will see in the context of this study, women workers who do voluntary work in the public sector are made to believe that they are performing an important social service for which they have been given a chance to contribute. A remuneration as compensation for this work would therefore be considered denial of a chance for these poor women (p.56) to contribute directly, through social service, to the state, and against the very concept of voluntary work itself. It has to be seen as their direct contribution towards state welfare or people’s welfare. Further, the voluntary social service by them in the public sector also gets converted into a moral responsibility or obligation of the woman worker. Oppenheimer feels that labour history has failed to understand the role of voluntary work in our societies because of its too narrow definition of work as the paid employment of the white male and also because of the stereotype against voluntary work and volunteers which appears not to be part of the labour tradition. It is the feminist critique of labour history and the contribution of feminist economists towards understanding unpaid labour that helped to create a better political understanding of voluntary work within the private and public space. Oppenheimer argues that voluntary work straddles both the spheres as it represents unpaid work in the public sphere. It is carried out in the public sphere within structured organizations and also within the general areas where paid work is found. For her, ‘for voluntary work to be defined in any realistic way with or alongside paid work, the whole concept of “work” requires redefinition’ (Oppenheimer 1998: 4). It is as an extension of the women’s unpaid work that the gendered stereotype of the volunteer is being reinforced which also adds to the exploitative dimension of the voluntary work denigrating women’s paid work.5 In the context of explaining the neoclassical position on women doing unpaid work in the private, family space as voluntary work, Folbre argues that neoclassical economists try to explain income inequality and wage inequality by taking a position that it is women themselves who choose to devote more time and energy to family than to work. And through this position they want to show that all (p.57) inequalities are voluntary. Folbre does not address voluntary work in the context of public space here, however, she sees it clearly as gendered and believes that women doing voluntary work lowers their labourforce experience, commitment, and their ability to acquire skills (Folbre 1998: 46). Another feminist scholar who has made a serious attempt to study voluntary work is Cora Baldock. Baldock defines volunteer as ‘a person who on a regular basis contributes services without receiving remuneration commensurate with the economic value of the services rendered and as part of a voluntary agency concerned with the provision of social care and/or the development of social policy’ (Baldock 1983: 279). Here she clearly excludes volunteer work done for leisure organizations, religious groups, or trade unions, and also excludes
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Understanding Work activities which are not a regular commitment, or are primarily carried out as leisure-time pursuits. Folbre, Baldock, and others refer to altruism as an essential factor in the politics of making women available for volunteer work. Altruism, in the context of women’s unpaid work in the private sphere, ‘is a fundamental part of the private sphere, of the family and the world of women ... it has no place in the public sphere ... the world of men ... women caught up in the “compassion trap” set by the structure and ideology of capitalist patriarchy’ (Baldock 1983: 292). However, altruism does have a role in the public space too and it can be seen as the extension of the moral responsibility of social service which women do for the family. And voluntarism and volunteer work especially by women is seen in general as a middle-class phenomenon, more so in the Western context. It is possible that wherever they are, only those who have free time and enough resources can offer to volunteer. However, it is important to see this aspect from a different perspective when it comes to voluntarism by women in the public space. It is important here to analyse the gendered nature of the voluntary work that women do, the gender division of labour within it, and also the moral and social pressure on women to do this work voluntarily. In the forthcoming chapters of this book, I will try to show how even working-class women are put under this moral and social responsibility to do voluntary work in the public space for their own benefit and for the benefit of other working-class women in their own communities. And once it is the women who are doing volunteer work, as Baldock argues, the very concept of volunteer work in itself will become working-class work (Baldock 1983: 292). (p.58) Baldock’s definition of voluntary work focuses on work processes which take place in the labour market, but dealing with social welfare. It complements or is identical to work done by paid workers. It functions as an ‘ideal type’ which consists of activities done by a person outside the market or which might have also been accomplished by hiring a third person from the economic market. Baldock argues that ‘volunteer work carried out within voluntary agencies in the social welfare sector is work albeit unpaid, and should be studied as part of the labour market in the same manner as the work of paid social welfare personal’ (Baldock 1983: 279), and it fulfils an essential economic and ideological function for the state which is of crucial importance during times of economic crisis when governments reduce welfare spending. In such times of economic crisis, the voluntary sector is placed under considerable pressure to increase services in the welfare areas. For Baldock, there is need for an in-depth analysis of the use of the volunteer worker as an unpaid social-service worker in the public sector since ‘this social service especially if done by women is taken as a symbol, the volunteer contributing by participating in the process of democracy in the state’ (Baldock 1983: 279–80; emphasis mine). Arguments by Baldock, especially on the role that the voluntary sector plays in times of economic crisis, are useful for the present study as in the current Indian Page 32 of 44
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Understanding Work economic condition, it is necessary that the government reduces its spending on welfare and instead place it under the voluntary sector. Simultaneously, there is also pressure on the voluntary sector to expand its services in the area of welfare. It is important, as shown by studies on voluntary work by these feminist scholars, to see the close relationship between voluntary or unpaid work/less paid work and paid work, and also the gender division of labour. Voluntary work is inherent to the structure of capitalist economy and its notions of the welfare state which in turn rests on capitalist patriarchy.
Concept of the Social and the Social Service Sector The service sector acquired a new stature or developed into new forms with the advancement of capitalist economy. However, the definitions of the terms ‘service’, the ‘service sector’, and the ‘market around the service sector’ do not necessarily have much in common. As discussed (p.59) earlier, the history and politics of the social6 is closely related to the history and politics of the socialservice sector. Both in many ways shape the life and work of women in any society. Braverman (1979) sees the change in the institutions of care, like family, and its marketization as the reason behind the origin of the so-called service sector. It is the institutionalization of different forms of care work. And under capitalism, what was explained earlier by him as the universal market is the ‘service economy’. There has been a massive growth of such institutions and ‘the conquest of an increasing range of services and their conversion into commodities’ (Braverman 1979: 280). In the conventional sense, giving a scientific definition of the service sector, Marx pointed out, ‘A service is nothing more than the useful effect of a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour’ (Marx 1884, 2010: 132). In the contemporary capitalist economy, a service is part of the public sector where it is available for consumption by the service provider. The services thus available in the public sector for sale have a service provider and it is not a direct commodity which can be brought. This means labour by a labourer in whichever form is essential for the conception and existence of a service for consumption. However, different forms of services available in the market by the service provider or the labourer have different usage value. Most of the services for sale in the service sector of the capitalist economy are part of the social service sector. Braverman explains that in a capitalist context, a change into the social form of labour is important for the capitalist, and though service occupations formed a large share in the social division of labour throughout the capitalist era, they did not form a productive or profitable part until recently (Braverman 1979: 360–1). Whatever happens in the service sector has to be originally part of the ‘social’. It has only changed its nature within the ‘social’ from time to time. The combining of the ‘social’, ‘service’, and the ‘economy’ changes the meaning of this sector. The servicesector work and the social-service work are closely related in many ways because of the nature and politics of work in this sector. Service-economy work is sometimes even interchangeably used with (p.60) social-service-sector work. Page 33 of 44
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Understanding Work The changes in the service sector from its traditional meaning and context to the new development in the capitalist economy has not been conceived by many in positive terms. For Braverman, the commodification and marketization of these services … which should facilitate social life and social solidarity have the opposite effect. As the advances of modern household and service industries lighten the family labour, they increase the futility of family life; as they remove the burdens of personal relations, they strip away its affections; as they create an intricate social life, they rob it of every vestige of community and leave in its place the cash nexus ... these [service sector] industries create new low-wage sectors of the working class, more intensely exploited and oppressed than those in the mechanized fields of production. (Braverman 1979: 281) Braverman sees that the growth of the service sector leads to the destruction of the older forms of social, community, and family cooperation and self-aid (Braverman, 1979: 357). Braverman’s concern is equally strong about the mass of women being drawn out from the household to join this exploitative service sector, which has led to the destruction of the affectionate, personal family space. Though Braverman is concerned about the exploitation of women’s work in the service sector, he prefers not to discuss the lightening of the family labour and its impact on women’s work. Braverman also critically analyses the massive growth of a marketplace of service corporations at public expense and the increase in ‘service’ employment around the marketization of hospitality of women’s labour (Braverman 1979: 279). Braverman seems to be critical of the situation in which the very social services which should facilitate social life and social solidarity have the opposite effect. As the advances of modern household and service industries lighten the family labour, they increase the futility of family life; as they remove the burdens of personal relations, they strip away its affections, as they create an intricate social life, they rob it of every vestige of community and leave in its place the cash nexus. (emphasis as in the original) (Braverman 1979: 281) Further, Braverman also argues that the rapid growth of service occupations in both the corporate and governmental sectors of the economy will destroy the ‘older forms of social, community and family corporation and self aid’ (Braverman 1979: 357; emphasis mine). Braverman clearly (p.61) expresses his discomfort with the entry of a cash nexus into the life of community and family cooperation. Then the changes in what is considered the service sector, in his point of view, have a negative impact on the family and its personal space. While his is a broader reading of the developments within the capitalist economy, Indian scholars have addressed the changes in the so-called Page 34 of 44
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Understanding Work service sector with the advancement of capitalism. According to them, industrial revolution gave a major boost to the service sector in the economy of the developing countries. Nirmala Banerjee explains that … an important change in the British economy after the onset of the industrial revolution was the fast expansion of an independent, non agricultural, non industrial, service sector of employment. The growth of such a service sector to an extent that it employed just under half the British labour force by 1911 was an entirely new phenomenon. The service sector included wholesale and retail trade, financial and commercial institutions, personal and professional services, transport and communications, as well as public administration and welfare services. In the earlier stages, women in service sector were confined mainly to domestic service, an occupation which had expanded fast in the 19th century along with the growth of a new urban bourgeoisie. After 1911, however women moved out of domestic service to other sections of the service sector. (Banerjee 1989: 269–301) Still, work in the service sector formed only a small part of the industrial work available and so paid work available to women in this sector was smaller in quantity. Even in a paid-work context, the only expanding occupation for women in the modern sector, according to Banerjee, was to do domestic service which is part of the said social-service sector. This period also coincided with the increasing number of women entering agricultural labour (Banerjee 1989: 269– 70). In some contexts, working women themselves are ‘regarded as a “social problem”— with the researchers pondering the consequences of female employment for child care, the survival of the family, or the status of the economy’ (Fox and Biber 1984: xiii). However, working women are also a necessary evil, especially in contexts like wars. With each world war, history has shown the increase in participation of women in the labour force as paid workers. The entry of huge number of women into paid work along with industrialization contributed to changes in the politics of sexual division of labour and conditions of women’s work (p.62) in general. This change specifically was visible in the work done by women in the service sector as a service provider. With the withdrawal of women from paid work and their return to their families, the nature of social work too changed. Thus, either women along with their children were dependents in the family and part of the state welfare or in the case of a small section of women who were paid workers entering the field of social work, it became a more suitable and acceptable work for women. Dale and Foster explain that both the social workers and feminists are centrally concerned about the institution of family and women’s role in it and women form the majority of social workers’ clients (Dale and Foster 1986: 95). The discussions so far show a close relation between the conceptual divisions of the social, political, and the economic. As women and children are mostly counted together in a conventional sense and become automatically part of the Page 35 of 44
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Understanding Work social, childcare and childcare policies are also put together within the category of women and policies for women. Baldock and Cass argue that … the history of the attempts to introduce child endowment as a ‘social policy’ illustrates well the contention that social policy cannot be separated from economic policy, and that the political definition of a measure as ‘social’ very often hides its economic purpose. The interconnections of the economic (in the shape of wage fixation policies) and the social (in the shape of a welfare measure to redistribute income to the mothers of dependent children) are manifestly clear in the child endowment debates. Much of the state action directed towards women is termed ‘social policy’ ... this arises from the assumption that economic and social policies comprise two distinct spheres, an assumption that lies at the core of capitalist ideology and roughly parallels a similar division of the world into two separate realms: the public and the domestic. State operations are often associated quite falsely only with public expenditure on social welfare … i.e. income maintenance and service provision. In this ideological separation of the social and the economic, much of the mounting political pressure from women has been siphoned into a narrow range of ‘social policy’ issues...using the term ‘public policy’. (Baldock and Cass 1983: 201–2) The separation between the social and the economic hides the relevance of the economic in defining and shaping the social. As an aftermath and an extension to this, the policies in this sector are interestingly called ‘public’ policies wherein the basic concept of the ‘service’ (p.63) remains with the economy around the ‘private’. Further, the changes the creation and expansion of the service sector brought in to family affection or to family responsibilities, are not appreciated well within the conventional positions on the family. Moreover, issues around the marketization of the service sector where further exploitation of women’s work or women workers takes place have become an important issue of concern in the contemporary context.
The Concept of Welfare, Welfare State, and Women Workers Women’s voluntary work in the public space has always had an important role to play in the history of the welfare state. The historical transformation of the capitalist state into a welfare state is relevant in understanding women’s unpaid or voluntary work in the public space. Within the different stages of development of capitalism, the nature and politics of the welfare state has also changed. The histories of the welfare state in the United States, United Kingdom, and other European countries vary. There are debates on distinguishing the nature of the welfare state as between the liberal and radical welfare state and also between the feminist positions on the welfare state— between the liberal feminists and socialist feminists. Here I have briefly touched upon these debates among the feminists; however, due to limitations within the Page 36 of 44
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Understanding Work scope of this study, the in-depth debate on the development and history of the welfare state is not looked into. In the context of this work, an understanding of the relationship between the related concepts of welfare state and social welfare from a feminist perspective contributes to a deeper understanding of women’s work and its relationship with the state. We have already discussed that the very term ‘social’, distancing itself from the political and the economic, makes it close to family, women, children, and the institutions around their lives and distances itself from the world of men. Social welfare and its economy is thus expected to contribute to the lives of those under welfare which is valued less in terms of priority in comparison to anything outside its purview. The state and the masculine world of the public which is outside this social, feminine world is offering help so that women, children, and the space of the private family are intact. (p.64) In the introduction to their book Women, Social Welfare and the State, Baldock and Cass raise a fundamental and specific question around the relationship between the three—women, social welfare, and the state, which is of utmost interest to feminists. The study addresses an important question as to what extent do various state interventions reinforce, challenge, or transform some elements of the enduring but changing pattern of women’s unequal access to economic security and social autonomy. In their analysis of women’s work in advanced capitalist societies where strict sexual division of labour prevails and women are engaged in unpaid domestic labour, Baldock and Cass explain that the advantage of the existence of sexual division of labour is not only for men as individuals, it also provides support for the whole structure of wages and profits in the labour market and subsidizes public expenditure in the state sector. Unpaid production and consumption in the family supplements the value of wages, and women’s care work in the family space creates an informal and private welfare system which allows the cost of state provision of welfare services to be minimized. For Baldock and Cass, the cheap system of private welfare services in this context is used efficiently by the capitalist state in situations of economic crisis with cuts in social welfare expenditure. (Though in the context of a country like India, unlike in Europe, there is no correlation between the cuts in social welfare expenditure and the subsidizing of the private welfare facilities for women). And that is why when there is an economic crisis, welfare services are handed over to volunteers available for unpaid labour (Baldock and Cass 1983: 51–2). Family here has a primary emphasis as an institution (which is meaningless in this context without counting women’s unpaid work along with it) with an important role to play and gets a firm legitimization. Baldock and Cass see the voluntary services which women do in the public space as an extension of this.
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Understanding Work The contemporary welfare state in the West is different from the post-World War I welfare state, though in general it continues to function within the framework of the public–private distinction through its welfare programmes. With World War I, there was a demand that the state should support mothers and children. Later, this was turned into what is called the demand for family allowances. Families which needed such support had to be first identified and then brought under state welfare. The state used its tax money to provide welfare support to (p.65) the needy. Later, it was meant for all poor families where the man cannot provide enough to support his wife and children or the woman is a poor single mother. Families were thus identified with certain criteria which decided whether a family deserves welfare support or not. In different contexts, different concepts were introduced like providing ‘family wage’,7 ‘living wage’, or ‘social wage’. Those who pay tax became the productive category of taxpayers and those who receive welfare support became the unproductive category of welfare recipients. In this context, trade unions abroad demanded that a family wage be given to men who are poor, which would mean that their women/wives did not have to do paid work, but would remain home as housewives. Thus, men would still be the breadwinners and would get to sustain the family, enjoying the unpaid services of women (Folbre 1991: 468). However, with more women entering paid employment, the nature of the provision of providing family wage changed. While more women joined paid work, the need for childcare also increased. So, with one set of women joining productive paid work, another set of women, the poorer lot, joined the less or unproductive care work. And those who remained outside both these categories became recipients of the state’s social welfare support. Women are both contributors and recipients of welfare services anywhere. There are two important debates among the feminists on the gendered politics of the welfare state; firstly, an attempt to understand and explain why and how only women are systematically included in the welfare policies and secondly to understand the conflicting interests between men and women, exposing the inequalities of power within the home. They also brought in the critique of existing social policies and raised the need for better social policies from a feminist perspective. The attempt has been to enquire why women have not played an important role in social policymaking and why only women are so dependent on welfare services (Dale and Foster 1986: ix, x). For those women who are contributors to the welfare services as workers, whether paid or voluntary, there is a clear sexual/gender division of (p.66) labour within the welfare work. When women work as caregivers (such as cleaners, nurses, home helps, and so on), men within the welfare services work mostly as paid professionals or managers (Dale and Foster 1986: 59–60). From a feminist perspective, state policies do perform a dual function by maintaining women’s subordination and ensuring the reproduction of labour power. The measures of the state policies through welfare try to sustain the family household system Page 38 of 44
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Understanding Work where there is a male breadwinner, dependent children. and a dependent wife who is responsible for care work. Feminists also see that in the long run, the provision of income maintenance as a welfare measure to women can add to their oppression, though in the short run this can make them independent (McIntosh cited in Baldock and Cass 1983: 143–4). Welfare policies in many ways have also been seen as the state’s mechanism to organize domestic life. When the state has supported needy families by providing financial or welfare measures, it has rarely been on the state’s agenda to help women to give up care or child-rearing work. In fact, the state has rarely pushed the agenda for public childcare services. For Baldock and Cass, the state can only play the male role, outside the women’s world of the household, contributing to women’s domesticity (Baldock and Cass 1983: 160). The women welfare workers both in primary education and in primary healthcare are examples of the state’s welfare politics contributing to or perpetuating the sexual/gender division of labour. Welfare work in this way expands women’s domestication to the outside public space and reduces the value of the work they do by gendering it, and more welfare services in practice means intensified measures of this gender politics. Feminists also see that states do put more women workers into welfare work, thereby manipulating their labour capacity especially at times when there is a crisis. Studies in women’s work have also shown interest in understanding the interests of the state though its welfare programmes when the state engages its women workers in less paid or unpaid welfare work. Whether it is done through the state’s own agencies or through private voluntary agencies, both streams do engage women as primary carriers of welfare work, especially in welfare programmes directly dealing with local development issues like access to health, education, and other basic facilities. Feminist critiques of these programmes studying the contribution of women’s work have attempted to find out if and how this (p.67) has helped the state machinery to accumulate more profit by exploiting women’s labour. It has also been considered important to see if this exploitation of women’s labour is justified and legitimized since the process is meant generally for social welfare or service, furthering the state’s attempts towards development of local communities. Welfare activities, especially in the voluntary sector, would in many ways portray these processes as positive measures towards social development initiated by the state, and within the economy of capitalist development it has been difficult to raise the question of less paid or unpaid work and the exploitation of women workers. The contemporary political context also shows a shift in most of the welfare services, with the state government withdrawing from its own initiatives of non-profit and the private sector investing directly in more and more social welfare activities engaging women workers; so, it is all the more important today to see what is
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Understanding Work the interest which pushes private capital to enter into such local welfare programmes and why they too prefer women workers. State welfare programmes with its focus on the family and childcare, both in the private and the public space, is an important agenda and an issue of concern for feminists all over the world. Though socialist thought and tradition has been against welfare programmes, socialist feminists have stood for a ‘nonstigmatizing’ welfare programme for sexual equality, and they have argued for the need for developing the basic qualities of nurturing, care-giving in labour as part of a right kind of welfare policy. A socialist-feminist understanding of welfare programmes also considers the failure of the family-wage system and its highly gendered arrangements as an important reason which gave rise to the need for welfare (Gordon 1990: 172). McIntosh neatly summarizes the dual function of state policy in maintaining female subordination and ensuring the reproduction of labour power. According to her, ... in various ways, the state policy has sought sometimes unsuccessfully to remedy the fact that the family household system is inadequate for mediating the wage and the reproduction of the working class. It has always done so in such a way as to sustain that family system of a male breadwinner, dependent children and a dependent wife responsible for domestic and child rearing work and where this would be seriously threatened, the needs have remained unmet. (McIntosh cited in Baldock and Cass 1983: 143–4) (p.68) Nancy Folbre has also made important contributions to the study of childcare policies. According to Folbre, while both individuals and groups have an economic interest in free riding on the parent’s efforts, the state policies can be an important vehicle for more equitable distribution of the costs of children across lines of gender, race, age, and class. However, several European countries impose higher taxes on the entire working-age population to defray the costs of childcare, and for this reason, affluent families who purchase highquality services in the private market are particularly likely to oppose tax increases to finance public provision of childcare and education. When women put time and energy into children, it is seen as investing in a ‘family public good’ while women pay most of the costs but other family members, including children and fathers claim an equal share of the benefits (Folbre 1999: 196–201). Brenner also says that there is also the need for a clear class perspective beyond the gender critique of the welfare policies in the West (Brenner 2006). Brenner sees the welfare state as an arena of class struggle within the limits imposed by the capitalist relations of production. The capitalist welfare state can offer substantial reforms but these reforms have been achieved as political concessions to working-class movements and middle-class reformers. Even in successful capitalist societies, welfare provisions have many restrictions and they provide only a bare subsistence for the poor, and the elite always resist the Page 40 of 44
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Understanding Work expansion of welfare. Poor women who need welfare support are forced to choose either a welfare state that assumes a male breadwinner family or no state help at all. However, a capitalist economy keeps pushing for privatization of reproduction and childcare, thus paving way for sexual division of labour and gender inequality (Brenner 2006: 44–9). For Brenner, the state policies perpetuate women’s marginalization in paid labour and women are assigned to unpaid household labour as a ‘negotiated settlement’ among contending groups of men. Further, the development of the welfare state thus establishes a public patriarchy, reinforcing women’s dependence on the male breadwinner family and on a male-controlled state (Brenner 2006: 59). As mentioned earlier, the making of a capitalist state into a welfare state has happened also because of the demands from the women’s movements in different parts of the world. In a capitalist economy, working-class women are too burdened with childcare. When a (p.69) liberal-feminist political framework does not challenge patriarchy or sexual division of labour while demanding state support in childcare, a radical feminist position challenges these and the privatization of childcare (Brenner 2006). For Brenner, the liberal-feminist framework is a ‘politics of protection’ reflecting the patriarchal ideology and the class interests of the reformers. Many in the welfare movement, especially middle-class women, accepted the notion of the male breadwinner while working-class poor women argued for higher wages and unionization, resisting the politics of protection and fighting the institutionalization of women’s dependence (Brenner 2006: 125). Feminist debates on welfare policies in the West reflect the complexity in developing a suitable political strategy for women through welfare reforms. Brenner explains this complexity and says, … the need is then for ‘a politics that should combine work and parenting for all families’ and this will challenge the false distinction between ‘dependent’ families (those that rely on the state) and ‘independent’ families (those that rely on their own resources) ... and at a minimum, good jobs at a living wage for women as well as for men, a shorter workday, and publicly funded programs providing high-quality care are necessary to meet the pressing needs facing the majority of men and women. (Brenner 2006: 143) Brenner also argues that the issue of the pooling of resources for day-to-day support should be kept separate from questions of intimacy and parenting. She sees it as a better option when women become dependent on the welfare state and less dependent on individual men, and thus they will be in a better position to engage in political activity and public life. Though the welfare state has its elitist and bureaucratic character, the demand should be for public services that are worker- and client-controlled, democratic, and integrated into the communities they serve (Brenner 2006: 176). As far as working-class women are concerned, they require, at a minimum, quality affordable childcare (and elderly Page 41 of 44
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Understanding Work care) and paid time off for parental responsibilities (including meeting children’s educational, emotional as well as physical needs), and in the long run, shorter work days (Brenner 2006: 207). Brenner sees the rise of social-welfare feminist politics as an outcome of the collapse of the revolutionary left and of the socialist-feminist collectives which are part of it. For Brenner, (p.70) … the distinction between a revolutionary (socialist-feminist) and a reform strategy (social-welfare) lies not in whether one organises to wrest some concession from the state but in how that effort fits into an overall strategy. Unfortunately, the feminist debate over the state has rarely been posed in this way, but rather as a choice between being outside or inside the state, between working for reforms or working to build alternative institutions. (Brenner 2006: 263) Women’s movements anywhere in the world have always demanded increased state support for childcare whether it is through financial support as seen in the welfare programmes in the West or through other kinds of support via public institutions helping with subsidized care facilities. However, there has also been a conflict in the capitalist state economy against giving support to poor families using public/state money from the tax paid by the rich as more and more welfare support would mean more tax burden on the rich sections in the community. There has not been fundamentally much change in the concept of welfare and the state policies towards it. Certainly, the history of welfare politics and policies vary between countries and between the poor countries and the rich. But throughout history, feminists and the women’s movement have negotiated with the state governments both for a better welfare policy and also for a change in the attitude towards the welfare for the poor, which will then change the condition of women workers and women’s work, both in the private and public spaces of the community. Social welfare policies for the poor, as mentioned earlier, are seen as a burden but to some extent a necessary evil by many state governments. The recent attempt everywhere has been to hand over this responsibility to voluntary agencies or groups in the community. While many governments justify this by arguing that welfare and other provisions are best delivered by voluntary groups, many of these organizations are funded to a large extent by the state which reveals another face of the politics of voluntary work/ service which needs to be further analysed in relation to the welfare state. A study of the state welfare policies and the women workers in the so-called voluntary sector in the coming chapters of this book will certainly contribute towards this. Voluntary work and honorary work are different but comparable. The term ‘honorary’ though linked to the term ‘honour’ carries a different meaning, especially in the context of labour. Both voluntary and honorary work are used in the context of devaluation of women’s work; (p.71) voluntary work is used more at the individual or social level, while the term ‘honorary’ is used more at Page 42 of 44
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Understanding Work the professional, official level. At many levels, the term ‘honorary’ is linked to a designation offered by the state and the main focus of a distinction between the voluntary and the honorary could be based on the fact that unlike voluntary work, honorary work is a designation given or offered by those in power; and in some contexts even imposed from above as can be seen in the context of this study. Further, honorary work by women is seen as a form of voluntary work expected to be done by women, as in the case of women workers in India for which they are being honoured. These diverse definitions and debates around women’s work will help us to understand the case of the so-called honorary workers in India. The forthcoming chapter of this book will discuss the history and development of women’s work in India as a background towards studying the case of these honorary women workers. Notes:
(1) Alexandra Kollontai’s contributions include her writings titled Communism and Family, ‘Marriage and Everyday Life’, and ‘The Labour of Women in the Revolution of the Economy’, published in 1977. (2) Walby’s important contributions in the field include, Patriarchy at Work, Gender Segregation at Work (ed.), and Theorizing Patriarchy. (3) Important works of these scholars include Delphy (1976), ‘Towards a Materialist Feminism?’, Delphy (1980), ‘A Materialist Feminism is Possible’ pp. 79–105, Barrett, Michele (1980), ‘Women’s Oppression Today: Problems in Marxist Feminist Analysis’, and Barrett and Mackintosh (1982), ‘The Anti-Social Family’. (4) Nancy Folbre’s contributions in the field include ‘Exploitation Comes Home: A Critique of the Marxian Theory of Family Labour’, ‘Of Patriarchy Born: The Political Economy of Fertility Decisions’, ‘The Unproductive Housewife: Her Evolution in Nineteenth Century Thought’, and Folbre and England (1999), ‘Who Should Pay for the Kids?’. (5) Oppenheimer refers to the The Lavarch Report of 1991 which acknowledged that women carried out a significant proportion of voluntary unpaid work in the community for which there was insufficient recognition and which reflected the low status accorded to much of voluntary work. There is also a reference to Marilyn Waring’s influential book Counting for Nothing arguing that if voluntary and unpaid work were given a monetary valuation, by the accepted process of imputation, this work would immediately become ‘visible, influencing policies and concepts and questioning values’ (Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘Voluntary work and Labour History’. (6) It is important to reiterate that my discussion of the ‘social’ here as in the case of this entire study is from a political economy perspective and is distinct
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Understanding Work from other works and debates on the same which have come from a historical or sociological perspective. (7) Scholars like Barrett and McIntosh (1982) have contributed to a critique of the concept of family wage from a feminist point of view, as for them it results in making the institution of family stronger, making children dependent for longer, and motherhood longer for women. The labour movement which supported the concept of family wage earlier had to change its position later.
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Women Workers in India
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Women Workers in India Issues and Debates M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0003
Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the changes in the nature and politics of women’s work in the context of women workers in India. It contains a review of some of the writings on women’s work in India, addressing issues like the status and growth in women’s paid work, the process of feminization and informalization, and the ramifications of these on women’s work in the informal sector. The chapter also briefly discusses the increasing need for more social welfare policies especially women specific social welfare policies and programmes in contemporary India. It reviews how women in paid work have figured in the state-welfare policies while trying to understand the relevance of these policies in the context of economic restructuring, globalization, and the entry of private capital. Keywords: Women workers, India, Informal sector, feminization, social welfare, globalization, private capital, paid work, less-paid work, social policy
If domestic work (in India) is included in the concept of work participation, 55% of the female population above age 5 would get included. —Gopalan 1995: 52 The history of women’s work is closely intertwined with the origin and growth of patriarchy, capitalism, or capitalist patriarchy. As discussed earlier, feminist literature shows differing views about the origin of patriarchy and capitalism; some believe in the concept of capitalist patriarchy while others believe in patriarchy which has its origin in the pre-capitalist period—a debate which is Page 1 of 31
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Women Workers in India broadly known as the dual systems theory in feminism, along with another dimension to it in the form of the existence of multiple patriarchies, especially in the context of countries like India. However, for the very same reason, different countries have different trajectories as far as the history of women’s work is concerned. This history clearly reflects the dichotomies between the North and the South, the East and the West, or the Developed and the Developing/ Underdeveloped, or the First, Second, and the Third Worlds.1 (p.73) In the history of Western capitalism, growth of capitalism and its expansion through phases of industrialization saw a massive expansion in women joining paid work in factories in industrial societies. As studies show, this workforce included not just young women workers but children too. However, the situation changed later with the further growth of industrialism; with the massive entry of women workers into industries, opportunities for women declined and in this situation married women were expected to leave paid work.2 Increasing unemployment among men also contributed to the situation of married women losing their paid work. Though joining industrial work meant regular working hours for these women workers, from the very beginning everywhere, women were paid lower wages than men. And the entry and exit of women workers in industries either as a result of labour shortage or as a result of exploitative labour terms led to some fundamental political questions which forced studies on labour to reflect upon the kind of questions we addressed in the earlier chapter about the definition of work, worker, and creation of the women worker. However, the history of women’s paid work in Asia has its own characteristics which made it different from the European experience. Women workers in the Asian countries worked in diverse fields. A good majority of its women workers, especially rural women, were agricultural labourers. Inequality in wages and working conditions among the women workers in Asian countries pre-existed its expansion into industrialized economies. There are many studies available with a qualitative and critical analysis of the ‘invention’ and ‘integration’ of women into development in India, and the political processes and efforts involved towards this integration. Being a country with a predominantly agricultural economy, Indian women workers contributed in a major way to the economy of the country while they mostly remained nonpropertied and landless agricultural labourers. Considering this history of the country’s economy, the relevance of industrialization and the role of women workers in it only come at a later stage with a secondary role. Ester Boserup (1970), a feminist economist, in her study attempting to (p.74) understand the condition of women workers in an emerging capitalist economy like India, critically analyses V.V. Giri’s argument that said: If the number of women employed in industry is small, it does not reflect any reluctance of the Indian women to take to vocations in industry; but it is only because industrialisation in India has not progressed far and there Page 2 of 31
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Women Workers in India yet remain(s) (sic) millions of men to be provided with work. In women, a vast manpower potential, both willing and eager to work, is existing and when the time comes for rapid industrialisation, their services could be well drafted. (Giri 1965, cited in Boserup 1970: 375) Boserup contests the view propounded by V.V. Giri in the above quotation that industrialization must reach a stage and enough men should be provided with work for an improvement in the employment of women in the industries. For Boserup, the recruitment of women in the modern sector has actually helped accelerate the growth of the economy beyond the rate attainable by the use of male labour alone. So, in the Indian context too, it may not be the ‘the vast manpower potential’ in women, but there was an increase in the demand for women workers even though social stigma and lack of education or professional skills worked against it (Boserup 1970: 211). Boserup’s position is taken in the pre-globalization period. However, at this time Boserup’s analysis of women’s work foresaw the changes in it and pointed out that when larger global industries gradually drive home-industries out of business, women would lose their jobs. She showed that in India the percentage of women among factory workers in the 1970s was much lower than the percentage of women factory workers in the 1920s. Boserup also pointed out that women were hired only for low-skilled, low-wage jobs while there was a steady and continuous decline in the percentage of women workers in traditional industries like textiles (Boserup 1970: 112). To know the history and politics behind the very creation of the honorary worker in the Indian context, it is important to discuss the history of women workers in the country. Further, with a background of the history of women’s work in India, it will be easier to clarify the reasons behind the role of women workers in India’s social welfare schemes. It is important in this context to remember that the overall percentage of Indian women entering paid work, whether in the rural agricultural industry or in different forms of industries, paid or less paid overall always remained low, around or less than 20 per cent throughout its (p.75) history. This needs to be understood in a context that almost half of its total population has remained illiterate. In the absence of possibilities to be engaged in skilled or formal sector work, many of its women workers worked in agricultural land either their own or land owned by others as labourers. Work in agricultural land or in small-scale industries like for beedi, brick-making, or handloom/traditional textile industries became the main sources of paid work for majority of India’s women in the post-independence period. Further, post-independent India witnessed a consistent decline in the agricultural sector production. The reasons include many and not just a shift towards industrialization as one would have imagined. Other than the decline of the agricultural sector, the lack of support for other traditional small-scale industries further led to the collapse of the rural economy. Majority of India’s Page 3 of 31
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Women Workers in India women workers were involved in these sectors and its decline naturally further marginalized their existence. While women workers were already paid less, highly discriminated in comparison with their male counterparts, the decline of the agricultural economy had a much larger impact, leading to large-scale migration or many forms of displacement of rural population into India’s cities. Tracing the analysis of women’s work in India, it is important to look at a report by the Government of India, addressing all questions relating to the rights and status of women in this country which would provide useful guidelines for the formulation of social policies. A committee was constituted for this purpose which was known as the ‘Committee on the Status of Women by a Resolution of the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare’, in 1971. It published its report in 1974 titled ‘Towards Equality’. This detailed report, along with addressing demography, educational and socio-cultural status of women, laws, rights and opportunities relating to women, political status, and so on, also looked at women’s economic participation, and policies and programmes related to women’s welfare and development. It addressed in detail the development of women’s work in different sectors. The report refers to the progress and shifts in the history of work for women in the country. According to this report, in the initial phase of industrial development, most industries continued the traditional pattern of family participation and employed a considerable number of women and children. Though they were confined to unskilled or semi-skilled types of work at lower rates of wages, women constituted an important (p.76) segment of the labour force in these industries. Technological changes affected the employment of women in these industries adversely. In the absence of training opportunities, the women, already handicapped by illiteracy and lack of mobility, could not acquire the new skills demanded by modern industry. This created a gap and spread the belief that women in paid work in developing countries were less productive. However, development opened new avenues for women and with social change and education, a section of educated women entered new professions or occupations which were totally closed to them earlier. In the committee’s opinion, any meaningful appraisal of women’s economic roles must take into account the socio-economic status of different categories of women workers. The largest of these categories consists of the women below subsistence level, generally found in unskilled work. In rural areas they are the landless agricultural labourers, members of households with uneconomic holdings and those engaged in traditional menial services performed by particular castes, and in urban areas they consist largely of migrants from villages (CSWI 1974: 151). In the committee’s opinion too, unlike in nonagricultural occupations and organized industry, the services and professions provided greater opportunities to women in the post-independence period. And while the participation of women was earlier confined to health and education, in the World War II period, women entered clerical and secretarial occupations in a small but significant way (CSWI 1974: 201). However, a majority of the Page 4 of 31
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Women Workers in India ‘unskilled’ women workers in the rural areas in India remained increasingly dependent on agriculture. The data on women workers show that the majority of women in paid work till the 1970s were women in the agricultural sector. Taking into account the 1971 census, the committee concluded that of the 264 million women, only 31 million in India were paid workers. Twenty-eight million among them were in villages and only 3 million in urban areas. Women played only a minor role in the urban workforce in India. While the proportion of women in the population remained more or less constant, the proportion of women entering paid work declined continuously between 1911 and 1971 with the exception of 1961. As visible from the data shown on women workers, issues around women workers in the post-independent period were many including the question of equal wages for women, working conditions, benefits as workers, and also around special benefits for women workers like maternity rights. The 1960s (p. 77) to 1980s have seen the organizing and unionizing of women workers in many fields of work in India whether it is in the formal sector or informal sector. However, in the fields of women’s work like in the tertiary sector or service sector and even the agricultural sector, it has been difficult to organize women workers to address the issues around their rights. The fact that even after few decades, the structural aspects around women’s lives in India whether on the question of women’s education or health did not improve much to influence their ability to bargain for better worker’s rights and further the expansion for their entry into paid work mostly remained confined to the informal sector.
Women’s Work Participation in Contemporary India Majority of the women workers continued to engage in agricultural work mostly as labourers. The study by the CSWI shows that till the 1980s, 80 per cent of the women workers in India were engaged in agricultural activities (CSWI 1974: 169). India initiated many important policy changes towards liberalization and privatization of its economy from the late 1980s onwards especially through structural adjustment policies (SAP), whereby it opened itself up to the global economy, becoming part of the globalized world of private capital. With SAP, the nature of the Indian economy and its labour market changed drastically. The private sector expanded, with the state withdrawing itself from many levels, giving away more power to private capital and market forces. The changes brought in by SAP in the nature of work available, and both in the quantity and quality of work, has had a strong impact on India’s women workers. The informal sector expanded in a major way. The so-called unskilled work was hugely subcontracted and de-regularized. This opened up a new phase in the integration of women workers into capitalist development in the history of India. The expanded labour market increasingly gave access to the exploitation of women’s labour, with unequal payment and unjust policies. The impact of SAP benefitted a small minority of educated and skilled women in paid work, while it had a negative impact on the poorer, unskilled section of the majority of women workers and also in general on the subsistence economy and its dependents. Page 5 of 31
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Women Workers in India Like in many other developing countries, in India too, women’s work participation rates (WPRs) not only declined but the work was also increasingly casualized. (p.78) Feminist scholar Kalpagam’s (1994) study analysed the relationship between gender and labour in the Indian context. Kalpagam argued that contrary to what Marx and Engels showed, the development of capitalism in the labour-surplus multi-structural context of India, along with the introduction of machinery in many instances, led to the displacement of women workers. She explains that the kind of substitution of male labour by female labour as expected by Marx and Engels does not seem to have taken place here. However, the development of capitalism in India absorbed women in a number of new occupations, especially in the industrial and service sector all of which contributed in specific ways to the process of capitalist development. Both the views of Boserup and Kalpagam illustrate that while the industrialization processes in India changed the quantity and nature of women’s work in India, its ramifications led to shifts in the paid work of women in the country, leading to low-wage and low-skill work for many. For them, it was also important to see that these processes of capitalist expansion, along with the advancement in technology, brought new opportunities for women in the tertiary sector. Changes or fluctuations in women’s work in both the agricultural and industrial sectors were reflected in what is referred to as the tertiary sector. Historian Hobsbawm in his work Age of Extremes (1994), attempting a short history of the twentieth century, discussed the social revolution in the West through industrialization and the role of labour in it. He points out that the growing economy of the capitalist market provided a wider range of jobs for workingclass and middle-class women. Hobsbawm argues that structural transformations and technology altered and greatly increased the scope for women’s employment as wage earners and through the rise of new service occupations as distinct from nineteenth-century industrialization, women entered paid work in offices, shops and certain kinds of services like telephone exchanges, caring professions, and so on which were powerfully feminized. However, he points out that these tertiary occupations expanded at the expense of both the primary and secondary ones that is agriculture and industry. For him, the rise of the tertiary sector was one of the most striking tendencies of the twentieth century (Hobsbawm 1994: 310–11). As he points out, the story of labour has many similarities as far as many Third World cities are concerned. In Asian countries, changes in traditional sectors like agriculture or mining and shifts towards the (p.79) manufacturing and service sectors was visible. While industrialization in India was in conflict with traditional industrial sectors of work like textiles or mining, the major expansion in women’s work participation was restricted to the informal and self-employment sectors. There were many reasons behind women losing their jobs in the organized formal sectors. These include mostly welfare measures for women workers in India in those times like Page 6 of 31
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Women Workers in India new protective legislations addressing women, like the prohibition on night work, maternity benefits, etc., or the need for crèche provisions. These measures were seen as a burden by the employers and worked against the preference towards employing women. The lack of any compulsion towards protective legislations or better welfare measures may also be working as an incentive in the contemporary times toward the inclusion of more women workers in the informal sector. In the last two decades, drastic changes have happened in the area of women as a workforce in the country. These changes reflect the impact of the changes in the political economy of women’s work as in new areas or fields in which mostly women work, whether it is agriculture, household industry, or construction work. A glimpse at the broader changes in the data related to the women workforce in the country shows the following facts: while women form an integral part of the Indian workforce, according to the country’s Census Report 2001, the WPR for women was 25.63 per cent in 2001. It was 30.79 per cent in rural areas and 11.88 per cent in the urban areas. In the rural areas, women are still mainly involved as cultivators and agricultural labourers. In the urban areas, almost 80 per cent of the women workers are working in unorganized sectors such as household industries, petty trades, and services and construction. The WPR for women was 21.9 per cent in 2011–12. The 2011 census shows WPR for women a 21.6 per cent while male WPR is at 51.7 per cent. The data shown in National Sample Survey (NSS) are slightly different at a higher level than shown in Census 2011. Further, in the organized sector, women workers constituted 20.4 per cent of the total organized sector employment in the country in 2010, comprising 17.9 per cent in the public sector and 24.5 per cent in the private sector. According to the 68th round NSS 2011–12, the WPR for women of all ages in the rural areas was 24.8 per cent. It was 14.7 per cent in the urban area and 21.9 per cent at the national level. In the organized sector, women workers constituted only 20.4 per cent of the (p.80) total organized sector employment in the country in 2010, comprising 17.9 per cent in the public sector and 24.5 per cent in the private sector. By 2010, there were only 58.59 lakh women workers employed in the organized sector, comprising 31.96 lakh in the public sector and 26.63 lakh in the private sector (SDGs, ICR 2013: 12, 49).3 The trend is certainly in decline in the WPR of women and this is true for both the rural and the urban sectors of work. The long-term trend in the past two decades show that the WPR of rural women declined from 42.5 per cent in 1988 to 18 per cent in 2012 and of urban women from 24.5 per cent to 13.4 per cent in the same time period (Naidu 2015). This has the signs of a long-term trend and is important to see that both the type and nature of work taken up by women and the overall data on the percentage of women entering into paid work reflects the gendered nature of this change in trend. A study of this trend takes one into the post-globalization shift towards massive informalization of work and decrease in the availability of formal sector work. Page 7 of 31
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Women Workers in India The expansion of the job market has been limited to the informal sector. Casualization or informalization of women’s paid work in India has at least two dimensions—to avoid provisions of maternity benefit, crèche, and so on; and the introduction of sub-contracting of the production process and the transfer of workers from the organized to unorganized sectors. This process was facilitated by the social conditions which prevailed in the country with its high levels of illiteracy and poverty. Practices of deregulation of the labour market through flexible labour were initiated in the 1980s and this resulted in the process and discourse of feminization of labour. The service-sector work expanded into women entering paid work in teaching, nursing, and other clerical work, while the uneducated women were employed as domestics or as other menial service workers. As self-employed workers, women were employed in small-scale production units like food processing, beedi making, or handicrafts. By the 1990s, with the new economic policies, more women workers got employed in fields like garment making or as piece-rate workers in the newly emerged manufacturing units. Further, with globalization, the meaning and nature of labour (p.81) changed and labour became increasingly associated with industrial work in large-scale enterprises. The number of women joining paid work in the industries and other manufacturing sectors increased. The new forms of paid-work labour in which women entered were mostly in the labourintensive manufacturing sector where sub-contracting of labour and home-based work contributed to the increasing availability of paid work (Kaur 2004: 195). The changes in the political economy of industrialization followed by the changes in the nature and type of labour had a visible impact on the status of worker’s rights. As far as the new large-scale industries are concerned, trade protection, not the interest of the workers or maintaining labour standards, became the most important goal for developing countries. The 1990s saw a debate on the impact of globalization on its impact through providing more labour opportunities for women while also contributing to further exploitative work conditions. The labour-market flexibility contributed to an increase in work opportunities for women. However, many jobs in the traditional large- and small-scale industries became informal work, and more and more women entered these enterprises under exploitative conditions with long working hours, low wages, and no benefits (Kaur 2004, 208–10). Liberalization of the economy also meant absence of state regulation or less interference from the state in the private sector and in the absence of both state regulations and unionization in the labour market, private capital and market become extremely powerful. With the weakening of the labour movement and trade unions, big industries, financial institutions and other non-governmental organizations too became powerful and capable of influencing state polices, and women workers’ rights issues took a back seat.
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Women Workers in India The decline in the work participation more in the formal sector has been consistent and also in contradiction with increasing percentage of access to education for women. The recent past has witnessed drastic increase in terms of women entering higher education. While in the 1950s women’s participation in higher education was only around 10 per cent, by 2011, it was more than 40 per cent, almost nearing equal to that of men. However, there have also been concerns raised about what is called the missing women workers in India in this century. It is reported by some scholars that between 2005–12, nearly 25 million women workers withdrew from paid work in India (Naidu 2015). (p.82) This includes work in all sectors whether formal or informal, urban or rural in terms of data on work participation in the country. While it is seen that the country is experiencing economic growth and there are more women with better access to education, it has been troubling to see and explain the decline in the work participation of women. Further, there are no positive interpretations around this to show that with better development and access to resources, women were withdrawn from paid work since the country’s economic development also widening the gap between the rich and the poor and more and more people pushed into malnutrition or extreme poverty. With decline in agriculture-related work, it is important to see the impact of expanding informal and casual sector work available for many women with massive increase in migration or displacement from rural to urban areas. There is also a decrease in women’s participation in manufacturing jobs; increase in work participation has been limited to men. In 2011, there were around 10 per cent of India’s women workers are in manufacturing (mostly in tobacco and textiles). With drastic decline in agricultural sector work and with migration to the cities, a section of those women who managed to shift away from agricultural sector entered the manufacturing sector jobs in the cities. Thus while there has been a decline in the job availability in the manufacturing sector too, more women who migrated to cities found jobs in the manufacturing sector in comparison with men. Growth in the percentage of women workers is seen only in specific sectors such as construction work, schools (as teachers in the private sector), and domestic work.
Informalization and Feminization While informalization and along with it the phenomenon called feminization also became important characteristics of post-globalization labour market, it has become relevant to know the definitions and debates around these concepts and its implications on women’s work. By the late 1990s, informalization of work extended to majority of available work for women though at the international and national contexts, there were very few attempts towards an in-depth understanding of the impact of this. However, organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) though late, recognized the existence of the ever-expanding informal sector and took a position on its role.
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Women Workers in India (p.83) According to ILO, the informal work in contemporary times makes up between half and three quarters of employment in the non-agricultural sector in developing and ‘transitional’ countries. The share of informal work is growing and the inclusion of agricultural labour force into the informal sector increases the estimates of this sector considerably in many countries. In contemporary India, informal-sector work accounts for 83 per cent of non-agricultural employment and 93 per cent of total paid work (Kabeer 2010: 31). The ILO first used the term ‘informal’ officially in the 1960s, ‘to describe the activities of the working poor who were working very hard but who were not recognised, recorded, protected or regulated by the public authorities’ (ILO 2002). The ILO soon had to take a decision whether to promote the informal sector as a provider of employment and income or to seek to extend its regulation. In 1991 it took the position that ‘there can be no question of the ILO helping to “promote” or “develop” an informal sector’. With the massive expansion of the sector, the issues it brought in could not be ignored. However, ILO counts or considers what is called the informal sector as an informal economy, not as a sector.4 In order to be considered a sector in work for ILO, the work should have the characteristics of a decent work which can be recognized, and the worker’s rights protected under its own rules and regulations, and this growing informal economy had no rules or norms regulating the activities of the workers or enterprises. It had its own ‘political economy’ (ILO 2002). In their study of the workers in the informal sector in labour history, Bhattacharya and Lucassen did an in-depth analysis of the history of the informal economy. According to them, ‘informal’ is not just a neutral term of description and analysis, it is highly imprecise in nature. It is extremely difficult to draw an exact dividing line between formal and informal. However, what is more disturbing is the fact that while in most countries in Asia, Africa, and to a somewhat lesser extent South and Central America, about 90 per cent of the workforce is in the informal sector of the economy; the concept of the informal in itself is inadequate to take (p.84) into account what is happening with the lives of the workers (Lucassen and Bhattacharya 2005: 10). There has been a massive expansion of people who do paid work and this expansion has happened in a major way in the informal sector. As far as India is concerned, this expansion is impossible to ignore since studies show that the socalled informal sector constitutes 93 per cent of its total labour force. Between 7–8 per cent of India’s total labour force of 390 million persons work in the socalled organized sector, leaving 350 million people in the informal sector (Lucassen and Bhattacharya 2005: 98). For the very same reason it is important to understand some issues in this process of informalization. The very fact that a good majority of workers in the informal sector are women and the role of the state in contributing to creating such a situation and its interventions in shaping labour relations make it an important area of study. Scholars like Bhattacharya and Lucassen do blame the absence of state regulation as an important reason Page 10 of 31
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Women Workers in India for whatever is happening in the informal sector (Lucassen and Bhattacharya 2005: 660–7). The reasons for them being the fact that, by definition, the informal sector is marked by the absence of or minimalization of state regulations, for example, the absence of labour laws in fields like selfemployment. As far as the national context is concerned, the concept of an informal economy was not new. However, the conceptual and the political meaning of it was certainly different, say in the 1960s or 1970s. According to the CSWI report, the (first) National Commission on Labour5 confessed its difficulty in identifying unorganized labour by its exact definition and the inadequacy of information about the workers in the sector. Based on the 1961 census, it puts the figure of workers at 10 million along with another 11 million, who could not (p.85) be described as ‘employees’ in the cottage and household industries (CSWI 1974: 169). For an analysis of the data of women workers in the informal sector in India, it is important to keep in mind that earlier in comparison with men, only a few women entered paid work. Moreover, work done by women otherwise is also not counted as work in the national statistics (Neetha 2009). Thus, as far as creating the data is concerned, it was not easy to even initiate process by which work by women in the informal sector could be counted or valued. Contributing towards this, Gopalan’s study of the informal sector data critically looks at the methods of collecting data for the census and also analyses what is counted as work or how work is defined as far as women’s work is concerned. She shows that the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) defines ‘work’ or ‘gainful activity’ as an activity pursued for pay, profit, or family gain. Work is an activity which adds value to the ‘rational product’ and it results in the production of goods and services for exchange. All activities that are part of the agricultural sector are also considered gainful (Gopalan 1995: 49). The NSSO in the 1990s attempted the inclusion of domestic work allowing a respondent to add and distinguish domestic activities. It established that a major part of women’s work is unpaid domestic work, and concluded that if domestic work in India is included in the concept of work participation, 55 per cent of the female population above age five would get included (Gopalan 1995: 52). Gopalan also shows that the data on the economic activity of the people collected up to the 1951 census were based on ‘income’ and ‘dependency’ concepts. However, from the 1961 census onwards, in accordance with the recommendations of the ILO, the concept of work was measured in terms of time or the labour force involved. The classification of population as ‘workers’ and ‘non-workers’ based on the (p.86) concept of work was introduced. In the 1971 census, every person was asked what his/her ‘main activity’ was, that is, how he or she engaged himself mostly, and on the basis of this question, the population was divided into two broad streams of main activity as ‘workers’ and ‘nonworkers’. In the 1981 census this classification was further expanded into ‘main Page 11 of 31
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Women Workers in India workers’, ‘marginal workers’, and ‘non-workers’ as mutually exclusive groups of was introduced. While the 1981 census recorded activities that are seasonal or regular, the 1991 census incorporated words like unpaid work on farm or in family enterprises. Special efforts were made in the 1991 census to capture women’s work in the informal sector, and also to include economic questions in the area of household work (Gopalan 1995: 53–5). The definition and the politics of the so-called feminization of labour has been an issue of debate among feminists for a long time. The changes in the political economy of development and the developments in women’s work have contributed new dimensions to this debate. Kabeer (2010) analyses feminization of labour as made up of two important components—changes in the percentage of women of working age who are either economically active or seeking such activity (that is, trends in female labour force participation rates [LFPRs]) and changes in women’s economic activity rates in relation to those of men (that is, trends in women’s share of the labour force). Feminization of labour also reflects the fact that the rise in women’s entry into paid work has often occurred in contexts of stagnant and even declining rates of male LFPRs (Kabeer 2010: 34). Debates on the definition and meaning of feminization of labour discusses both an increase in the number of women entering the workforce and the processes through which many sectors became feminized with a preference for women workers, with the working conditions based on low wages, no unionizing or organizing of workers in low-skill professions. These processes of feminization of labour also showed that it is a process in response to paid work becoming increasingly informal as far as women workers are concerned. The very nature and political meaning of the informal economy changed much in the post-globalization period. However, women’s work has always been characterized by a considerable degree of informality, as unpaid but productive. Informal work continues to make up a much larger share of women’s nonagricultural employment than men’s in most developing countries. For Kabeer, there are no clear-cut (p.87) boundaries between formal and informal work. There are only ‘different activities located somewhere on a continuum which stretches from highly formalized conditions and relations of work to activities that are not covered by any labour legislation, workers benefits or social protection’ (Kabeer 2010: 37). Kabeer sees workers in the informal sector broadly in two categories: the self-employed and the wage workers without formal contracts, work benefits, or social protection. Despite major changes in the labour market, such as an increase in women’s participation in paid work, an expansion in the areas of paid work available to women, especially in the nonagricultural sector, rising levels of education among women and declining fertility rates, gender inequalities in the labour market could not be eroded. Women continued to be confined to certain sectors and certain occupations and in the case of poor women the options were limited to the more informal end of the labour market (Kabeer 2010: 49–50). Kalpagam (1994) also analyses the Page 12 of 31
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Women Workers in India basic features of the informal sector in India. For her, the informal sector in India includes both the rural and the urban sections. It encompasses the categories of self-employed and wage workers in both manufacturing and service activities. It is characterized by the following features: ease of entry, reliance on indigenous sources, family ownership of enterprises, small scale of operation, labour intensive and adapted technology, skills acquired outside the formal school system, and an unregulated and competitive market. It includes workers in household production, small workshops and factories as well as those engaged in petty occupations, and all other forms of casual labour (Kalpagam 1994: 229–30). For Kalpagam, the evolution of the informal sector in every country, as in India, has strong ideological and political implications. Some see it as arising out of excessive controls by governments in the formal sector. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and WB are in the forefront of those holding this view. Others (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2002; Majumdar 2007, 2008; Ghosh 2009; Bhagwati and Panagariya 2013) see it as structural, that it is the outcome of incomplete transition to capitalist development. While structural factors contribute to the evolution and perpetuation of the informal sector, it is further exacerbated by policy measures of the government (Kalpagam 1994: 231). Kalpagam argues that concentration of women in informal-sector occupations that are characterized by low wages, low (p.88) capital intensiveness, and low energy should lead us to question the structural and ideological factors that have led to such a concentration. Most women are forced to work in this sector in these conditions and yet at the ideological level, they are enmeshed in a patriarchal ideology whereby the man is seen as the provider and protector of the family (Kalpagam 1994: 234). Moving forward, Majumdar’s (2007) work discusses in detail the political process of globalization and how it changed the nature of women’s work in India, and analyses the different phases of India’s industrialization and its growth in women entering paid work. The study explains the different stages in women’s engagement with industrialization in the country where there has been both an increase and a decrease in the number of women paid workers. However, the study shows that with globalization, there has been a clear stagnation and decrease in overall employment and a shrinking of the formalsector work. With more and more men and women entering the informal sector, a significant proportion of the unorganized industry has grown around the periphery of modern industrial organizations through subcontracting. For Majumdar, globalization has contributed in many ways to the complexity and contradictions in the sphere of women doing paid work, including the availability of new forms of paid work, large-scale displacement of women from paid work, a decline in the small-scale industries which has given opportunity of paid work for many women workers in India, and the vast increase in paid work in the informal sector such as home-based work. Unlike many scholars who see Page 13 of 31
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Women Workers in India globalization as a process which helps a straight increase in the availability of paid work for women, Majumdar sees the impact of globalization as contributing to losses of employment, contrasting sharply with the fairly generalized intensification of the labour process. What is important for her in this context is the decline in employment in the organized sector from the 1970s onwards. Majumdar explains that by the 1990s, workers in general in the developing countries experienced large-scale retrenchment, sharp increases in urban unemployment, wage reductions alongside inflation, and rising destitution in the rural areas. The condition of women workers has become worse considering the already existing inequalities in the labour market, making it easy for women to lose jobs or for further cuts in their wages. (p.89) It is in this context that the Indian state is expanding and employing increasing number of poor or lower middle-class women in many of its social welfare policies for women and children or for families per se. The case of the honorary worker is one among these. Further, the work to be by the honorary woman worker is more and more relevant in a context wherein there is increasing poverty, malnutrition, issues or lack of immunization or broadly say lack of access to basic health and education for an increasing number of people. The growing gap between the rich and the poor and its reflection in the data and position shown of the country through many reports including Human Development Reports, Gender Gap Reports, and so on, raised relevant concerns on the contradictions between growth per day and basic indicators of development. Further, in order to have a more careful look at what is happening in the data shown in these reports, mostly Indian and others, and to see the possible link between these indicators and the increasing relevance of the role of welfare projects like the ICDS and its anganwadis, the following section briefly points out the recent development indicators in India.
Increasing Need in the Country for Social Welfare of the Poor The above description of the conditions around women’s work in contemporary India and also the changes in its political economy of work through the development towards more informalization and trends of feminization in work is to say that in the background of these trends, it is important to see what are the needs and concerns around issues of work and also of livelihood of the poor in the country in its near future. Further, the facts and figures around development clearly indicate the severity on the need for the poor in India and especially for women for furthering the support through state-supported welfare schemes for survival. Reports at many levels around development indicators in contemporary India show worrying trends. To elaborate more on these needs, some of the development indicators from reports like the Human Development Report and Gender Gap Reports, Sustainable Development Goals, National Family Health Surveys (NFHSs), Census Reports are discussed here. According to the Human Development Report (2013), in 2012 India (p.90) ranked 136th among 186 countries in terms of the human development index (HDI). While the country’s Page 14 of 31
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Women Workers in India population was 181 million during the decade 2001–11, there was a reduction of 5.05 million in the population of children in the age group of 0–6 years during this period. The decline in male children was 2.06 million and in female children for the same period, the decline was 2.99 million.6 Current data with regard to the Government of India’s expenditure on health (central and state governments combined) show that it is only 1.36 per cent of the GDP in 2012–13. An overview of the latest development indicators shows a slight improvement in the country’s status with regard to issues of malnutrition, mortality, and so on. In 2006 the World Economic Forum introduced the Gender Gap Reports, with a Global Gender Gap Index measuring the gender equality of countries in the world. The areas of focus covered economic participation and opportunity, educational, health-based, and political indicators as in comparing the status of men and women.7 The report showed that India will take more than hundred years to reach anywhere near gender equality. It is shown in very poor light especially on women’s educational status or their economic participation and opportunities. As far the internal surveys and studies are concerned, they show an in-depth analysis of the same issues addressing issues of gender equality and its indicators within the country also in comparison between different regions within the country. Surveys like the NFHS in the recent times have made relevant shifts adding men and bringing in a comparison between men and women in studying the family health situations. While we try to understand the relationship between growth and development, it is important to see what these surveys and studies show about family health situation or other relevant indicators of development like access to education, livelihood, or employment in the Indian context. With a decline in access to these basic resources, the need for access to social welfare schemes for the (p.91) poor will certainly increase. The latest data published by the National Family Health Survey8 (NFHS-3 2009: 6) reveal the following trends: The status of malnutrition among children under five years shows that almost half of the children below five years (48 per cent) are chronically malnourished and 43 per cent of children below five are underweight for their age (NFHS 2009: 6).9 This means that nearly half of the country’s children are malnourished and, considering India’s population, this is a huge number. The prevalence of underweight children remains higher in India than in many developing countries like Bangladesh or Nepal (NFHS-3 2009: 7). And despite efforts to improve the nutritional status of young children, especially through the ICDS programme, there has not been much improvement in the nutritional status of children under three years of age (NFHS-3 2009: 13). The data reveal that more than half (54 per cent) of all deaths before five years of age in India are related to malnutrition (NFHS-3 2009: 14). The NFHS-3 data show that seven out of every 10 children in the age group of 6–59 months in India are anaemic. In the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, half of their children are severely (p.92) anaemic. The data also reveal that anaemia among children under three years of age was found to be Page 15 of 31
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Women Workers in India extremely widespread at the time of NFHS-2, and the prevalence of anaemia actually increased further between NFHS-2 and NFHS-3. The percentage of children with any anaemia increased from 74 per cent in NFHS-2 to 79 per cent (NFHS-3 2009: 14– 17). Although more than four-fifths of children under six years lived in areas covered by an anganwadi centre (AWC) at the time of NFHS-3, only 28 per cent of children received any service from an AWC in the 12 months preceding the survey (NFHS 2009: 42). Further, it shows that more than half of women (55 per cent) and almost one-quarter of men (24 per cent) are anaemic (NFHS-3 2009: 49).10 The SDGs, India Country Report,11 looked into the data on the accessibility to food assistance scheme among the poor in India. Among the beneficiary households of food assistance schemes of the central government, while the Mid-Day Meal scheme12 benefited children of an estimated 22.8 per cent rural households in 2004–5, the ICDS (its history is discussed in detail in Chapter 4) benefited 5.7 per cent of (p.93) rural households, while the Food for Work13 scheme catered to only 2.7 per cent, and the Annapoorna scheme14 for the elderly helped 0.9 per cent. In urban India, while children from 8 per cent of households benefited from the Mid-Day Meal scheme and the ICDS scheme benefited 1.8 per cent households, only 0.2 per cent urban households benefited from Annapoorna and only 0.1 per cent from Food for Work. The proportion of births attended by skilled personnel has increased from 33 per cent in 1992–3 to 47 per cent in 2005–6 and to 52 per cent in 2007–8 (SDGs, ICR 2013: 11–13). The ICDS programme is operational in almost every block, and the country currently has more than 7 lakh AWCs according to the Citizens Initiative for Rights of Children Under Six, 2006. NFHS-3 shows that utilization of ICDS services is quite limited, particularly in the urban areas. Malnutrition continues to be a significant risk factor for child deaths in developing countries, including India. Mortality rate among children with severely acute malnutrition is 5–20 times higher than it is among well-nourished children. According to HDR, UNDP, 2006, India has the highest proportion of undernourished children in the world, along with Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Nepal15 (NFHS-3 2006: 50). According to SRS 2011, the sex ratio at birth in the country for the period of 2009–11 (three-year average) has been estimated at 906 and a decline in the infant mortality rate (IMR) from 80 in 1991 to 44 in 2011. According to the SDGs data, the national maternal mortality rate (MMR) level registered a decline of 35.2 per cent over a span of eight years. The IMR (p.94) for infant girls has been consistently higher than IMR for infant boys in India. The IMR (girls) has however experienced greater decline than IMR (boys), the decline being from 81 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 46 per 1,000 live births in 2011 for infant girls and from 78 per 1,000 live births in 2011 for infant boys (SDGs, ICR 2013: 58, 63).
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Women Workers in India As far as the employment situation of women are concerned, the data also show that as per census 2001, female workers constituted 25.63 per cent of the total working population. At the all-India level, wages/salaries for directly employed women workers was Rs 131.23, whereas it is almost double for their male counterparts at Rs 258.04 for the year 2008–9. The literacy rate in 2011 is 74.04 (males 82.14 and females 65.46).16 As far as the WPR is concerned, as per census 2011, the workforce participation rate for females at the national level stands at 25.51 per cent compared with 53.26 per cent for males. As per census 2011, 41.1 per cent of female main and marginal workers are agricultural labourers, 24.0 per cent are cultivators, 5.7 per cent are household industry workers, and 29.2 per cent are engaged in other works. A total of 20.5 per cent women were employed in the organized sector in 2011, with 18.1 per cent working in the public sector and 24.3 per cent in the private sector. The unemployment rate for women of all ages was at par with men at 1.7 in the rural areas in 2011–12. It was 5.2 for women in urban areas during the same period.17 The unemployment rate is estimated to be 4.7 per cent at the all-India level. The majority of the employed persons have been found to be self-employed, which is 48.2 per cent, followed by 17.4 per cent as wage/salary earners, and the rest 34.4 per cent persons under the contract-worker and casual-labourer category.18 (p.95) According to the NSSO data from 2009–10, a decline in employment in the rural areas of the country has led to a fall in the employment of rural women. There has been marginal increase in urban employment mainly due to an increase in employment for men, while employment for women has come down. In total, there has been an increase in employment for less than a million people in the country between 2004–5 and 2009–10, a period in which the Indian economy was growing rapidly. However, there was a decline in rural employment and also in the LFPR for women (Chowdhury 2011: 23–4). There has been a drastic decline in LFPR for women workers both in the urban and rural areas. Such a decline in female LFPR across all age groups could be a result of falling employment opportunities. Self-employment grew significantly in this period with a fall in causal employment and a marginal rise in regular salaried employment. There has been a decline in employment in agriculture, manufacturing and also in the service sector, and all this has been compensated by an increase in employment in the construction sector, both in the rural and urban areas. Scholars like Chandrasekhar and Ghosh (2011) also identified a slowdown in the growth rate of labour in India and the phenomenon called ‘missing female labour’ in the period from 2004 onwards. The ‘missing female labour’ debate reflects the recent fluctuations in the labour participation of women in India which is seen as due to short-term shifts in activities responding to economic conditions. These include an increase in income, leading to women withdrawing from paid work or women from extremely poor background continuing to remain in the labour market leading to its feminization (Abraham 2013). Low work-rate participation, rising percentage Page 17 of 31
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Women Workers in India in self-employment, decrease in employment in the agricultural sector, and increase in contract-based informal-sector jobs in areas like the construction sector have been shown as impacts of the processes of globalization and privatization, culminating in informalization and feminization of labour. A study by Indrani Majumdar (2007), for example, does a detailed analysis of the processes of informalization and feminization of labour in India. Majumdar addresses the debates around the issue of feminization of labour as a field of enquiry. According to her, the concept of feminization of labour emerged in the country in the 1980s ‘to somewhat loosely capture the characteristic features of changes taking place in what is called the labour market, as national (p.96) statutory regulations gave way increasingly to market regulations and globalization’ (Majumdar 2007: 33). It was in the background of developing countries emerging as export-manufacturing hubs with increasing proportions of women workers in export-oriented industries. In this context, feminization of labour became a central concept around which the gender-oriented discourses on the impact of globalization took place (Majumdar 2007: 33–4). Majumdar explains that the conception of feminization of labour included two specific connotations. Firstly, as generally understood, the concept was identified with the rise in the number of women in paid work, either taking over jobs earlier done by men or due to relatively faster expansion of certain sectors predominated by women workers. Secondly, the concept referred to the characteristics of what can be considered ‘flexibilization’ policies. As part of this process, employers reduce the core workforce and rely increasingly on irregular forms of employment in order to avoid paying wages during economic downturns. Flexible labour is fundamentally constituted by ‘a causal nature of the work contract, lower rates of remuneration, lack of security provided low access to skill and so on’, all ‘characteristics associated with women’s historical pattern of labour force participation’ (Majumdar 2007: 34). However, Majumdar argues that recent studies give evidence of reversals in the trend of rising shares of female employment. Especially in the 1990s, against this feminization thesis, there has been a gradual closing of the gender gap in wages with the rise in skill- and capital-intensive industries. While the ‘flexible’ characteristics of women’s work made women the easiest to be removed from work, in some other countries, Majumdar argues, there is a defeminization of labour as shifting industries has led to replacement of the less mobile women workers by the more mobile male workers. Flexibilization does not necessarily lead to direct substitution of women for men or rising female share in paid employment (Majumdar 2007: 34–42). Despite the feminization debate, there has been a decrease in the percentage of women workers in rural India unlike the urban areas of the country. According to her study, the percentage of women workers in the age group of 15–59 declined from a low 18.7 per cent in 1983 to 18 per cent by 2004 in the urban areas. And the drastic decrease in formal, regular jobs for both women and men had a negative effect Page 18 of 31
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Women Workers in India in a major way on the overall development (p.97) of the labour economy. As far as the expansion of the informal sector is concerned, its contribution to the increasing availability of paid work for women as a solution to unemployment and poverty was welcomed by many. However, some scholars point out with equal importance the issues of exploitation and discrimination of women workers in the sector. In the absence of any state intervention or welfare measures in this sector, the issues of the workers were left to trade unions or to the workers themselves. With the origin and expansion of the service sector along with other processes of globalization, there has been a rise in the economy of services and other tertiary fields in paid work, especially for women. Majumdar argues that in the context of India, the expansion of the service sector took place at the cost of the erosion of family labour in the field of agriculture. It is the concentration of capital and growth of monopolies which lead to the growth of the tertiary sector. The expansion of the service sector thus tells the same story everywhere, with an extension-and-expansion approach of the market into new areas of life. The entry of the market into new areas has taken place mainly in the personal domestic sphere and in the otherwise unproductive ‘white collared’ services (Majumdar 2007: 227–8). For her, from the 1980s, the largest increase in women’s paid work has been in the self-employed retail trade in the service sector and in sectors like construction and manufacturing, and in a few sub-sectors like domestic work (Majumdar 2007: 254–70). Women’s share in the service sector has been still lower than their share in the manufacturing sector, while in agriculture, forestry, and fishing or in traditional sectors like textiles or plantations, women have the most significant share of employment. However, in an earlier work, when the impact of globalization was not so fully evident, Gopalan noted that while the availability of work in India in those decades shifted from the primary sector the increase did not take place in the secondary (or manufacturing sector) but in the tertiary or service sector. The number of women workers in the primary sector also increased where the wages are relatively low (Gopalan 1995: 66). These views however reveal that whether in the formal, organized sector or in the informal, unorganized sector, the majority of women worked in areas which had a ‘feminized’ character and experienced different forms of gender inequality.
(p.98) Welfare Schemes, Equality, and the Status of Women in Paid Work in India Development in India is discussed and assessed mostly through visible increase in per capita income. However, the failure here is to see the increasing gap between the rich and the poor and massive increase in the number of people forced to enter into the informal sector market along with a drastic fall in the contribution to GDP from the agricultural sector in a country in which even today around half of the population is still engaged in agriculture. The decline in agriculture is certainly an outcome of the policies of the government with the Page 19 of 31
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Women Workers in India introduction of liberalization of the economy along with withdrawal of the subsidies provided to farmers. Further, the impact of this certainly has a gender dimension since huge number of women workers were part of the agricultural sector as labourers. Changes in the rural economy with the drastic fall in the agricultural sector have contributed to migration or displacement of families and women entering into the more unskilled, vulnerable, exploitative jobs in the urban areas. The fact that more than seventy per cent of women workers in India were in the agricultural sector is very important to understand whatever happened in this sector. Education and paid or skilled work we would expect will have a relationship with each other with more women having access to education, especially even in higher education, the percentage of women workers entering paid word should naturally go up. While the status of women in education, especially in higher education in India is showing a clear increase as mentioned earlier, (which is referred as a ‘silent revolution’ by John (2015) explaining the increase of women in higher education from 10 per cent in the 1940s to around 46 per cent in contemporary India) it is important to note that there is a drastic fall in women’s participation in paid work. This indicates otherwise that the educated woman in the contemporary times is also mostly doing only unpaid work mostly in the domestic space with less chances of finding paid work. On the one hand, here women’s struggle for survival, of themselves and of their families, and their contribution in household is still not counted while on the other hand, the pressure on men to be the head of the household, to find employment, and income continues as a stereotypical gender norm in Indian society. (p.99) Further, along with a drastic decline in the agricultural sector work, recent studies also have shown a fall in the work participation for women in the manufacturing sector too. While women leave the agricultural sector in the rural areas, they have not been incorporated in the same level in manufacturing jobs in the cities at the same level reflecting the shift. Further, the expansion of the paid job market as mentioned earlier, has been more into the specific service sector jobs. Thus this phase in the Indian labour market is considered as the phase of ‘jobless economic growth’ as far as women workers in India are concerned (Naidu 2015). The expansion of the informal sector and the decline in the formal sector jobs are certainly related to each other. However, it is important to understand the two different spectrums around this, while on the one hand to see what happened to women who had access to education since they also have not been successful in entering the job market and as far as women from lower classes are concerned, lack of education, fall in the agricultural sector jobs together led to major crisis in their life in terms of acquiring livelihood. With such increasing inequality, the vulnerabilities towards all forms of harassment including sexual work atmosphere in the informal sector jobs, lack of sources of livelihood which lead to extreme poverty and malnutrition, the demand for any form of support from the government in terms Page 20 of 31
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Women Workers in India of social welfare schemes would certainly increase. This is where the increasing relevance of the role of schemes like the ICDS or others comes into the picture in contemporary India. With the government withdrawing itself more from providing education, livelihood, or access to health care, made the role of social welfare policies all the more relevant. A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report released in 2013 addressing the performance report of the ICDS and its anganwadis during the period 2006–11 concluded that ‘given India’s status on the key indicators for the wellbeing of its children, the ICDS scheme requires appropriate strengthening for effective delivery of its services in order to build a healthy and sound future for country’ (CAG Report, GOI 2013). The health indicators shown above from the latest reports or studies on India’s important development indicators illustrate that the country needs specific measures especially to improve the situation of its women and children. Moreover, other than the issues of health nutrition or mortality, rising unemployment is another important obstacle which needs urgent attention. (p.100) Though independent India was expected to guarantee access to education for all, even after six decades, almost half of the population in the country is uneducated. Though education for women from all sectors was promoted in some ways through different policies and schemes by successive governments, social, cultural, and economic impediments still remain leading to drop out of a good majority of girl children from the school. Only a small percentage of middle-class and elite women have had the advantage of achieving higher education, and enter professional, skilled jobs. Other than these policies and provisions in the Constitution, the Constitution also has enacted Acts like the Minimum Wages Act 1948, the Equal Remuneration Act 1976, and so on, to guarantee workers’ rights and equality. With the support of the Constitution, the state institutions and its policies and schemes were expected to uplift the conditions of majority of the working poor in the country. As discussed in the previous chapter, the history and politics of welfare mean different things for people in the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries. As far as the poor working-class women and their families are concerned, anything in the name of welfare from the state mean a support for survival. In reality, as far as the extreme poor population is concerned, whether it is public property of the state or the social welfare offers from big companies as charity, the primary factor is only whether it helps improve their condition. In a country like India, where extreme diversity and disparity exist between different states and communities, any form of welfare measures by the state is to be welcomed by the people. The Five Year Plans of India played an important role in the development process of the country since the time of independence. During the pre-independence period itself, towards the planning of development in India, a National Planning Committee (NPC) was formed to address various issues of Page 21 of 31
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Women Workers in India development, with a sub-committee formed in 1939 to address the issue of ‘Women’s Role in Planned Economy’ ‘to deal with the place of woman in the planned economy’.19 Though the first Five Year Plan addressed the need (p. 101) to achieve equal status and opportunity for women and their overall development, in the later plans, women disappeared from the discourse on development, work, and the world of welfare (Chaudhari 2000: 120). The Central Social Welfare Board was established in 1953 to promote welfare and development services for women, children, and other underprivileged groups. Following this, the state governments set up the State Social Welfare Boards for the same purpose. According to the Planning Commission, India’s social welfare policy intends ‘to cater for the special needs of persons and groups who by reason of some handicap—social, economic, physical, or mental—are unable to avail of, or are traditionally denied the amenities and services provided by the community’ (Planning Commission Report cited in Chaudhari 2000: 122). Women as a community were also identified and incorporated as recipients by the Ministry of Social Welfare of welfare policies in the social sector. Women were considered handicapped by social customs and social values, and therefore social welfare services had to be specially endeavoured to rehabilitate them. The Planning Commission itself recognized that it was only after the first four Five Year Plans that women were counted as active economic players and it was only in the fifth Five Year Plan that this shift was reflected in the welfare and development policies. The Planning Commission defined three major areas under which special attention is to be given to women’s development: education, social welfare, and health. The health programmes for women mainly concentrated on provision of services for maternal and child welfare, health education, nutrition, and family planning (CSWI 1974: 306–7). The responsibility for planning women’s welfare programmes were scattered across different departments and agencies of the government at the local level, state level, and at the centre among different ministries, including the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare, Health and Family Planning, Labour and Employment, and Human Resources Development. At the state level, all states have different departments looking at health, family planning, and education, and some states have set up separate departments for women’s welfare and education (CSWI 1974: 309). When the Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB) decided to launch the welfare extension projects in 1954, its activities included balwadis, maternity services, and general medical aid, as well as social education and craft training for women. During the Five Year Plans, the (p.102) CSWB initiated many welfare projects among which many folded up later or were handed over to MMs and voluntary organizations. On the recommendation of the CSWB and an Evaluation Committee of Social Welfare, in 1964, it was decided to revise the services existing in rural areas in different patterns, aiming to develop a country-wide programme of integrated welfare services for children. Thus the Family and Child Welfare Scheme was initiated in November 1967; whereas Page 22 of 31
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Women Workers in India extension projects provided services for women and children, the Family and Child Welfare Projects aimed at integrated development of the pre-school child, training to young mothers and all services that were necessary for proper growth and development of the child and the rural family (CSWI 1974: 332). The welfare projects were initially funded by the central and state governments, and also aided by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The implementation of the welfare projects for women and children was made possible through MMs and other voluntary agencies. Other than the state’s funding, voluntary agencies were made to mobilize resources from the local community for the welfare projects. A study by the Planning Commission on the role of voluntary agencies in the welfare projects in 1959 recommended that, ‘whereas all programmes of social welfare arising out of the statutory responsibility of the State should be sponsored by State departments of Social Welfare, other social welfare services to meet local needs should be implemented through voluntary organisations’ (CSWI 1974: 338–9). Instead of institutionalizing the welfare services through state offices, voluntary institutions and MMs (the history of MMs is discussed in detail in Chapter 4) were used to engage with the local women and avail them of welfare services. A critical analysis of the role of the voluntary agencies in the community, especially the MMs, will show that they promoted women’s role only as passive recipients of these welfare programmes and of development in general. These agencies are also criticized for their limitations in involving the entire community, especially the lower-caste and lower-class sections of the local community. Kalpagam explains that from the first Plan onwards, women were targeted for welfare support which was combined with the community development approach. This approach promoted the creation of MMs in which the community developer was seen as a harmonizer of interests rather than as a stimulator of awareness. These (p.103) MMs became the site for women from the rural elite to promote their vision and ideals for rural women, which were completely at variance with the realities of majority of the women in the country (Kalpagam 1994: 34). Such attempts, although intended to change the status of women in development from passive recipients to active agents and contributors, were just strategic moves which did not help in bringing the benefits of welfare initiatives to the majority of poor women. However, different plans and policies were shaped and implemented to achieve the goal of integrating women into development and making them a direct beneficiary of the welfare programmes of the country. These include National Perspective Plan for Women, National Commission for Self-Employed Women, and Women in the Informal Sector; meanwhile, other state institutions were also set up to facilitate such plans and policies. The Shramshakti Report (1988)20 of the National Commission on Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector pushed for universal childcare facilities and the setting up of exclusive credit facilities for women through a national credit fund for women. Each Five Page 23 of 31
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Women Workers in India Year Plan had particular agenda for development in specific fields. However, the ‘trickle down’ had a very slow pace and even after six decades of implementing development plans, a good majority of the population still has no access to health and education. By the fourth Plan period, the ‘growth and redistribution’ strategy changed to the ‘minimum needs and target approach’. This was a rather late recognition of the need to make the state responsible for the minimum needs of the poor (Kalpagam 1994: 35). These policies and plans did not take into consideration women’s different roles in paid and unpaid work. The understanding of the needs of the poor was aimed only at life-sustaining inputs and had no macro structural perspective. Policies targeted households, rather than individual members. As far as the policies are concerned, women were not independent agents; instead they were part of the household and were just beneficiaries. The idea of state welfare policy was thus (p.104) conceptually formed around the patriarchal notion of women being either dependents or supplementary earners. Kalpagam points out the paradox that, however, there was no difficulty in identifying women from these households as targets for family planning programmes (Kalpagam 1994: 35). Studying the condition and vulnerabilities of the women workers in the country, a report of the National Commission on Self-employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector, GOI, 1988, recommended ‘an integrated and holistic approach tackling the basic issues regarding women through planning’, and to meet its objectives it recommended ‘the formulation of micro policies in various areas that are well integrated’ (cited in Kalpagam, 1994: 38). A change in development planning where women were earlier considered passive agents who were in the background supporting the ‘breadwinner’ takes place with the agenda in the 1960s and 1970s to ‘integrate’ women into the process of development as active agents. A Department for Women and Child Development was created under the MHRD in 1985. Each plan and policy by the state, whether it is health related like family planning, or education, political participation or other fields, there was a demand and attempt towards a more direct and active participation of women. Though the Minimum Wages Act 1948 was meant to attempt statutory regulation of wages and working conditions, in many sectors and industries the Act has not been enforced and the working conditions too are poor. Many of these sectors, especially where women are in good majority, also have no labour organizations to fight for their rights. However, the implementation of these Acts meant to address gender inequality and ensure women workers their rights were not effective in practice. The Minimum Wages Act in the legislative stage itself discriminated against women by fixing a lower wage for women than men. Moreover, majority of the workers in the country are not aware of the existence of Acts like the Maternity Benefits Act 1961 or the Equal Remuneration Act 1976. (I will discuss more on these Acts and their role and relevance in the debate on devaluation of women’s work in India in the forthcoming chapter). Page 24 of 31
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Women Workers in India The most important service towards working women’s welfare is the provision of childcare. The National Creche Fund was set up by the Government of India in 1994 with the objective to meet the growing demand for crèches and to provide day-care facilities to the children in the age group of 0–5 years. It paid grants to registered voluntary (p.105) organizations or MMs and state governments to implement crèche programmes for poor children. This assistance was given to both anganwadi-cum- crèche centres and other General Crèche centres. The CSWI report shows that as per the welfare plans, crèches were to be provided for the working mothers in factories, plantations, or industrial premises employing more than 50 women workers. In the case of mines, crèches are to be provided even if a single woman is employed. Other facilities like separate latrines and urinals were also to be provided for women in every factory, mine, or plantation (CSWI 1974: 190). The ILO suggested governments to take steps to coordinate the provision of these facilities by employers, voluntary agencies and the local community, and to ensure at least minimum standards of services. In accordance with the ILO conventions, laws for maternity protection and prohibition of night and underground work were also ratified by the Government of India. Apart from these, the general welfare provisions regarding sanitation, health services, social insurance, and so on, also apply to all workers. However, there has been no legal provision to avail any of these facilities for the women in the unorganized sector (CSWI 1974: 228–9). Recent experiences show that with the expansion of the informal sector and the increase in the number of women joining this sector, whether in industries or in the agricultural field, welfare policies have become almost defunct when it comes to a majority of workers doing paid work. The expanding tertiary sector has majority of its women workers without access to any such polices, while they have to go a long way to even demand basic workers’ rights, minimum wages or equal wages with men. While there is a need for the government to spend more on welfare programmes by enhancing the budget towards the same, the general atmosphere in the country is against any increase in expenditure in the social sector. Recent times have seen drastic financial cuts in the social sector and this has a direct impact on the welfare policies in general and policies and schemes for women and children in particular, since expenditure in these sectors are not of immediate profit. A report was published in 2006–7 on the issue of Social Security for Unorganized Workers by the NCEUS which suggested that there is a grave need for laws to ensure ‘comprehensive protection’ to informal workers in India. Moreover, proper implementation of existing laws like the Minimum Wages Act 1948 and Equal Remuneration Act 1976 is equally important. (p.106) However, there is also the criticism that this report too has not given enough attention to the needs of unpaid women workers (Dutta and Pal 2012; Neetha 2006). In a country like India the availability of cheap labour in the absence of strict implementation of minimum wages works against the majority of the women workers and they get exploited. Public policies have an important role to play in Page 25 of 31
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Women Workers in India this context and the government has to initiate new policies and schemes to benefit the women workers in the unorganized sector. Apart from policies to address issues of women’s health and economic independence, it is most important to expand the existing childcare facilities so that women have an opportunity to join paid work and the development of the child is not at risk. Though legislations like the minimum wages or equal wages Acts have supported gender equality and encouraged women to enter into paid work, in practice, there is a serious absence of facilities of childcare. For a majority of women in the absence of maternity benefits and childcare facilities, it is impossible to do paid work. On the other hand, the availability of these facilities and the implementation of minimum wages would have encouraged many women to do paid work. It is also important that policies and schemes are converted into legislations, and the responsibility of welfare is taken from voluntary agencies and handled through proper institutionalization under the state governments. However, the new economic policies and liberalization programme have changed the entire scenario in the Indian political economy and slowly, government agencies and its welfare programmes are taken over or sponsored by private agencies and institutions, both national and international. Private capital is flowing into the public and private spaces of the country and, like other spheres, these agencies and their aide programmes have appropriated the welfare programmes in the country on behalf of the state.
Welfare, Globalization, and the Entry of Private Capital A cutback in social welfare measures ought to have a direct impact on the entry of women into paid work. Not only do women withdraw themselves from entering paid work outside, the fact that processes of reproduction and childcare have no state support or it has been left to the private sector to provide childcare, will make it unaffordable for (p.107) families. In this context, either the poor women will take the triple burden adding extra working hours to their routine or they will become the victims of added poverty in the absence of an additional income through their paid work. In India, majority of the women workers have to work and they and their children have to live in extremely exploitative conditions in the absence of state providing maternity benefits and childcare. Private institutions, both national and international, are taking over where the state has withdrawn itself from the responsibilities of welfare. These include big and small NGOs, other voluntary and community organizations, or corporate companies in the name of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). (See Chapter 6 for a detailed discussion on CSR and its role in ICDS). In India, though the last decade has seen major cutbacks in the expenditure on women’s welfare, the government still has not completely withdrawn itself from the responsibility of providing welfare services. Attempts to move new legislations towards helping the informal sector workers and to provide them Page 26 of 31
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Women Workers in India with social security can be seen as a forward step though this still has not become a reality. However, the entry of private capital into all sectors of the economy, including the social-welfare sector, has changed the setting of the situation. Both national and international financial institutions pushed for India’s entry into the global economy with globalization and with this they also encouraged the withdrawal of the Indian state from welfare activities. And, today, these very institutions have taken over the role of being providers of welfare services in India by promoting and contributing to the welfare programmes for poor women in the country (Chaudhari 2000: 122). With whether a smaller or larger share of contribution, these institutions are actively designing or shaping these welfare programmes and, use these programmes as an entry point into the lives of local communities and poor people especially women in this country. In response to the changes brought forth through the policies under the processes of globalization, many national and international private financial institutions stepped in with initiatives of social protection. These include institutions like the WB and ILO. These institutions have initiated public security schemes for the welfare of the poor in the developing countries. They have contributed to a new debate on social policy with new ideas and concepts where private agencies, individuals, and institutions have a role to play. For the WB, the concept of (p.108) social protection comes along with the belief that successful markets are the best means to help the vulnerable poor to manage their risks. And in the absence of a successful market, other private institutions, including non-governmental organizations and other community and civil society organizations, are seen as the next best option to help with providing social security to the poor (Kabeer 2010: 11). In the context of the massive expansion of the informal sector in developing countries, the WB explains that the changes in the global economy prompted the Bank to change its policy from ‘social security’ to ‘social protection’. The ILO makes a distinction between ‘social security and social protection’. ‘Social security’ was taken to refer to the public measures through which a society protected its members. It refers to public measures while ‘social protection’ ‘included not only public social security schemes but also a variety of private and non-statutory schemes with similar objectives’ (Kabeer 2010: 17). The new social policy discourse relies on concepts and ideas like decentralization, self-reliance, community participation, co-responsibility, voluntary work, and so on, and of getting rid of excessive bureaucracies; this discourse is very much compatible with the Bank’s privatizing agenda (Kabeer 2010: 20). The poor thus should not become dependent on the government and its bureaucracy for survival, but should find their own ways to social security either through these private financial institutions or through their voluntary agencies which will work with the community.
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Women Workers in India Furthermore, the new initiatives promoted by the state governments and other voluntary agencies like the new Social Security Scheme for Unorganized Sector Workers or the self-help groups (SHGs) for ‘micro credit’, targeting the poor women in India, is also a way of mobilizing resources by the workers themselves for their own social security needs. It is, in other words, a process by which the resources of the poor will be used to circulate among the poor (Majumdar 2007: 40). Whether through community voluntary agencies or through other private financial institutions, the state is trying to move away from its own responsibility towards providing social security to the poor. There is no dearth of new schemes, programmes, and policies addressing the issues of women workers, women’s welfare or child/adolescent welfare. In the past one decade, many new schemes have been launched, including the National Policy for the Empowerment of Women (2001), the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (2001), National Guidelines on Infant and Young (p.109) Child Feeding (2004), National Plan of Action for Children (2005), Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme for the Children of Working Mothers (2006), Janani Suraksha Yojana (2005), Kishori Shakti Yojana (2006), Mother and Child Tracking System (2009), Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY 2010), Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (Sabla 2011), and so on. Moreover, in a country like India where the public sector is still alive and public institutions, its polices and schemes still do have a role to play in social welfare, it is important to see to it that the existing measures of social welfare do work and they remain successful in providing benefit to the maximum number of people, especially among the poor. In order to understand the limitations within social welfare policies and the role of the Indian state in contributing to the increasing exploitation of women workers in the country especially from the poorer sections, in the following two chapters of this book, an attempt is made to study one of the oldest and India’s most important social welfare scheme—the ICDS through the story of its workers—the women workers who implement or work in the scheme. In order to introduce the AWW to the reader, the forthcoming chapter attempts a chronological history of the ICDS programme intertwined with the history of anganwadi women workers. Notes:
(1) One can add many more to the list of these conceptual or political binaries like the ‘Developing’ and the ‘Developed’ or the ‘First’ and the ‘Third’ Worlds. However, whether one believes in such binaries or dichotomies or not, the political necessity to point out their existence in whatever form makes it difficult to avoid mentioning them. (2) In the previous chapter I have discussed the feminist debate on the impact of women entering paid work on the institution of family. For a detailed discussion on the impact of industrialization on women workers, also see Okaley 1974. Page 28 of 31
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Women Workers in India (3) These data are drawn from the SAARC Development Goals (SDGs), India Country Report 2013, published by the central statistics office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. (4) International Labour Organisation (ILO) has explained its position on the informal economy in its report, ‘Decent Work and the Informal Economy’, Report VI, published by the International Labour Conference (2002), 90th session, Geneva. (5) The National Commission on Labour under the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation published its first report in 1969. This report studies the economic trends in the country, the condition of its workers, issues related to worker’s welfare and security, and so on. Its recommendations reflect the change from agriculture to industrialization, and the impact of the process of urbanization on the worker. On the issue of women’s work, it said that the right of a woman to work should not be considered subordinate or secondary to that of a man. There will also be an attempt at implementation of equal pay for equal work, and more women will be absorbed into skilled work. It called for stricter regulation of contract work and its abolition in due course. Other than its special reports on women workers in India—‘Towards Equality’ in 1974 and Shramsakti report in 1988—the National Commission of Labour published its second report on the condition of workers in India in 2002. Unlike the first National Commission of Labour four decades ago, which focused on workers’ welfare and the streamlining of labour laws, the second report in the background of globalization and privatization focuses on the process of reform in labour laws, supporting contractual labour, and ‘hire and fire at will regime’. (6) These data are drawn from the report titled, ‘Children in India 2012—A Statistical Appraisal’, published by the Social Statistics Division, Central Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. (7) A latest report published in 2015, the Global Gender Gap Index ranked 145 countries and India ranked 108 in position. (8) The NFHS is a large-scale, multi-round survey conducted in a representative sample of households throughout India. Three rounds of the survey have been conducted since the first survey in 1992–3. The NFHS provides state and national information for India on fertility, infant and child mortality, the practice of family planning, maternal and child health, reproductive health, nutrition, anaemia, utilization and quality of health, and family planning services. Each successive round of the NFHS has had two specific goals: a) to provide essential data on health and family welfare that are needed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) and other agencies for policy and programme purposes; and b) to provide information on important emerging health and family welfare issues. The NFHS-3 (2005–6) is the third in a series of national surveys; earlier, Page 29 of 31
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Women Workers in India NFHS surveys were carried out in 1992–3 (NFHS-1) and 1998–9 (NFHS-2). All three surveys were conducted under the stewardship of the MHFW, Government of India, with the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, serving as the nodal agency. (9) These data are drawn from the report titled ‘Nutrition in India’, published in 2009 by NFHS-3. (10) The recently published NFHS 4 survey report (2015) by the MHFW in 15 states in India around 40 per cent of its children below the age of five are stunted which comes to around 62 million. Half of its children in the age group of 0–6 and women in the age group of 15–49 are anaemic with the highest percentage in Bihar, Meghalaya, and Madhya Pradesh. (11) The SDGs, India Country Report 2013, a statistical appraisal, is published by the central statistics office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. (12) It is the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education popularly known as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. It was launched by the Government of India in 1995 with the objective of boosting the universalization of primary education by increasing enrolment, attendance, and retention, and simultaneously improving the nutritional status of students in primary classes. Accordingly, many of the states started distributing food grains (dry rations) at the rate of 3 kg per month/per child. The Cooked Mid-Day Meal (CMDM) scheme was introduced in all Government and Government-assisted primary schools in the form of a country-wide ‘Day of action on mid-day meals’ in April 2002 by a landmark direction of the Supreme Court. In 2006, the scheme was revised to provide cooked mid-day meal with 450 calories and 12 grams of protein content to all children in primary classes (I–V) in the country. (13) The National Food for Work Programme was launched in 2004 in the most backward districts of India with the objective of generating supplementary wage employment. The programme is open to all rural poor who are prepared to do manual, unskilled labour. It is implemented as a centrally sponsored scheme and as part of the programme, food grains are provided to the states free of cost. (14) The Annapurna scheme was started by the Indian Government in 2000 to provide food to senior citizens (above 65 years) who cannot take care of themselves and are not under the National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS), and who have no one to take care of them. The scheme would provide 10 kg of free food grains a month to eligible senior citizens. (15) This information is based on the report ‘Health and Living Conditions in Eight Indian Cities’ published by NFHS-3, India, 2005–6, under the MHFW, GOI.
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Women Workers in India (16) These data are drawn from the report ‘Statistical Profile on Women Labour’, 2009–11 published by the Labour Bureau under the Ministry of Labour and Employment, GOI. (17) These data are drawn from the report ‘Women and Men in India 2013’, (15th Issue) published by the Central Statistics Office, National Statistics Organisation under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. (18) These data are drawn from the ‘Report on Third Annual Employment— Unemployment Scenario—2012–13’, Vol. I, Labour Bureau published by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, GOI. (19) The details of this committee’s report are available in the Planning Commission document titled ‘Engendering Public Policy: A Report on the Work of the Working Group of Feminist Economists during the Preparation of Eleventh Five Year Plan: 2007–2012’ published by the Planning Commission in 2010. (20) The Shramshakti Report (1988) of the National Commission of Selfeemployed Women and Women in the Informal Sector was commissioned by the Government of India to bring visibility to women workers in the informal sector. It gave recommendations to the government to improve the condition of these women workers and recommended encouragement of women’s voluntary organizations.
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0004
Abstract and Keywords This chapter includes a detailed chronology of the history of honorary/ anganwadi workers in India. Here the focus is on the women workers—both workers and helpers—as part of the scheme, instead of an analysis of the impact of ICDS on the beneficiaries. The everyday functioning of the anganwadi and the problems around the functioning of the ICDS will be a part of the history of the anganwadi worker. It attempts a narrative of the ICDS, the history of the anganwadi worker and helper, their honorarium/wages, the training provided to the workers, funding for the ICDS both from the government and from external agencies like the World Bank or USAID, and reviews and appraisals of the ICDS. It also discusses in detail the Universalization of the ICDS and its Mission Mode in the context of the future needs of ICDS and its workers. Keywords: Anganwadis, anganwadi workers, anganwadi helpers, Mahila Mandals, ICDS, ICDS training, ICDS IV, ICDS Mission Mode, Honorarium, Universalization of ICDS
The case of the honorary worker is the story of the AWW. Through the case study of the honorary worker in India, what is being revealed here is the direct and specific role of the state in devaluation of women’s work in India. The story of the AWW is in its nature one among the many cases along with many other scheme workers where one can see a direct relationship between the worker and the government. However, the AWW’s case is on its own a unique one, considering the specific legal and technical definition of the term—honorary worker. In order to understand the AWW, one will have to look at the history of the ICDS in India. Further, though the history of AWWs is the history of ICDS in Page 1 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis India, in this study the focus would be on the workers—both workers and helpers—as part of the scheme instead of a detailed analysis of whatever happened with the ICDS (around its beneficiaries, as in the case of child nutrition, infant mortality, pre-schooling, or care for the young mother). In the post-independence period or from the 1940s onwards, there has been a demand for childcare services for the benefit of both women and children. Here, one can say it should be explained as for the interest of the family whether it is male headed or female headed. Earlier, we briefly addressed the problem by considering children as women’s problem, which also gets extended to the marginalization of the needs of both women and children while clubbed together. Further, many a times, the demand for childcare services were used (p.111) by the employers against the interests of women workers, to avoid providing crèches for women workers by reducing their number or getting rid of women workers, and paying the relatively nominal penalties; employing women part-time and so on (Khullar 1994). As discussed in the earlier chapter, the CSWI studied the absence of adequate childcare services as an obstacle in women’s economic and political participation, especially for the women working in the unorganized sector. It recommended, other than the extension of Maternity Benefits Act to women working in all industries, specific provision of crèches for the benefit of all women which will take care of health and education of both the mother and child (CSWI 1974). In 1952, the Planning Commission established the Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW) for the purpose of undertaking multifarious child-welfare activities. As a part of the Third Five Year Plan in India, the ICCW initiated schemes of Integrated Child Welfare Services. The interventions made were part of the pre-school education (PSE) or Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme, and the concept of balwadis was part of this programme. Extensive networks of balwadis were opened in the rural areas of the country, focusing on child welfare and education. The women who worked in the balwadis as a part of the ECCE were called balsevikas. Balsevika Training Institutes and Centres were established all over the country to train balsevikas to work at the grassroot level. The profile of the balsevikas was similar to the AWWs who worked in the ICDS scheme whom we will study in detail in this chapter. Balsevikas could be considered predecessors to the AWWs and were replaced by the AWWs with the introduction of the ICDS. There were policies in India specifically addressing child welfare. As part of its many initiatives to address the issue of child welfare, the Government of India formulated and adopted the National Policy for Children as a prominent part of national policy in 1974. In the policy, the Government declared the nation’s children ‘as supremely important asset’ and that the national plans for development of human resources should have a prominent place for children’s programmes. The national policy for children called upon states ‘to provide adequate services to children, both before and after the birth and through the period of growth, to ensure their full physical, mental and social development’ Page 2 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis and to cover ‘all children in the country ... (p.112) within a reasonable time’ since this would impact the ‘future human development’.1 The National Policy acknowledged the fact that the majority of India’s children did not have access to these, and other development programmes did not address these needs. So it planned for comprehensive health and nutrition programmes, nutrition education, and care for young mothers, and free and compulsory education for all children. The policy also constituted a National Children’s Board to coordinate all these services. The role of voluntary organizations and people’s participation along with legislative and administrative support by the government was specified (National Policy for Children 1974). Other government initiatives like reports and schemes on working women, policies for education, and so on, such as the National Policy of Education (1986), the Shramshakti Report (1988), CSWI Report (1974), and the Report by the National Commission on Labour (which were discussed in the earlier chapter) made suggestions and recommendations on the issue. In the 1950s the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child also helped to change the very approach to childcare and child rights. The Government of India also ratified the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child. The convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the UN in 1989 and enforced in 1990. These measures were meant to help the government to turn the Directives in the Indian Constitution into a reality. The DWCD formulated the National Plan of Action for Children in 1992, and in 2003 a National Charter for Children was adopted which redefined India’s policy commitments towards the child. A revised National Plan of Action for Children was also adopted in 2005 to remove obstacles and improve the condition of children in India. However, as discussed earlier and as one can see many of the welfare policies do bring women and children together and mostly also address childcare as mainly women’s responsibility. Otherwise, childcare provision is seen as an extension of women’s work in the public (p.113) realm from the private. The ICDS is a clear example of this tendency in the policymaking in all senses.
Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) In 1975 the Ministry of Social Welfare evolved the Integrated Child Development Scheme during the Fifth Five Year Plan period. With this scheme, the focus shifted from child welfare to child development and the emphasis to integration and coordination of services. The organization of the ICDS scheme has many levels and the anganwadi is the focal point for the delivery of various ICDS activities. The Ministry of Social Welfare under the Government of India is responsible for the budgetary control and administration of the ICDS. It issued guidelines on the main objectives of the ICDS as follows: To improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age group of 0–6 years, to lay the foundations of proper psychological, physical and social development of the child, to reduce the incidence of mortality, Page 3 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis morbidity, malnutrition and school drop-out, to achieve effectively coordination of policy and implementation amongst the various departments to promote child development and to enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child through the proper nutrition and health education.2 (Planning Commission 1982: i) Thus, the ICDS scheme consisted of six services: provision of supplementary nutrition, health care, referral services, non-formal PSE to children and adolescent girls, nutrition education, and care of pregnant and nursing mothers. The main objective was to improve the health status of the children in the age group of 0–6. It also aimed at specifically addressing issues of malnutrition, mortality, morbidity, school education, and so on. The health status of the child included the health status of the mother too. Women and children together as one unit became an integral part of the scheme which also became a specific target of the (p.114) Five Year Plans. Other than children, projects for adolescent girls, such as the Kishori Shakti Yojana, were also added to ICDS later. The ICDS is considered a complex programme in its implementation since there are many actors involved in the scheme and though it is a ‘centrally sponsored scheme’, the basic responsibility of implementing it rests with the state governments (FOCUS 2006: 26). The network of ICDS all over the country is known as the AWC. An AWC includes the AWW and the anganwadi helper (AWH). However, there are others like the supervisor, the Child Development Project Officer (CDPO), and other members of the community who are also important parts of the scheme. The Department of Women and Child Welfare (DWCW) set up in the year 1985 as part of the MHRD was upgraded to a ministry in 2006. The ministry formulates plans, policies, and programmes, and enacts and amends legislation related to the welfare and development of women and children. With the establishment of the ministry, the ICDS programme came under its guidance. The ministry has six autonomous institutions functioning under it, including the NIPCCD,3 National Commission for Women (NCW), and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR).4 The Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) under the (p.115) MHRD and the MHFW issues orders/letters related to every decision and action taken regarding the ICDS and AWWs. In August 1975, the MHRD, stated, The project area (of an ICDS project) will be community development block for a rural project, the tribal development block for a tribal project and a ward or a slum having a population about 1 lakh for an urban project ... If any balwadis or other pre-school institutions exist, these should be utilized. Wherever such institutions don’t exist, new anganwadis will have to be organised. Efforts should be made to organise anganwadis through mahila mandals, other voluntary organisations, local bodies, panchayats etc. The Page 4 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis government will have to run the anganwadis directly in those places where no such institution is available or can be entrusted with the running of an anganwadi. The anganwadi workers should be a person acceptable in the local community. Special care should be given in her selection so that children of scheduled caste and other weaker sections of the society are ensured free access to anganwadi. This initial guideline is clear in its intentions in terms of utilizing the existing institutions and networks for the new project and also to make sure that the new scheme is implemented in such a way that the members of the community feel comfortable in utilizing it. Other than the need for the AWW to be a member of the local community, it also suggested that the AWWs in the selected project areas may be selected by a committee consisting of the District Social Welfare Officer, the Block Development Officer, the CDPO, the Medical Officer of Primary Health Care Centre, the president of the panchayat/block advisory committee, the district representative of the state social welfare board, and any other nonofficials which the state government may consider appropriate. The scheme envisages active involvement of the Central Social Welfare Advisory Board, State Social Welfare Advisory Board, voluntary organizations, local bodies, panchayats, and so on, in the implementation of the scheme which can be given assistance for running the anganwadis. The CSWB and the State Social Welfare Advisory Boards (SSWABs) are expected to be involved in the organization of new voluntary organizations and also in the promotion and development of existing voluntary organizations so that these organizations can be entrusted with the running of the anganwadis. The guidelines also clarify that all the personnel (p.116) and posts under ICDS should be sanctioned in the appropriate pay scales of the state government, and for this necessary adjustments in the cost estimate of the scheme are permitted. The ICDS has a centrally designed structure and is a top-down programme. The community’s ‘formal’ involvement is minimal and at each level the ICDS is staffed with government functionaries, mostly holding regular jobs and cut off from the village communities. The only exception is at the village level, where the AWW who is not a salaried functionary, is invested with the responsibility of interacting with the community and eliciting full cooperation (FOCUS Report 2006: 93). (The role of the AWW is discussed in detail later.) In those days, the provision of day-care centres was available only in a few states and it was hugely inadequate. Soon there was also a realization of the need to give enough attention to the development of adolescent girls and children aged 0–3 years, and this was taken up by the DWCD. Considering these needs, ICDS was designed by the government to become the major vehicle for childcare in India (Khullar 1994, 30). The ICDS has separate projects for rural and tribal areas. A rural project is for one lakh population in around 100 villages and a tribal project is meant for 35,000 people in 50 villages. Funds and basic equipment are provided to AWWs (NIPCCD 2009). Initially, the ICDS project was launched with Page 5 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis just 33 projects. In November 1975, the DWCD stated that the general model compilation of having 100 anganwadis in rural/urban project and 50 anganwadis in a tribal project to be adopted to cater to the needs of each ICDS project area with reference to the demographic and other features of the project area. In November 1983, the DWCD stated that several blocks selected for ICDS have a population of more than one lakh and therefore the number of anganwadis should be increased. In the earlier period, the rural and urban projects were running comparatively well than the tribal projects (Planning Commission 1982: 14–15). The anganwadis in the tribal areas had less population to cover than the ones in the urban areas. In the hilly and desert areas, villages may be small or divided into small hamlets. In such cases an anganwadi may be set up in every small village or hamlet having a population of 300 or more. By 1985 there were around 1,000 projects. The project area is a community development block, a tribal development block, or a group of slums and it is further divided into anganwadis. By 1987 (p.117) every anganwadi served a population of about 1,000 in rural areas and urban slums, and about 700 in tribal areas (NIPCCD Report on ICDS 1987). At a later stage what is called ‘mini-anganwadis’ were opened for the tribal areas. In June 1996 the MHRD (DWCD) stated the opening of mini-anganwadis to cover the remote and less populated hamlets/villages in the country. According to it, the universalization of the ICDS has been achieved in the country in 1995–6 by covering all the Community Development Blocks having a population of less than 300. However, the AWWs in these mini-AWCs are to be paid only half the honorarium. The mini-anganwadi is a concept where five minianganwadis can function linked to an anganwadi. A mini-anganwadi is proposed for a population of 150 people and it should be located within one kilometre from the main anganwadi. Mini-anganwadis are a thrust area of ICDS IV,5 and by this phase, with the decision for the universalization of the ICDS is in process, there is massive expansion of the number of mini-anganwadis and the also function with all services available in an anganwadi. The concept of minianganwadis was part of the third phase of ICDS which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter.6 The implementation of the ICDS demanded a coordinated effort of different ministries, departments, and voluntary organizations. The Ministry of Social Welfare had to ensure the involvement of the CSWB, SSWABs, and other organizations both at the state and central levels. The implementation of ICDS had to be a coordinated effort of the MHFW, state departments of health, department of food, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Education and Culture, Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ministry of Rural Development, and so on. Moreover, international organizations like the UNICEF, WFP, CARE, and so on, also contemplated on offering support (Planning
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis Commission 1982: 9). The USAID and WB also became active partners in supporting the ICDS. (p.118) From the very beginning of the planning towards the ICDS, there has been a thrust on the role of voluntary work and voluntary organizations. It is interesting to see that here the thrust is on voluntary work and the later part of this book will further discuss the relationship between the voluntary and the honorary. While the workers of ICDS are honorary workers, as an extension to this, the work they get done or do for the community will also be done voluntarily either by institutions of individuals. Ministries and other agencies from the very beginning have been very clear about this involvement of the voluntary agencies. The DWCD in 1975 stated that regarding implementing the ICDS at the village level ‘the scheme envisages active involvement of local voluntary organizations like Mahila Mandals, local bodies, panchayatraj institutions, etc. in its implementation’. The ICDS scheme in its initial stages envisaged that the running of anganwadis should involve voluntary organizations. But by the 1980s there was a visible change in this. In 1986 the DWCD directly demanded a more active involvement of voluntary agencies and guidelines regarding entrusting the whole or a part of an ICDS project to voluntary organizations. In a set of guidelines followed by this, the department considered the direct allotment of some ICDS projects to voluntary agencies for implementation. These guidelines state that the implementation of an entire ICDS project or running of some anganwadis of such a project, can be entrusted to a voluntary organization by the state government/union territory administration or by the central government; the voluntary organization concerned should have been in existence for a minimum of three years, with a properly constituted management body, with good financial position, should have facilities, resources, and experience of undertaking child development programmes, should not run for pecuniary profit for any individual or body, should be open without any discrimination, should maintain separate accounts and registers in respect of the grants received for ICDS, and should provide adequate medical facilities for the ICDS project area. If grants are not utilized properly, or project not implemented properly, no further assistance will be given and the amount given will be recovered. It will be open to the state government to entrust an organization with the whole or part of an ICDS project in suitable cases. The central government may entrust to an organization of national standing and repute an ICDS project directly, and so on. (p.119) The involvement of voluntary organizations with ICDS thus has a long history. There have been changes in the policies of the government towards voluntary organizations and also the change with time in terms of the very nature of voluntary work and voluntary organizations in the country. This certainly has had an impact on the choice of particular voluntary organizations as in whether funded or non-funded or reputed within the framework of other criteria, and so on in terms of their involvement with government projects like Page 7 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis the ICDS. Voluntary organizations involved with ICDS can include MMs, locally funded NGOs or big financial institutions, and there are no different procedures or rules set for these different levels of organizations. The involvement of different voluntary organizations thus had a varied impact on ICDS, and this is discussed in detail separately later in this study distinguishing them from voluntary organizations like MMs and small NGOs or from big financial institutions. A report on the study on ‘Voluntary Organizations and ICDS’ undertaken by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances under NIPCCD describes ICDS as a ‘community based’ programme reflecting the importance of voluntary work and voluntary organizations in the implementation of the ICDS. Thus the expectation of the government clearly was that as far as possible at the local level, anganwadis should be run by voluntary organizations, local bodies, panchayats, and other welfare bodies. Among these voluntary organizations, MMs, unlike others, played a more important role at least in the earlier stages. The DWCD in 1976 stated that the organizing of MMs at the village level would play an important role in implementing the programme of the ICDS projects, especially in organizing anganwadis. Similarly, MMs may be organized by the SSWABs and the community development staff in those villages which have no MMs at present so that the running of the anganwadis can be entrusted to such organizations. Entrusting upon the relationship between MMS and the anganwadis, the Ministry of Social Welfare in 1983 stated that MMs can help the AWWs in various ways: persuading the mothers to bring their children for immunization and health check-up, promoting better attendance of malnourished children, helping the AWWs in cooking and feeding the children and keeping them clean, participation of larger number of women in nutrition and health education (NHED) classes, reporting the cases of sick mothers and children below three (p.120) years of age, and so on. A non-recurring expenditure not exceeding Rs 1,000 per MM may be incurred from the ICDS budget to defray expenses on registration of MMs. If for any reason, an MM does not exist or cannot be organized soon in any village, the running of the anganwadi can be entrusted to a yuvak mandal or other voluntary organization or the panchayat whichever may implement the programme efficiently. Grants for running the anganwadis according to the approved pattern can be paid to these organizations whenever the running of anganwadis is entrusted to them. The history and the role of the MMs in the context of ICDS thus help in order to understand the making and shaping of rural women into AWWs and the very possibility of making anganwadis functional. So in knowing the history of women workers in the anganwadi, the history of MMs is important. In a study sponsored by NIPCCD on MMs, the author explains that … as a part of Five Year plans, community development programmes accorded an important role to the organisation of women and their participation in the various rural development activities were effectively Page 8 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis ensured. These organisations of women were known as Mahila Mandals, established in a phased manner in different states ... integrating women in to development. The idea was to encourage rural women to improve their status as house wives and to take part in public affairs. Mahila Mandals were thus organised which imparted training facilities to their members and provided incentives/awards for performance. Until 1965, the performance of these Mahila Mandals was evaluated periodically by the annual conferences under the supervisions of the development commissioners of the states. The Mahila Mandals had to operate with greater flexibility and function more effectively than the government managed agencies (emphasis mine). (Kumar 1991: 4–12) Originally most of the branches of the MMs carried out independent activities and projects. The broad objectives were to help women to participate in developmental programmes, to provide opportunities for discussing their needs and problems, to share responsibilities with others according to their interests and abilities, to act as an agency in planning, developing, and executing programmes for women and children, to help them understand their role and responsibilities, to foster group efforts in the implementation of activities, to develop different (p.121) kinds of activities for the common good, and to develop leadership among women. However, their performance and contributions to welfare programmes remained unnoticed (Kumar 1991: 71). Some of these MMs had existed earlier; that is, much prior to the ICDS many village-level MMs came up after independence and in the initial stages their administrative responsibility was entrusted to the block agency in most of the states. In the Third and Fifth Five Year Plan documents, the role of MMs has been emphasized and by the Sixth Plan, important status was assigned to Mahila Samajams, MMs, and other voluntary organizations (Kumar 1991: 72). According to Kumar, MMs generally worked on an informal basis and were sometimes confined only to high castes. There was no regular source of income and no infrastructure facilities. However, despite these shortcomings, they played an important role in making the rural women come out of their homes and interact with the forces of modernization in terms of participation in community affairs, besides elevating their own social status (Kumar 1991: 132– 3). Interestingly, more than involving many of these organizations in public service, the Ministry of Social Welfare in 1975 stated that as part of work experience for girls in standard IV and higher classes, they should also be involved in the care of children in the anganwadi at least twice a week. According to the ministry, this will have certain advantages: these girls will gain experience in childcare, hygiene, and cleanliness which will be useful to them in the future; the anganwadi will get additional assistance in its activities and the AWW will be able to devote better attention to her other responsibilities. It also stated that a lasting solution for the proper care and development of children in the pre-school age group can be secured through the education and involvement Page 9 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis of women and this requires organization of an active MM and its involvement in the ICDS activities in each village. The expectations from MMs towards the implementation of the ICDS certainly reflects on the government’s understanding and assumption towards women workers as ‘naturally’ ready to volunteer for childcare work. Further, the ministry’s direct involvement and interest in providing such experience to the school going girls on childcare as useful for them in the future is an eye opener to the expected role to be played by women and girls in the country in the state-sponsored social welfare programmes. (p.122) In the following years, that is, in the late 1970s, the communication between the Department of Social Welfare and the local administration shows that an MM was to be organized on a priority basis in each village in the project areas so as to involve women of the village in the anganwadi activities. Some state governments introduced a simplified procedure for the registration of MMs by amending rules under the Societies Registration Act 1860.7 MMs could then be registered under this Act which entitled them to avail any form of assistance from the government. State governments issued instructions to Block Development Officers to get these organizations registered on payment of a nominal fee of Rs 5. The aims and objectives of these MMs, as stated by the Department of Social Welfare, are to provide a common forum for the socioeconomic, political, and legal advancement of rural women and the general community through women’s effort, to assist rural women in bringing about selfreliance, to promote voluntary action among them, to undertake constructive activities such as services for the welfare of women, children, and family on a voluntary self-help and democratic basis, to assist village-level workers, gramsevika, and other block functionaries in achieving goals of rural development through the efforts of rural women, and so on. The MMs were also expected to deliver supplementary nutrition. The history of the MM is so clearly older to the history of the AWW and the ICDS. However, as one can see, the MMs have an important role to play in the ICDS like many other voluntary initiatives around the implementation of the ICDSs. The only difference is that MMs are the oldest of such initiatives originated and expanded clearly under guidance from the government involving women in the local community towards voluntary work in their own community or areas. We will look into the changing nature and role of MMs at a later stage to see what has been the impact of the implementation of the ICDS and the emergence of the AWW on such local women’s initiatives. (p.123) Table 3.1 The Administrative Set-up of the ICDS Scheme in the 1980s
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis Source: Report ‘Programme Evaluation Organization: Evaluation Report on the ICDS Project, 1976–78’, Planning Commission, Government of India, 1982, p. 7.
(p.124) The Anganwadi Worker (AWW) Within the administrative set-up of the ICDS, the AWW (other than the AWH who is below her) is the only ICDS staff who is not directly a government functionary. She works at the village level. She is ‘invested with the responsibility of interacting with the community and eliciting full cooperation’ (FOCUS 2006: 93). An AWW is a local woman, and an affectionate sister who is different from the ‘sarkar’. She brings in ‘a personal touch in place of the impassive formality of the government delivery system’. So, she should be considered like a parent who will look after the children voluntarily (FOCUS 2006: 93–4). For the government, she is a local woman who gets an honorarium for her voluntary service to the community, and ‘not a government official’. The AWW is the most important functionary of the ICDS project. Young women from the local community are preferred as workers. Reports show that mostly the workers selected were from influential families of a community. Workers who were not from the local community were not well accepted. However, it was also rare that women who were not from the community would travel and stay at another place for this work (Planning Commission 1982: 17). On a daily basis, an AWW has a hectic schedule, a range of responsibilities. In brief, an AWW is responsible for organizing non-formal education for children of 3–5 years, supplementary nutrition feeding for children of 0–5 years and expectant and nursing mothers, conducting functional literacy classes, making home visits and giving health and nutrition education to women of 15–44 years, giving assistance to public health centre (PHC) staff in implementing health components of the ICDS scheme, maintaining liaison with local MMs and lady school teachers, contacting the local people for support and participation in the programme, maintenance of prescribed files and records, and appraising the supervisory officers of the progress achieved and difficulties experienced conducting the ICDS activities. Non-formal or pre-primary education to children is the most common activity of the AWWs’ schedule. The AWWs are also given extra responsibilities (special duties) like giving polio drops, carrying out surveys for a widow’s pension, poverty surveys, and all information related to schemes concerning women and children. As the priority has always been on these surveys, the activities of AWCs, apart from SNP distributions, take a back seat during these (p.125) days’ (FORCES8 2007: 25). According to the Planning Commission’s own evaluation report, the AWW has a hectic schedule of almost 11-hour workload each day. Other major activities include functional literacy, supplementary nutrition programme, home visits, and so on. The report adds: ‘the job description of the AWWs, as it exists now is much too elaborate for her to cope up with. It is clearly not possible for an AWW to put in 11 or 12 hours of work daily. There is therefore, need to work out a Page 12 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis realistic time disposition for the important duties of the AWWs’ (Planning Commission 1982: 19). Each AWW is assisted by a helper (AWH). An AWH’s work includes bringing children from home to the anganwadis and to cook food for them. She has to clean and maintain the anganwadi. She will also help and guide the AWW in conducting a survey of her area and plan the programme of anganwadi centres in consultation with the worker. She will act as a liaison between the workers, the CDPOs, and the health staff. Supervisors (the Mukhya Sevika) are to assist the CDPO by making regular visits to the anganwadis. They are supposed to check the registers, inspect the premises and advise the worker and helper, and help with problems. The Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (henceforth, ANM) works as a link between ICDS and the health department. She organizes immunization sessions and provides basic healthcare services at the anganwadi. The AWW is guided by the supervisor and the CDPO, and all projects under the ICDS are managed from above by the CDPO. The CPDO is the overall in-charge of the ICDS and is required to supervise and coordinate the work of all the functionaries in the project. The CPDO is a direct appointment through interviews. The posts of a supervisor or CPDO are not based on promotions or seniority which has been a complaint or demand among the workers in AWCs for some time now. The AWWs feel that women workers like them with enough experience in the field would make better senior officers and this will help improve the situation. However, there has (p.126) been no response to this and these posts continue to be direct appointments based on interviews. The recent addition to the sector is the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA)9 who is employed under the National Rural Health Mission10 (NHRM), as voluntary health workers at the village level. These women volunteers are expected to work with the ANMs and anganwadi women workers to help with the health issues of women and children (FOCUS Report 2006: 28). This is also expected to help integrate ICDS with other community health volunteer programmes. Though the post of ANM has been there from the beginning in the ICDS, the role, responsibilities, and position of the ANM also went through major changes. The ANM has an important role to play in public health, especially in rural areas, along with the other health workers. They interact directly with the community on reproductive health issues. The role of the ANM changed drastically from the 1960s to now from a midwife to a multi-purpose health worker. They have been assigned new responsibilities as part of the NHRM. Most village public health centres (PHCs) have two ANMs appointed in which one could be a male health worker. However, the position of the ANM is fully supported by the central government; they are paid better and also have (p.127) a longer contract of ten years per appointment. They are government employees under the state government with a pay scale. Some of the responsibilities of the ANM do have duplication of work in relation to the AWW, like in the case of responsibilities in immunization, and on some occasions they are expected to work together. Page 13 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis However, unlike the AWW, the role of the ANM is considered more of a technical nature along with others in the nursing field and has gone through drastic changes in the past few decades. Coming back to the story of the AWW, the responsibilities of an AWW is almost of an all-in-all person who needs to do many multitasking roles linking many fields together, and if the AWW is well trained, well supervised, and well supported, she will be able to make a good contribution to the programme. However, the AWW has to function even when the programme has limitations. She has to maintain proper records. Sometimes, she has to spend too much time on preparation of vital statistics and growth charts. Majority of the anganwadi women are married. These women find it convenient to supplement their income by participating in other income-generating activities, such as tuitions, tailoring, and adult education. Many work for longer period—more than six years. Many workers joined for economic benefits. Only a few joined the ICDS ‘to serve the children’ (Kakar 1992: 58–66). Many felt the need for further training to perform their duties better. They believed in the contribution of the ICDS to the community and in many ways were witness to it from their own direct experience. As far as the wages for the honorary work is concerned, in years, there has been just nominal increase in the rate of honorarium paid to the workers. In 1975 starting with an honorarium of Rs 25 for a worker, by 1984 with an increase in honorarium (from 1 January 1985): A helper will be paid Rs 90 and a worker who is non-matriculate Rs 200 and a worker who is matriculate and above Rs 250. In 1984 the scales of honorarium of workers who are matriculate and above was at Rs 325, and non-matriculate and above at Rs 275. By1986 the MHRD (DWCD) puts the honorarium for AWWs and helpers for non-matriculate AWWs as Rs 225, for non-matriculate with five years of work as Rs 250, for non-matriculate with ten years of work as Rs 275, for matriculates as Rs 275, for matriculates with five years of work as Rs 300, for matriculates with ten years of work as Rs 325, and for a helper as Rs 110. In the same year again the MHRD (DWCD) increased the honorarium as (p.128) Rs 300 for a non-matriculate worker, a non-matriculate worker with five years of experience as Rs 325, a nonmatriculate worker with ten years of experience as Rs 350, a matriculate as Rs 350, a matriculate with five years of experience as Rs 375, and a matriculate with ten years of experience as Rs 400. In 1997 the rates of honorarium were revised as follows: for non-matriculate workers it is Rs 438, for non-matriculate with five years of experience it is Rs 469, for non-matriculate workers with ten years’ experience Rs 500, for matriculate worker Rs 500, for matriculate worker with five years of experience Rs 531, for matriculate with ten years of experience Rs 563 and for helpers Rs 260. Some of the ICDS projects which are funded or supported by the WB at this stage have an increased honorarium financed out of the WB Aid. (The role of WB in the ICDS will be discussed in detail later in this chapter). As shown here, from a meagre Rs 25 in 1975 to Page 14 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis around Rs 600 till the late 1990s is the honorarium paid to the AWW. In more than two decades, while the work load and responsibilities of the AWW increased tremendously, there has not been any reflection of these in their honorarium since an increase in the honorarium still continued to be certainly not as a wage or salary for the work done, but an offer in honour of the work these women do voluntarily. However, today, as far as the payment of honorarium is concerned, the highest amount is paid by the Haryana government followed by Delhi. From January 2014, the Haryana government pays around Rs 7,500 to its AWW and Rs 3,500 to its AWH. An exception is the state of Puducherry where the job of an AWW is regularized with a salary, a right to minimum wage and a pay scale. They are paid Rs 12,000 per month at this time and a helper gets Rs 6,000; other than the share from the central government. The honorarium amount is shared by both the central and state governments, and for the same reason it varies from state to state, depending on the amount of contribution by each state government. Other than the meagre wage an AWW receives, she is also hassled by problems around her retirement, transfer of work, promotion, and so on. Addressing some of these issues also has to be seen directly in relation to the directives taken by the ministry. While the government is originally responsible for the condition of these women workers and the issues they face, the AWWs from the beginning have organized themselves and have struggled to negotiate with the governments in power in order to achieve better working conditions. Further, such struggles (p.129) have led to some level of success in achieving their goals including the following visible through the ministry’s orders or directives. Initially the DWCD sanctioned the grant of leave to AWWs and stated that though the AWWs are honorary workers they may be allowed 12 days of causal leave during one year. A directive in March 1985 by the Ministry of Social and Women’s Welfare on the period of annual leave stated that instead of 12 days of casual leave, these workers may be granted 20 days of leave in a year; further, out of the total annual leave of 20 days, leave up to 10 days may be granted at a time. In January 1977 the DWCD sanctioned an honorarium for helpers. The helper has to work for about 4 hours a day to help the worker in the following ways: cooking and serving the food to children and mothers; cleaning the anganwadi premises daily; fetching water for the anganwadi; looking after the cleanliness of small children; and collecting children from the village at the anganwadi. Communication from the Department of Social Welfare to the functionaries of the ICDS programme also refers to the extended services demanded from the workers on issues in some specific contexts. In 1978 the Department of Social Welfare addressed the issue of protection of civil rights in the project areas. According to them,
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis In the ICDS project areas, a sizable number of children belong to scheduled castes and other backward classes. The scheme of functional literacy for adult women is also being implemented in the ICDS project areas. It is essential that, as part of the non-formal education, the people, particularly women, may be made aware of the provisions of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, formerly called the Untouchability Offences Act 1955. More than the Scheduled Castes children, it is necessary to inculcate among other castes and classes the spirit of equality … It is felt that by sustained efforts of ICDS staff, a definite dent can be made on the problems of untouchability in ICDS project areas. Here, it is visible that though the thrust of the ICDS scheme has been specifically on health and education of children and mothers, while addressing these issues the scheme had to broaden its perspective to include other larger social issues such as employment or caste-based discrimination. It is understood to some extent that the original idea of the scheme is to address the poor in the country and the attempt has been to specifically help the women and children among the poor. Thus, the scheme did have a class and gender perspective in addressing (p.130) the problem. However, it is important to see these responsibilities and the possibilities of implementations of these responsibilities from the perspective of the AWW. The process of appointments and transfer of AWWs was another issue of struggle since these included steps like signing bonds at the time of joining, transfers without a proper notice period, and so on. A directive in May 1980 addressed the issue of appointment and transfer of AWWs to reiterate that there is no need to take any bonds from the workers at the time of their engagement while sending them for training, because the workers are honorary workers and not government servants. However, the desirability of making a provision in the engagement letter of AWWs to the effect that they would have to give a 15-day notice in writing to relinquish the job could be considered by state governments. Similarly, the state government will also give a 15-day notice in writing to AWWs to dispense with her services. It is absolutely essential that the selection of workers is made very carefully so that the training imparted to them at a cost does not become infructuous due to resignations, and so on of such workers. A directive issued in August 1985 by the Ministry of Social and Women’s Welfare addresses the facilities given to AWWs who apply for the post of supervisors. In case of an AWW having the requisite educational qualifications and applying for the post of supervisor, the period of her work as an AWW should be deducted from her age for determining her eligibility on grounds of age. In 1987 an MHRD (DWCD) directive referred to the issue that whenever an AWW shifts from one state to another, her experience in the first state as AWW is not counted in the second state for the purpose of fixation of honorarium, age relaxation, and so on. It clarifies that an AWW should be given the benefit of her total experience as an AWW and that such experience is to be cumulative in that post, rather than Page 16 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis experience as an AWW in any one particular state or project. The state governments should therefore take into account the experience of AWW in a previous ICDS project, while considering her eligibility for appointment to the post of supervisor and while fixing the scale of honorarium, as well as on her fresh appointment as an AWW in an ICDS project. In April 1982 the Ministry of Social Welfare sanctioned the grant of ‘paid absence on maternity’ to AWWs. It decided that AWWs who have put in at least one year’s service may be allowed paid absence (p.131) on maternity for a period of three months. This may cover any period from the eighth month of pregnancy to the end of the third month of lactation. However, this will be allowed only once to a worker. The same facility was sanctioned to the helper by the Ministry of Social Welfare in June 1983. A helper, who has put in one year’s service, will be allowed paid absence on maternity for a period of three months, covering any period from the eighth month to the end of the third month of lactation, and this also will be allowed once only. In August 1997, in response to another struggle by the workers on better maternity rights and on the issue of granting of maternity leave, the MHRD (DWCD) stated that paid absence of maternity leave to workers and helpers is admissible for a maximum of two occasions. It also clarified that workers and helpers having two children before joining the service cannot avail of paid absence on maternity leave. The MHRD (DWCD) in April 1988 addressed the issue of the age limit of AWWs. It stated that an AWW may remain in employment till 58 years and even thereafter so long as she is able to perform her duties with due diligence, alertness, and efficiency. In June 1991, in response to long protest by the AWWs all over the country, the Ministry of Welfare and DWCD raised the age limit for retirement of helpers in anganwadis. It was stated that keeping in view of the nature of duties involved as also the type of functionaries to be selected for the posts of workers and helpers, it is felt that the same criteria and guidelines with regard to the retirement age for helpers be adopted as are being adopted for workers viz. the age limit for retirement may be taken as 58 years in normal course. Further continuance may depend on the alertness, eagerness and sincerity of the worker in performing her duties. The age limit for the retirement of an AWW at present remains at 60 years at the moment for the majority of the states, with the exception of Haryana where the government have recently extended the retirement age of workers to 65 years. It is important to note that even in the absence of medical insurance, pension, or other work benefits, unlike other government employees, workers or the helpers of the ICDS do have a retirement age.
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis The responsibility of village rehabilitation workers (VRWs) was also given to the AWWs by the ministry in December 1988 and the responsibilities of AWWs in this position were explained as follows: (p.132) The ministry of welfare has taken up a district rehabilitation programme in certain selected districts in the country with the objective of rehabilitation of the disabled in the rural areas. The worker at the village level caters to a population of about 1000 and is called Village Rehabilitation Worker, in the areas covered by ICDS, the AWWs will function as the VRW... The VRW will be paid an honorarium of Rs. 50 per month under the District Rehab Programme (DRC). The DCWD addressed another rather controversial issue of AWWs contesting elections for the local bodies in January 1996. On filing of the nomination by AWWs and helpers to contest elections for local bodies like panchayats, and so on, it was stated that since AWWs and helpers working under the ICDS are voluntary workers and are getting an honorarium and they are not government employees, there can be no objection in them contesting the elections. Many went to the court against this directive and in some states like in Kerala, the workers won against this and got it withdrawn. Few steps were taken by the ministry in the past one decade to encourage and inspire the AWWs. These include declaration of performance awards and also providing access to insurance schemes. In order to motivate the AWWs and give recognition to good voluntary work, in May 2000, the MHRD (DWCD) decided to give annual awards to selected AWWs on the basis of their dedication and exemplary performance. Accordingly, a scheme of awards has been approved and enclosed herewith. It is requested that early action may be initiated in this regard, since the scheme is time bound. The criteria for selection is exemplary performance in improving the coverage, frequency and quality of services to children, pregnant women and nursing mothers in anganwadi centres and enlisting community participation and bringing innovation in the field, and the national awards are to be given to 20 AWWs in cash. An award of Rs 25,000 and a certificate of appreciation were introduced by the ministry to be given to the best performers both at the national and state levels for their good voluntary work. In 2004 the ministry also declared a social security scheme of providing a life insurance scheme for AWWs called ‘Anganwadi Karyakarti Bima Yojana’ under the Life Insurance Corporation of India. Along with this, a retirement benefit scheme was also declared to provide financial help post retirement.
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis (p.133) Training ICDS Functionaries Considering the need to give education and training to the AWW, programmes were initiated to establish Anganwadi Workers Training Centres. Each of these training centres were assigned with the responsibility of developing at least 20– 25 centres so as to provide the trainees with adequate field practice, placing trainees for a minimum of one month in the anganwadis for practical training, and development of instructional materials for use of trainees and trainers (Khullar 1994: 30). The ICCW, as mentioned earlier, was entrusted with the task of training the AWWs. The AWWs got a three-month or four-month training under the ICCW. ICCW runs many anganwadi training centres and also monitors the training and preparing of training manuals which are a guide regarding technical, financial, and administrative aspects of training. ICCW also conducts refresher courses and orientation courses for AWWs and helpers (Shah 1991). All ICDS functionaries are given training and separate institutions were established by the ministry, including the NIPCCD and middle level training centres (MLTCs) specifically for this purpose. The NIPCCD was set up in 1966 for the training of ICDS functionaries. It has its headquarters in Delhi and regional centres in Gauhati, Bengaluru, Lucknow, and Indore. The NIPCCD organizes training for CDPOs at its regional centres in Bengaluru and Lucknow and for supervisors at some 20 training centres, including its three regional centres. The NIPCCD monitors the training programmes for CDPOS and supervisors, and also designs the syllabi for training of all the functionaries. There are specific Job Training Courses designed for AWWs. The NIPCCD also monitors the social inputs of the ICDS programme through a Monitoring and Evaluation Cell. It also conducts regular training courses for ICDS functionaries under the project UDISHA (which I will discuss in detail later), which is a WBsponsored project, and the UNICEF is a technical collaborator in this project. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) monitored the health and nutrition component of the ICDS and also gives training to medical officers through a chain of medical colleges and health consultants. Grants for health personnel, who worked as ICDS consultants and health advisors, were released directly by AIIMS. Since health and nutrition were two important components of the ICDS scheme, (p.134) it was felt that the active involvement of the medical colleges with ICDS projects will have the advantage of facilitating technical support, regular flow of information, and medical education in rural and urban areas with a thrust on community medicine. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences coordinated these efforts at the central level and made recommendations through workshops (NIPCCD 1984: 148). Considering the job responsibilities of AWWs, the training syllabus of NIPCCD consists of a four-month training course, including theory and practical and a general orientation about ICDS, with each section consisting of instructional goals, field training, and classroom teaching on each job responsibility. Each AWW is provided with a kit which contains audio-visual aids, improvized Page 19 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis educational equipments, record files, scrap book, and resource files (NIPCCD 1979). The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) provides funds for the training programme through the state governments in respective training centres. The annual expenditure for the training of ICDS staff in the year 2010– 11, as reported by the states, is 9455.39 crore (See Table A.2). At the end of four months of training, the training centre concerned gets to assess each trainee and issues a certificate of satisfactory completion of the training to the workers. Trainers are selected from training institutes with some past experience and are invited as guest/part-time lecturers, with mandatory remuneration. One of the initial tasks of the AWWs is to carry out a simple census of all the families in their respective areas of work. In the beginning, trained balsevikas were also employed as AWWs. Balsevikas were part of the grassroot-level childwelfare programme under ICCW. These balsevikas played an important role in the initial phase of the ICDS to train the AWWs. In 1984 a review of the ICDS indicated that the recruitment and training of personnel, particularly of AWWs, required major effort if we are to enter the Seventh Plan period without a large backlog of untrained workers. It was suggested that the training period be reduced from four months to three months and training centres function for at least ten months every year. The review also proposed to introduce a two-week refresher training to those workers who have completed one year of work. A directive from the MWCD in March 1996 announces the decision of setting up crèches at AWWs’ training centres under the National Crèche Fund. It clarifies that since training is a vital component of the programme and (p.135) considering the fact that most AWWs have small children, it is necessary to set up crèches at the Anganwadi Training Centres (AWTCs). The workers were also to be provided with travelling allowance by the training centre itself. As one can see, the role of training in ICDS has increased tremendously in recent times. There are more and more institutions engaged in training and the budget allotted for training has also increased tremendously. It is important in this context to get an idea of the content and the aim of the training given by these institutions for ICDS functionaries. Though knowing this with an in-depth understanding of the differences across states is important, here only a comparison between the broad areas, that is, as in between the budgeting for training and other factors in the ICDS and also between the institutions and programmes dealing in training for ICDS functionaries is attempted.
Integrated Child Development Services-IV The ICDS-IV Project with assistance from the International Development Association (IDA) aims to address the multidimensional causes of malnutrition in children and to promote better early childhood education. The Ministry of Women and Child Development negotiated with the WB for support from the IIDA for the ICDS-IV Project. This was after the closure of the WB-assisted ICDSIII/WCD Project (1999–2006). The five-year ICDS-IV project (2008–13) is planned Page 20 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis for eight states: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh. The project envisages covering 158 high-burden districts identified on the basis of taking into consideration the low nutritional status of children below six years and high anaemia levels among pregnant women. The concept note for ICDS-IV from the MWCD noted that currently India is witnessing a high economic growth; yet, there is no substantial evidence to prove that the economic prosperity has been translated into improvement in quality of life. There is virtually no significant improvement in undernourished children over the last 10–12 years reinforcing the argument that economic growth is a necessary, but may not be a sufficient condition for improvements in young child survival, nutrition and development (ICDS IV Project, MWCD, 2007: 5). (p.136) Here, interestingly, in the context of this project, the ministry is admitting the fact that in all these years with high economic growth, there is no substantial improvement in the case of malnutrition. And hence Project IV is welcomed, with the external assistance and active involvement of the WB. Here, it is important to remember that the initiation of the ICDS IV Mission with support from the WB coincided with the Supreme Court order for the universalization of ICDS, in 2006. ICDS IV is planned by the IDA and the WB as a ‘revised implementation framework’ which involves ‘decentralisation, partnership, sustainability and empowerment’, involving panchayat raj institutions, NGOs, other community-based organizations (CBOs), and the private sector. This is expected to bring in community ownership and thereby better performance of the AWCs and AWWs in the country. It demands strong monitoring and evaluation, as also a performance appraisal system with rewards. More importantly, this also offers a disincentive mechanism which rewards or punishes the AWWs based on their performance. The ICDS-IV was initially implemented in eight states (158 districts).11 Its special targets were ‘under 3s, 3–6 year olds, adolescent girls and (Schedule Caste/ Schedule Tribe) SC/ST minorities’. According to the concept note, ICDSIV is expected to bring in greater focus and targeting of interventions in terms of both age-specific developmental needs of children (below three years and 3–6 years); intensive support to the high-burden districts in the areas of nutrition and early childhood education; and introduce substantial reforms in programme implementation. The two major components of the project are Nutrition and Early Childhood Education (ECE). The project design will learn from many technical and managerial ‘best practices’ that have evolved over the last three decades of ICDS implementation and will aim to take these to scale as feasible and appropriate. The vision of ICDS-IV was supposed to be a ‘Mission Mode’ (ICDS Mission Mode will be discussed in detail in the later part of this Page 21 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis chapter) with a revised implementation framework, and the vision demanded ‘Universalisation of ICDS with Quality’. Its nationwide component has two major activities: training/capacity building and Information and Education and Communication (p.137) (henceforth, IEC). The capacity-building component has three major sub-components, capacity building of the ICDS field functionaries, of family members and the community, especially the mothers, and of the key project management staff. The ICDS-IV vision plan suggests that ‘it is envisaged that IEC shall evolve a successful process in some projects, which would result in AWCs being managed by village/slum women, responsibility of food supplementation being taken over by the village communities and effective targeting of all ICDS services to reach out to the most needy as decided collectively by the village/slum dwellers themselves’ (ICDS IV Project, MWCD 2007: 8–9). Further, the communication strategy of the ICDS-IV would address ‘how to change behaviours of the community for the correct health and nutrition practices, by removing cultural barriers/age-old practices/superstitions’ (ICDS IV Project, MWCD 2007: 9). To address the inadequate technical and managerial expertise in the scheme, ICDSIV has a new management structure with an ‘Empowered Committee, Central Project Management Unit, State Project Management Units and District Cells’. With a revised national framework, the WB has a major role to play in ICDS-IV and its participation has created expansion in the number of so-called minianganwadis all over the country. There has also been a restructuring of the ICDS through privatization and PPP of the project and I will discuss the overall impact of these on the ICDS in the forthcoming chapter.
Funding ICDS The planning for welfare of women and children has to be clearly supported by an increase in resources allocated for the same. The First Five Year Plan allotted Rs 40 million for social welfare services while by the Sixth Plan, this increased to Rs 2,010 million. However, the increase in funding was not matched by an improvement in the performance standards of various infrastructures built for providing such services (EPW 1986: 510–12).12 According to the FOCUS report of 2006, the total allocation of ICDS by the central government in 2004–5 was a mere Rs 1,600 crore—less than one per cent of India’s GDP while Rs 77,000 crore of its GDP is spent on defence purposes (FOCUS 2006: 27). The overall budget for ICDS is very low and many (p.138) states have allocated much less than a rupee a day. In 2004–5, each anganwadi in rural areas received a mere Rs 150 per month as ‘rent’, to get a proper space for an anganwadi which within this budget is almost impossible (FOCUS 2006: 27–9). The Union Budget of 2005–6 allocated Rs 3,142 crore for the programme. According to the 2005–6 budget provision for ICDS, the numbers of AWCs were to be increased drastically. Though this budget represents a 93 per cent increase, this remained insufficient since the Supreme Court of India had already ordered the
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis universalization of ICDS (SEEDS and DWCD 2007: 16) which will be discussed in detail later in this chapter. Initially, the MWCD worked out budgetary requirements for ICDS during the Eleventh Five Year Plan period under ICDS Project IV as Rs 41 crore which was revised tentatively to Rs 72 crore. The census of 2001 estimates the population of children under six years at about 16.4 crore or 16 per cent of the total population of India. According to the FOCUS report of 2006, the average expenditure on government schemes for the young child was only Rs 208 per child per year, for the period 2000–5. Percentage wise, in 2006–7, only 1.66 per cent of the total funds available in the Union budget were allocated for children under six. In 2006–7, allocations for ICDS in the central budget increased from Rs 3,315 crore to Rs 4,543 crore and though this appears to be a huge increment, it is not sufficient to cover the required cost of universal coverage of all children and settlements. At present, ICDS services are provided to about 4 crore children through 7 lakh anganwadis; however, with universalization the need will be to reach 17 lakh settlements.13 For the ICDS-IV project, there is an expected IDA assistance of US$ 450 million (US$ 250 million for Nutrition and US$ 200 million for ECE) (MWCD 2007). In the year 2010–11, the actual annual expenditure of ICDS was Rs 9,763.11 crore and for the year 2011–12, the revised estimated expenditure was Rs 14,048.40 crore. While in the year 2007– 08 the expenditure was Rs 5,256.46 crore which (p.139) is 97.40 per cent, in the year 2010–11, it became Rs 8,776.71 crore which is only 95.43 per cent. The supplementary nutrition component of the ICDS was funded by state governments. While the Government of India has been sharing half of the expenditure on supplementary nutrition since 2001, it has now directed the state governments to share the total expenditure of ICDS. The state governments were made to share 10 per cent of the total expenditure of ICDS from 2009–10. As per the proposal of the Planning Commission, this will be gradually increased to 50 per cent of the total expenditure in the coming years (MWCD 2007). What is important in this context is the fact that with the plan towards universalization, the financial needs are certainly much higher than what is available at present. When the revised plan for ICDS in the Eleventh Five Year Plan was Rs 72 crore, the budgetary allocations were only Rs 37 crore, half of the actual requirement. The needs allocation for universalizing ICDS with existing norms has been estimated at Rs 258 crore, but only Rs 177 crore has been approved during the Twelfth Five Year Plan period, of which Rs 123 crore would be the central government’s share and Rs 53 crore the state government’s share (AIFAWH 2013: 5). Total expenditure for ICDS certainly suggests what is meant to be spending for the beneficiaries and also for the staff who implements the scheme. However, the separate data available only show the finds allotted for AWTCs, offices, and other infrastructure, not specifically referring to funds allotted for the staff/workers.
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis External Assistance to ICDS As explained earlier, the ICDS had its external partners both at the local community level and also at the national and international levels. These external institutions played different roles in terms of their contributions towards the implementation of the scheme and also in its performance assessment. UNICEF, which is a part of the United Nations with a special mandate to care for the children of the world, showed keen interest in the ICDS programme from the beginning as one of its important component of activities in India. UNICEF considered itself a ‘modest but steadfast partner in child development—a helper in ICDS parlance at the national anganwadi’ (ICDS: An Overview, (p.140) GOI 1991: 33). It provided its inputs in training, health and nutrition, drinking water supply, and so on. The United Nations World Food Programme (henceforth, WFP) was also one of the old international partners of India’s food programme. It offered food aid to the ICDS for supplementary nutrition from 1976 onwards though it later reduced this assistance. From 1995 onwards, WFP has provided support for the distribution of more locally produced food ‘to increase the capacity for locally produced blended food’ (SEEDS and DWCD 2007: p. 20).14 The WFP has been extending support to some ICDS projects in the states of Madhya Pradesh (19 projects), Orissa (32 projects), Rajasthan (20 projects), and Uttaranchal (16 projects) covering nearly 0.865 million beneficiaries (NIPCCD 2006: 38). Along with UNICEF, CARE remained one of the important partners of the ICDS. The CARE-assisted ICDS was an important collaboration where CARE collaborated with the Indian government to work in the field of food for the poor in India. It has been one of the oldest partners in the ICDS programme. CAREIndia has a long history of supporting the supplementary nutrition component of the ICDS in several ways. Integrated Nutrition and Health Project (INHP) was initiated by CARE to bring in additional support for child-health and nutrition interventions. Earlier, CARE focused on food supply only; later it changed its focus to providing technical assistance to ICDS staff for managing commodity supply and programme practices, while for some of these provisions, CARE was funded by the USAID. CARE also helped develop a set of processes and tools contributing to capacity building of ICDS functionaries as part of its Leadership Development Programme for the ICDS. CARE-India programmes include the INHP in the nine poorest states in India; this was first introduced in 1997 in seven states, and the first service providers of this project were the ANMs and AWWs. By 2004, CARE covered 26 per cent of the ICDS projects in nine states. CARE, along with USAID, completed two major projects on Reproductive and Child Health and Nutrition, and HIV/AIDS (Rachna) Programme (NIPCCD 2006; CARE-India 2008).
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis (p.141) World Bank-Assisted ICDS The WB has been assisting ICDS since 1980s. The WB-assisted ICDS-I project was sanctioned for a period of six years from 1990 to 1996; the same was soon implemented in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa (NCAER 1998: 11). In addition to the normal ICDS programmes, this project also provided for construction of anganwadi buildings, nutritional rehabilitation, income-generating activities, and non-formal education for women, strengthening awareness generation, community participation, and the strengthening of the training component (NIPCCD 1992: 136D). The second WB-assisted ICDS project, ICDS II, was in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh for a period of seven years from 1993 onwards. At present there are WB-assisted ICDS APER projects in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh (NCAER 1998: 11). In 1999 the Government of India implemented the WBassisted training programme for the ICDS, called ‘ICDS Training Programme Project UDISHA’. The project was an outcome of the DWCD’s evaluation, which envisaged the upward revision of financial norms, integration and coordination of training of ICDS functionaries, and revision of training syllabus. An evaluation of ICDS in 2007 says that UDISHA was envisaged to broadly provide a set of locally relevant training interventions in order to achieve women and child development goals, rather than focusing solely on ICDS functionaries (SEEDS and DWCD 2007: 13). In May 1999 the MHRD (DWCD) initiated its national training component, Project UDISHA, as part of the overall WB-assisted Women and Child Development project. According to the ministry, it was after an in-depth analysis and evaluation of the ICDS training programme that the DWCD formulated this project with the assistance of WB, which envisaged ‘the upward revision of financial norms, integration and coordination of training of ICDS functionaries and revision of training syllabus’. Through this project the WB agreed to provide financial assistance for the implementation of a larger programme of ICDS training for a period of five years. Under Project UDISHA, the WB conducts job training and refresher training for AWWs. The ministry further explains that the training under UDISHA is meant ‘to improve the quality of the training system and to clear the training backlog and provide training to every ICDS functionary’. Under (p.142) the project, AWTCs are sanctioned all over the country with staff who are paid an honorarium. Training is provided for workers, helpers, supervisors, CDPOs, and Assistant CDPOs (ACDPOs). The training of trainers and other programmes related to the objectives of ICDS are also organized. Grants are also released for development, printing, distribution of training materials, and supply of kits, and so on for AWWs. Workshops and trainings are organized both in India and abroad. Project UDISHA also provides for purchase of equipment, materials, development, and printing of training materials/kits, and so on. The Government of India sanctioned these AWTCs and, alternatively, the AWTCs were required to adopt a neighbouring AWC for Page 25 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis developing such AWC as model anganwadis. The ministry also decided to ensure that the AWWs are not sent for training programmes other than those prescribed under the ICDS training programme—Project UDISHA, since ‘there were reports that AWWs were sent for training frequently to other areas due to which they had to be away from their duties for long periods’. Project UDISHA covers all the existing ICDS projects and under this, a revised syllabus/curriculum and additional AWTCs have been sanctioned to the state governments/Union territories depending upon their training needs during the next five years. Under this arrangement, the AWW is required to undergo refresher training after the completion of two years of service. Supervisors are also to be given training at MLTCs for which a grant was released thorough NIPCCD. Through NIPCCD, training is provided to supervisors and CDPOs with modifications. A total provision of Rs 13.94 crore was made under Project UDISHA for NIPCCD for upgradation/capacity building in training facilities/ collaboration and creation of new facilities. The terms and conditions for WB assistance provided for certain procedures for submission of claims for seeking reimbursement. These procedures are required to be followed strictly to get timely and full reimbursement of the expenditure incurred under the project. With UDISHA, WB entered a new phase in its association with ICDS, initiating, shaping, and taking over the entire project of training of the ICDS staff and building new mechanisms and institutions which will now control the entire project of training. The WB initially assisted ICDS-III projects in five states, namely Kerala, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh. It covered 1003 blocks, including 318 new blocks where ICDS was (p.143) introduced and 685 old blocks where the services were enriched. Later, the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Uttaranchal were included in the remaining period of the project up to 2004. With UDISHA, the ICDS training programme and its training component were strengthened, equipment was supplied to AWCs, and learning–training material was prepared and distributed at AWCs and training centres. The WB stood for a change in the focus of ICDS from providing supplementary nutrition to ‘education to improve domestic childcare and feeding practices and micronutrient supplementation’. Instead of expanding the ICDS, WB suggested shifting focus from ‘wealthier households’ to providing guidance and information to malnutrition-concentrated pockets. Thus the focus on ‘information, education and communication’ (ICE), instead of expansion, seems to emphasize that the problem is not increasing poverty, but ignorance (ALFAWH Report, Can a Nation Develop without Its Children, www.aifawah.org). AIFAWH15 feels that though illiteracy and lack of awareness contribute to malnutrition, they are only part of the problem and this cannot be addressed only through information or education. Women who are working in the unorganized sector with no facilities cannot breast-feed their children at regular intervals or provide any care to their children within their living Page 26 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis conditions. While the WB financial assistance to ICDS-IV is less than 180 crore, that is, around Rs 36 crore per year, the government’s budgetary allocation was Rs 6,300 crore in 2008–9. This shows that the WB is contributing a very small share to the project; however, it is being able to shape the policy or influence it strongly according to its interests (AIFAWH, www.aifawah.org/Date accessed: 22 January 2014). The WB’s contribution and its critique as in the case of other external assistance to ICDS are important to understand how and what has changed with the ICDS. The MWCD, in its handbook on ICDS-IV, December 2007, admitted that ‘the previous investments, of USD 700 million, from the WB in ICDS, have not yielded the desired level of impact’ (ICDS IV: A Handbook, MWCD 2007: 5). It is clear that through whatever level of (p.144) financial support it provided to ICDS, the WB has been able to shape or influence the programme in a major way. The debate on the role of WB in the ICDS, its changing role from the 1980s to now other than its direct contribution in terms of financial support in ‘revising’ ICDS in the present stage are important aspects discussed in the forthcoming chapter of the book.
USAID-Assisted ICDS Another important organization which played a crucial role in the implementation of ICDS is the USAID. The USAID started its support to ICDS in 1983 with two states (Gujarat and Maharashtra), in two districts, 21 blocks with 4,501 villages, and five million people. According to USAID, despite successes, the expansion of ICDS could not be managed effectively by the government and the programme did not uniformly live up to expectations. Results varied in different parts of the country depending on the skills of the staff, and the workers were overworked and undertrained. They could not give enough attention to the more vulnerable infants and toddlers, and could not perform well in teaching mothers how to enhance their children’s nutritional status. Most of the times, AWWs were taken up with PSE and record-keeping. State governments were sometimes unable to supply the necessary food on a regular basis. There was lack of training and feedback to workers and too little cooperation between the ICDS functionaries. To address some of these problems the Government of India and USAID agreed to try some new approaches for strengthening ICDS services. This resulted in an eight-year US$ 24.5 million project joint venture of the Ministry of HRD and USAID. The USAID tried its innovative projects in three important areas: training, health and nutrition, education and management information. It offered successful implementation of the project with ‘new ideas which are cost effective’ (USAID 2004: 9–11). Initially, the USAID project focused on remote, poverty-stricken tribal districts in Gujarat and Maharashtra. It supported enhanced training for AWWs and their supervisors, innovative NHED for mothers, and improvements in the Management Information System (MIS). The improved MIS was to ‘properly monitor services; strengthening the skills of workers and health functionaries through Mobile-In-Service (p.145) Training (MIST); to help expand NHED Page 27 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis through social marketing; and make more effective use of Title II food commodities by giving priority to children under three and pregnant and lactating mothers’ (USAID 2004, 11). USAID also assisted Training for Health and ICDS workers together through MLTC and AWTC. The total cost of the eight-and-a-half-year project was US$ 24.9 million supported through a loan of US$ 7 million by USAID, a grant of US$ 8.4 million, and a Government of India contribution of US$ 9.5 million.16 Its primary goal was to ‘reduce infant mortality in Panchmahals and Chandrapur districts by 25% and mortality in toddlers one to three years old by 33% within six years. The four-year sub-goal was to reduce severe malnutrition in both districts by 50% and severe/moderate malnutrition by 35%’ (USAID 2004, 11). These projects came to a close in 1992. Other than the external institutions contributing to ICDS, the eleventh plan of the ICDS also has the entry of the private sector into the ICDS. This has led to the introduction of PPP in the implementation of ICDS. PPP in this context leads to ‘adoption’ of an AWC by NGOs or corporate houses. A nutrition mission by the Maharashtra Government17 from 2005 onwards directly invited partnerships with corporate powers; it elaborated on this decision by ‘adopting’ anganwadis, and that corporates can bring in funds and also use their management expertise, training intervention, and project management skills in this field. The document reveals that in the state there are already 14,000 AWCs adopted by the corporates since 2008. Training the AWW is an important component of the corporate agenda other than contributing to nutritious food or infrastructure. The Maharashtra state government plans to turn the ‘adopt an anganwadi’ movement into a national mass movement. This has set off a new phase in the ICDS where the role of the government and external institutions is being reversed wherein at every stage of the implementation of the ICDS external forces/institutions will now have a bigger role to play.
(p.146) Reviews and Appraisals of ICDS Many reviews and appraisals of ICDS were taken up by different institutions under the central government focusing on different factors. Several studies conducted by the Planning Commission, AIIMS, NIPCCD, and so on to assess the impact of ICDS noted the positive contribution of ICDS. In the first decade of its formation itself, in order to evaluate the ICDS projects, a Program Evaluation Organization (PEO) was formed by the Planning Commission projects in 1976–7. The PEO released the Report on the State of Preparedness of the ICDS projects. Among the main objectives of the PEO evaluation was studying the organizational structure of the ICDS and the background and training of the basic workers (Planning Commission 1982: ii). The report, among other things regarding the functioning of the ICDS, specifically mentioned the lack of supervision of anganwadis, and absence of coordination among different offices in the project, and also noted that an AWW spent most of her time in education of children and less on health and nutrition (Planning Commission 1982: iv). In 1988, a ‘Handbook of Instructions Regarding ICDS Programme’ was prepared by Page 28 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis DWCD. Among other things, it stressed on the fact that ‘care should be taken to see that minorities secure, in a fair and adequate measure, the benefits flowing from the ICDS programme...within projects, all eligible children and mothers should get ICDS services irrespective of their caste, religion or sex’.18 In 1991 ‘15 Years of ICDS: An Overview, Government of India’ was published. This document discussed the contributions of institutions like the ICCW and its Balsevika Programme, UNICEF, and so on. It also analysed the services of the anganwadis, the training for its functionaries and the services of anganwadis in the tribal areas with a case study of Andhra Pradesh. At the national level there have been two evaluations of ICDS, one by NIPCCD in 1992 and another by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in 1998. The NIPCCD evaluation of the ICDS in 1992 concluded that there is (p.147) a need to upgrade the physical infrastructure facilities provided for AWWs. It also revealed that wherever AWWs were located in areas predominantly inhabited by upperclass and upper-caste population, it restricted the utilization of services by the lower castes and poor beneficiaries (NIPCCD 1992). According to the report, the staff position and training status of functionaries were quite satisfactory though there was a backlog in job training. Its analysis of AWWs indicated that more and more educated women had joined the scheme and more than 50 per cent were matriculate. While the functionaries reported irregular supply of food, equipment, material, and medicine kits as a major problem, community participation was also revealed as a very weak link. The study also observed the need for coverage and outreach of services in tribal areas. The NCAER had its evaluation of the ICDS conducted in 1998 and published in 2001. The NCAER study too aimed at examining the performance of the scheme on the ground. Its report showed that the ICDS benefitted over 50 per cent of the eligible women and children. The NCAER report’s another contribution was that it provided separate reports for major states. On the occasion of ICDS completing 30 years, the MWCD directed the NIPCCD to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the implementation of ICDS and its impact. An NIPCCD document ‘Three Decades of ICDS: An Appraisal’ was published in 2006. This study covered 150 ICDS projects spread over rural, urban, and tribal areas in all the 35 states and union territories of the country and was restricted to those projects which were functional for a minimum period of five years. The objectives of this study were to assess the existing status of implementation in terms of coverage, outreach, coordination, convergence, and innovations introduced by states and NGOs, compare the differences between rural, urban, and tribal areas in NGO-run projects, identify gaps, and problems, find out the perception of the local community, and explore interlinkages with other development programmes and ascertain the benefits of the scheme (NIPCCD 2006: 2). The Report on ‘ICDS’s Three Decades’ prepared by NIPCCD observed that, unlike the earlier studies there was the need for a comprehensive investigation to assess the ICDS at this stage not only because it had completed Page 29 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis three decades but also because ‘the profile of ICDS has been changing specially in the last decade because of expansion, decentralisation, (p.148) universalisation, WB inputs and convergence with other schemes’ (NIPCCD 2006: 44). According to the report, ‘the Scheme of ICDS had performed considerably well in our socio-cultural system during the last few years to ensure children’s right for survival, growth, protection and development’. According to this report, ICDS is the world’s most unique early childhood development programme and it has contributed to a welcome transition from welfare orientation to a new challenging perspective of social change. The report discussed the working condition of AWWs in the country and also studied in detail the inter-sectoral linkages of ICDS and also the role of international organizations like UNICEF, WB, and WFP (NIPCCD 2006: 3).19 It also studied the role or contributions of NGOs like CARE, USAID, and SEWA. According to this report, the findings have come as a ‘pat on the back’ so far as the implementation of ICDS is concerned. However, it highlights some gaps and shortcomings. It showed that around 60 per cent of the anganwadis in the country have no toilet facility and in rural areas half of them still do not have access to health services, a majority of AWCs in urban areas lack space, and almost half of them do not have PSE kits. The report also points to lack of coordination between different departments. It recommends that as the involvement of SHGs was effective, this should be increased and there should also be increased community participation and contribution. It also recommends the universalization of ICDS in order to improve the nutrition levels of children and women in the country. (p.149) Meanwhile, with all the external assistance ICDS has received in the past two decades, the contemporary situation demands much more than what is available. While there is further demand on the expansion and the universalization of the scheme, in ratio of the need for resources, things have gone only from bad to worse. A CAG report released as recently as in 2013 addressing the performance report of the anganwadis during the period 2006– 11 showed diversion of money meant for ICDS worth around Rs 57.82 crore to other activities not permitted under the scheme in five of the test-checked states, and Rs 70.11 crore was parked in civil deposits and personal ledger accounts/bank accounts/treasury, resulting in the blocking of funds. The report also pointed out the shortage of staff and of key functionaries at all levels and it noted that 61 per cent of the test-checked anganwadis functioning under the ICDS scheme did not have their own building and 25 per cent were functioning in semi-pucca/kachcha buildings, or open/partially covered space. Along with the absence of many other facilities and infrastructure, 52 per cent faced absence of toilets, leading to poor hygiene and sanitation. The report concluded that the ministry has failed to sanction the required number of anganwadis and the states have failed to operationalize the sanctioned AWCs. It concluded that ‘given India’s status on the key indicators for the wellbeing of its children, the Page 30 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis ICDS scheme requires appropriate strengthening for effective delivery of its services in order to build a healthy and sound future for country’ (CAG Report, GOI 2013). The health indicators shown above from the latest reports or studies on India’s important development indicators illustrate that the country needs specific measures especially to improve the situation of its women and children. Moreover, other than the issues of health nutrition or mortality, rising unemployment is another important obstacle which needs urgent attention.
Universalization of ICDS In May 2001 the People’s Union for Civil Liberties filed a public interest litigation suit with the Supreme Court arguing that several federal institutions and state governments should be responsible for mass malnutrition among the people living in the state concerned. In November 2001 the Supreme Court passed an interim order; among other things, the Supreme Court directed the central and state governments (p.150) to ‘universalize’ the ICDS programme. This means that ICDS should cover every child under the age of six, every adolescent girl and every pregnant and nursing mother. The apex court also directed the government to ensure that there is at least one functional ICDS anganwadi centre in every settlement. When this order was not implemented, the Supreme Court issued another order in April 2004 instructing the Central government to provide a plan of action to expand the number of anganwadis to cover all settlements latest by July 2004. As a country with the highest proportion of undernourished children in the world, the demand for an expansion and universalization of the ICDS in India is well positioned. The universalization of the ICDS was one of the commitments of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government as part of its Common Minimum Programme (CMP). The CMP clearly stated that the UPA will universalize the ICDS scheme to provide a functional anganwadi in every settlement and ensure full coverage for all children. Universalization of ICDS would certainly contribute to curtail the perpetuation of social inequality by creating more equal opportunities for growth and development in early childhood. It will help promote social equity by creating a space where children eat, play, and learn together irrespective of class, caste, and gender. This socialization role of ICDS is very important in a country where social divisions are so resilient (Dreze 2006: 3708). The FOCUS Report on ICDS argued that universalization should mean every settlement in the country should have a functional anganwadi and its services should be extended to all children under the age of six years and to all eligible women. The scope and quality of these services should be radically enhanced, and priority should be given to the disadvantaged groups (FOCUS, Abridged Report 2006: 32). It was in November 2008 that the Ministry of Women and Child Development approved a third phase in the expansion of the ICDS—universalization of the ICDS scheme under the third phase of expansion bringing the total number of AWCs to 14 lakh. This included additional 792 projects, 213,859 AWCs and 77,102 Mini-AWCs, and an Page 31 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis additional provision of 20,000 anganwadis for anganwadi-on-demand (with immediate effect). In this order, the existing category of costs for children (6–72 months) was revised from Rs 2.00 to Rs 4.00 and for severely malnourished children (6–72 months) was revised from Rs 2.70 to Rs 6.00 and for pregnant women and nursing mothers from Rs 2.30 to Rs 5.00. It also revised the (p.151) honorarium for AWWs and AWHs of mini-anganwadi centres. In 2008 the ministry’s assessment of the state-wise requirement of AWCs with the process of universalization showed that there is a need for 213,286 AWCs and 77,053 minianganwadis in the country. In 2011 the National Advisory Council (NAC) gave recommendations for a reformed and strengthened ICDS. While NIPCCD gave a ‘pat on the back’ to the ICDS in its appraisal, the Council report said, ‘Despite the considerable expansion and additional investments made after 2005 (and following the Supreme Court orders for ensuring ICDS universalization with quality), progress has been slow and uneven ... the levels of under nutrition continue to remain unacceptably high and the rates of reduction in under nutrition disappointingly low...there is a need to a take a hard look at the ICDS to improve the programme’ (NAC 2011: 1).20 The NAC made recommendations and several important policy pronouncements. It discussed the deficiencies in the implementation of ICDS and identified a new set of core strategies which could bring in change within a time period of five years. The council’s core strategies include: a genuinely integrated approach, starting of crèches, decentralized management, home-based nutrition counselling, training and capacity building, community ownership, and public education. Its recommendations include expansion of operations of AWCs, human resources, early childhood care, and so on. As a part of management reforms, it recommended convergence of work between AWWs, ASHAs, and the ANMs. It also recommended setting up of a new institution, ‘Nutrition Mission of India’, and a comprehensive child development package. Reports and reviews of ICDS show the need for expansion of the ICDS and the appraisal of the scheme also recommends its universalization. However, it is important to understand, considering the history of ICDS, what the present circumstances are in which this has to take place and what it would mean to have ‘universalization with quality’. In the coming chapters of this study, we will look into the possibilities and challenges of this. A study by Rajni Palriwala and N. Neetha (2009: 31) on paid care workers in India has an in-depth analysis of the AWWs and helpers, and their struggles through unionization. Their study first of all (p.152) looked into the classification of AWWs not as workers but as social workers, volunteers, or honorary workers, and discussed the distinction between social work as a profession, voluntary activity, charity work, and so on in the context of understanding the work of AWWs and concluded that it is rather compellingly assumed in the context that these women are working for the social good rather than personal benefit. According to them, since the work contributing to social Page 32 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis good is ‘respectable’, this made AWWs more attractive for women from poor, underprivileged, and oppressed backgrounds—it also helped them financially in whatever little way in their desperate situations and that it gained them respect and a limited form of power. Thus, it has been taken for granted that this is a ‘social work’ which does not need any ‘skill’, and that women ‘naturally’ possess this skill. The work is also demanding since in case of failures or inefficiency, the AWWs have to face hostility from the local people with whom they directly deal (Palriwala and Neetha 2009: 35) However, it would be difficult to explain in this context why only poor women will desire this work when they would otherwise be in search of better paid work options than doing social or voluntary work.
ICDS in Mission Mode In 2012 the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare issued an order regarding the strengthening and restructuring of the ICDS Scheme. It stated that over the 35 years of its operation, ICDS has expanded from 4,891 anganwadi centres through 7,076 approved projects and 14 lakh AWCs across the country. However, with the universalization process from 2008, there were some programmatic, institutional, and management gaps that needed redressal. Later, the prime minister’s National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges and an Inter Ministerial Group (IMG) led by the Planning Commission decided to strengthen and restructure the ICDS. The IMG submitted a ‘Broad Framework of Implementation’ for restructuring the ICDS. Accordingly, the proposal to strengthen and restructure the ICDS scheme through a series of reforms including putting ICDS on a Mission Mode was considered and approved by the Government of India. It also proposed for continued implementation of the ICDS scheme in the Twelfth Five Year Plan and implementation of restructured and strengthened ICDS scheme (p.153) in Mission Mode with a budget allocation of Rs 123,580 crore as Government of India’s share.21 This Mission will, according to the ministry, reposition the AWCs as a ‘vibrant Early Childhood Development centre’, to become the first village outpost for health, nutrition and early learning. The Mission proposes, minimum of six hours of working (the AWWs and AWHs are expected by this finish to all their work in six hours), focus on under-3s, care and nutrition counselling particularly of mothers and under-3s, identification and management of severe and moderate underweight through community-based interventions, decentralized planning and management, flexible architecture—flexibility to states in implementation for innovations, strengthening governance—including PRIs, partnerships with civil society, introducing APIP (Annual Programme of Implementation Plan), and MOUs with states/UTs, and so on. The implementation will take place under the National Mission Directorate and National Mission Resource Centre. The Mission will be rolled out in three years and along with other changes, the new revised rates as cost norms were: for children the existing cost rate of Rs 4.00 was revised to Rs 6.00; for severely underweight children the existing cost rate of Rs 6.00 was revised to Rs 9.00; and for pregnant women and nursing mothers Page 33 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis the existing cost rate of Rs 5.00 was revised to Rs 7.00. The order allows for granting of a maintenance cost of Rs 2,000 to AWCs run in government buildings, while strangely enough when a good percentage of AWCs are run in rented buildings, it does not allow any amount for the AWCs run in rented buildings. The money for rent sometimes comes late, often around ten months late. It also provides for the appointment of a new Nutrition Counsellor cum additional worker in 200 high-burden districts where malnutrition is prevalent, and in other districts, a link worker (who will be paid an ‘incentive’ depending on her performance). Also in this Mission Mode, 5 per cent of the existing AWCs will be converted into AWC-cum-crèche. And ‘with a view to strengthen governance’, it assigns the management and operation of up to 10 percentage of projects to PRIs and separately to NGOs or voluntary organizations. (p.154) To improve human resource management through appointment and selection and appointment policy, it prescribed a minimum qualification of matriculation and age limit of 18–35 years for the appointment of AWWs and AWHs, and also permits states to fill up vacant posts on a contract basis. A National Mission Steering Group and an Empowered Programme Committee has been constituted under the MWCD which will be an apex body for providing direction, policy, and guidance for the implementation of ICDS. State and district Mission units will also be set up with decentralized planning and management, according to flexibility states for innovations. While the government has not increased the financial allocation for ICDS as required, with the declaration of Mission Mode, it has declared the need to look beyond ICDS, by privatizing it through the process of involving NGOs to face the new challenges. With the restructuring and strengthening of the scheme, there is no increase in resources or better services, monitoring or professionalization of the services; instead the new model effectively is moulded towards privatizing the scheme, making changes favouring privatization at the institutional, infrastructural, and management levels. The workers will be more on a contractual basis; more AWCs will be handed over to NGOs; schooling or crèches will always be private; and the distribution of supplementary nutrition will also be handed over to NGOs for community participation. Discussions on these important changes were carried out with NGOs like WB, CARE, and USAID, and not at the level of workers or beneficiaries of the scheme. The very idea of a Mission Mode makes it more temporary and short term than the idea of the scheme or programme (AIFAWH Review the ICDS Mission, 8–9). The Mission Mode will make the workers of ICDS more contractual. However, the needs and requirements as far as the beneficiaries and workers are concerned have only increased as an essential service in the present context in the country. Mission mode and the universalization plan for the ICDS, the problems faced by the honorary workers are certainly to get more intricate. The next chapter of the book specifically looks at detailed narratives based on the stories of the
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis anganwadis in some parts of selected states in the country and through it the everyday narrative of work of the honorary workers. Notes:
(1) The National Policy for Children 1974 is published by the Department of Social Welfare, Government of India, and is available at http://www.indg.in/ primary-education/policiesandschemes/national_policy_for_children_1974.pdf. (2) This is the guideline issued in 1982 through the Planning Commission’s ‘Evaluation Report on the ICDS Project, 1976–78’, by the Programme Evaluation Organization under the Planning Commission, Government of India. (3) The NIPCCD was established in 1966 under the Societies Registration Act of 1860. It functions under the aegis of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The institute functions as an apex body for training functionaries of the ICDS programme. (4) The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) was set up in March 2007 under the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005. The commission’s mandate is to ensure that all laws, policies, programmes, and administrative mechanisms are in consonance with the Child Rights perspective as enshrined in the Constitution of India and also the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The ‘child’ is defined as a person in the 0 to 18 years age group. The commission visualizes a rights-based perspective flowing into national policies and programmes, along with nuanced responses at the state, district, and block levels, taking care of specificities and strengths of each region. The commission sees an indispensable role for the state, sound institution-building processes, respect for decentralization at the level of the local bodies at the community level and larger societal concern for children and their well-being. (5) ICDS IV is the present phase of ICDS in India, which I will discuss in detail later in this chapter. (6) Both the NIPCCD review of ‘Three Decades of the ICDS’ in 2006 and the WB documents on the ICDS discuss the establishment of the ‘mini-anganwadis’. (7) The Indian Societies Registration Act 1860 was drafted by the British in India for the legal registration of literary, scientific, and charitable societies, under which a society could be formed by any seven people by signing a memorandum of association. (8) FORCES is a coalition of NGOs formed as a response to the Shramshakti report on the women workers in the unorganized sector in India in 1989. It took the initiative to struggle for childcare facilities for these women workers. The CWDS in Delhi took an active role in this coalition and along with NGOs and Page 35 of 37
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis individuals this network negotiated with the government for better childcare for women workers in India. (9) The ASHA scheme was initiated in India in 2006, a relatively new one in comparison to the ICDS. It is one of the key components of NRHM as community health scheme. By now it has around 9 lakh women workers part of it. As far as the nature of the ASHA scheme is concerned, it is certainly important to study it in detail in the context of women worker’s rights vis-a-vis the Indian state. However, it is not taken up in this book considering the feasibility of the same for an in-depth study here. Further, it is important to see the condition of ASHA workers in comparison with the AWWs in the context of the upcoming changes in the neo-liberal political economy of India. It is also important to see the very word ‘activist’ directly added to scheme as it a way of keeping the women in ASHA away from the status of workers. ASHA workers are more ‘voluntary’ workers in nature than any other scheme workers and even their remuneration depends totally on the work they do, not as fixed wages. The condition of the women ‘social workers’ in ASHA are worse in comparison with the AWWs. (10) The NRHM was initiated by the government in 2005 to enhance comprehensive primary health-care facilities to the poor and vulnerable sections in Indian society, and ANMs are key workers in this mission. (11) This information is based on the AIWAFH report ‘The ICDS IV—Whatever Happened to ICDS’ on its website (www.aifawh.org). (12) This information is based on a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly, 1986, in the section Discussion. Authored by a Development Paediatrician, it is titled ‘Management of Services for Mothers and Children; Vol. 21, No.12, March 22, pp. 510–12. (13) This information is based on a study contributed by HAQ, Centre for Child Rights for FOCUS, cited in FOCUS Report 2006, 29. (14) The source of this information is an Evaluation of ICDS, 2007, published by the Socio-Economic and Educational Development Society (SEEDS) under the Haryana state government and DWCD, GOI. (15) All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH), the workers’ union for Anganwadi women workers, was formed by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in 1989. The history and struggles of the union are discussed in a subsequent chapter of this book. (16) These data are drawn from the USAID report ‘USAID Assisted ICDS Project: Final Evaluation’ published in 1992 by the Pragma Corporation.
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The Story of the Honorary Workers in India’s Anganwadis (17) This information is based on the Maharashtra Government websites: http:// www.nutritionmissionmah.gov.in/Site/Home/Index.aspx/http:// nutritionmissionmah.gov.in/Pdf/Adopt_AWs.pdf. (18) The ‘Handbook of Instructions Regarding the ICDS’ issued by the DWCD in 1988 had been earlier published by the Programme Evaluation Organisation, in 1982, as a report titled ‘Evaluation Report on the ICDS Projects 1976–1978’ under the Planning Commission, Government of India. (19) The NIPCCD report ‘Three Decades of ICDS’ (2006) also showed that 80 per cent of the AWWs belonged to the same village/locality. These AWWs ‘walked down the distance whereas others (9.0%) utilised public transport...rest of them, around 4% used their own scooter/motor cycle/cycle’. The appraisal found that the system of selection of AWWs directly by CDPOs got diluted with the massive expansion of ICDS. The data on the age of AWWs depicted that about 64 per cent of AWWs were of 35 years and above. The percentage of AWWs in regular and WB-assisted ICDS projects was evenly divided in the age group 35–45 years while 30 per cent AWWs were in the age group of 25–35 years. 62 per cent AWWs had work experience over ten years whereas 28 per cent had experience of more than five years. Majority (43.2 per cent) were matriculate, 23 per cent higher secondary and about 10 per cent graduates, and hardly any illiterate. (20) This information is based on a background note titled ‘Recommendations for a Reformed and Strengthened ICDS’ by the NAC in June 2011. (21) This information is shared by the MWCD through an order dated 22 November 2012, ‘Strengthening and Restructuring of ICDS Scheme’, published by Government of India, New Delhi.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0005
Abstract and Keywords This chapter includes the primary data collected on anganwadis in the NCR, and a study of the interviews of the anganwadi workers in selected areas of the NCR. The chapter is based on qualitative interviews with the workers and helpers of the anganwadis in the selected areas and also includes information and views based on the interviews with anganwadi union leaders. It has a critical analysis of the findings from the primary literature and from the field work. The chapter analyses the issues and concerns raised by the workers and discusses the honorarium, appointments, and issues around other benefits of the workers and also the politics of caste, class and gender around anganwadis, the issue of privatization and NGOization and the rise of Health Hub anganwadis, and so on to see the conditions in which anganwadis are functioning today in the NCR. Keywords: National Capital Region, class of anganwadi workers, caste in anganwadis, gender politics among anganwadis, appointments in anganwadis, NGOization, private–public partnership, privatization of anganwadis, Health Hubs
If the government is ready to take care of our children for free, then we are ready to do free service for the government’s/community’s children. —Personal interview, Savita, anganwadi helper, Delhi [name changed], 26 October 2013 Very few studies have taken place on AWWs. Further, a multi-sectoral analysis of the ICDS scheme in itself is also still missing. In the absence of a deeper analysis Page 1 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region and understanding of a possible link between who the AWWs are, why they are still called honorary workers, and why they are not workers, and so on, are questions that need attention from the scholars of labour studies or workers’ rights in India. As pointed out earlier, while a majority among the ICDS beneficiaries and workers in India were earlier from the rural areas, the situation has been changing drastically with increasing levels of migration to the cities which coincided with large number of paid women workers in the country joining the informal sector. In order to understand the story of the honorary worker in anganwadis, the everyday life of the AWW in India brings into picture this missing link between a conceptual or theoretical understanding and real and practical issues in the field. A closer look at the anganwadis in India gives us a clear picture not only of the everyday struggles of the AWWs but also of the historical and political trajectory of the ICDS scheme with the major changes it went through strongly influenced by the changes in the (p.156) broader political economy around the role of the state in social welfare and workers’ rights in India. ICDS and AWWs in India is a perfect example to study in order to understand how the politics around women’s work and women workers were shaped in India and how even in a context of massive expansion of this section of women workers in paid work, it has been consistently overlooked as an issue of political significance in its larger political economy. This chapter focuses on the everyday life of the AWWs, their issues and struggles by focusing on the field stories from the NCR of India. The NCR includes areas or states which pays the lowest possible ‘honorarium’ to its AWWs. The study of the NCR brings in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan with a comparison of the workers in these areas. The chapter includes a brief description of states which are part of the NCR, with information on its specific ICDS scheme and its workers, which makes a comparison of the conditions and experiences of workers in these states possible. Since the attempt is explicitly to identify and understand the specificities of the work done by AWWs and helpers in the NCR, only a selected number of long qualitative interviews have been done from different anganwadis located in different areas of the NCR. The workers and helpers were met through the help of unions, mostly the ALFAWH/ CITU, and some through the BMS (these unions are discussed in detail in the next chapter of this book, looking at resistance and struggles by AWWs). Here the attempt through these interviews is to bring out in detail a description and understanding of the work of AWWs in their own views and experiences. It does not attempt to go beyond that to discuss or hold a discussion on the larger issues around the ICDS programme and its implementation including discussions on suggestions for improving the implementation of the scheme. This is because, the main focus here is to understand the work responsibilities and the contributions of the workers through the ICDS and to see how their work is recognized and valued by the state. In the process, the study also discusses the growth and changes in the ICDS to see its impact on its workers. Precisely for Page 2 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region this reason the study also does not attempt to offer suggestions or recommendations specifically towards improving the ICDS, whether nutritional levels of the children or the poor or the health aspects of the women. Instead, it offers a clearer picture of the condition and issues of women workers in ICDS thus showing (p.157) the process in which how the Indian state contributes to the devaluation of women’s work and side line or disregard the relevance of social welfare policies of the poor in this country which is utterly important for survival of the poor. The study has been done through qualitative interviews with a total of 55 AWWs and helpers in the NCR. The selection of the workers was done following a purposive sampling method within the research area and within the specific type of work. Questions around the class and caste specificities of the interviewees have been addressed within particular interests of the research as they appeared as exploratory in its location. The total number of workers interviewed was 28 and the total number of helpers interviewed was 9. Visits and interviews with union representatives or officials have also taken place with few group discussions with the workers which were facilitated with the help of the unions. The interviews with the workers and helpers took place in the areas of Wazirabad, Badarpur, Old Seelampur, Shahdra, Paharganj, Madanpur Khadar, and Azadpur in Delhi, Sonepat in Haryana, Ghaziabad and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, and Alwar in Rajasthan. The choice of the NCR area has helped in terms of comparing divergent conditions in states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana, which show different levels in their development indicators and also by way of specific social issues related to each state. The details of each specific interview are not given as part of the text of the study here in order to avoid repetition of issues raised or not to dwell overmuch on the specificities of work profiles of the workers, and so on. Instead, the chapter contains views and relevant issues which were raised by the workers through these qualitative interviews. Majority of the interviews took place in AWCs and often immediately after the working hours of the anganwadi. Each interview attempted a detailed profile of their work, issues which affected each of these works, and in general the functioning of the anganwadi. Workers and helpers were interviewed separately. The interviews for the same reason reflect the details of everyday activities, the profile of the worker or the helper, the specific conditions of the particular anganwadi, and also the larger issues around the programme. Many issues addressed in the earlier chapters do come up in these interviews along with other larger issues like trends towards NGO-ization, privatization, PPP, the universalization of ICDS, and so on. (p.158)
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
Table 4.1 Data on the ICDS in India and in NCR in the year 2012–13 AWCs
Operational Projects
India
Delhi
NCR part of Uttar Pradesh
NCR part of Haryana
NCR part of Rajasthan
7,025
94
897
148
304
AWC Sanctioned
1,373,349
11,150
188,259
25,962
61,119
AWC Operational
1,338,732
10,874
Total 187,659 NCR 7,879
Total 25,570 NCR 6,730
Total 61,100 NCR 2,079
AWWs
1,273,137
10,828
Total 146,223 NCR 7700
Total 24,874 NCR 6,634
Total 57,897 NCR 2079
AWHs
1,163,199
10,874
Total 143,648 NCR 7,654
Total 24,352 NCR 6,646
Total 54,915 NCR 2,079
Source: Data drawn based on information available from the government websites: www.wcd.nic.in and http:// wcddel.in/icds.html, accessed on 22 June 2013.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region Anganwadi Workers and Helpers in Delhi This section is an analysis of the interviews done in the Delhi region of the workers and helpers in the anganwadis of the NCR. The first part will look into the details and issues at the workplace of the AWWs and helpers in the Delhi region and the impact of policy decisions in the views of the workers and difficulties in the field in implementation of the programme. The second part of the chapter will also look into the same in the case of workers and helpers from districts in other states which are part of the NCR. With a comparison of the condition and work of these workers in these different states which are part of the NCR, the chapter will attempt a deeper understanding of the nature of work conditions and different situations of workers in terms of their rights, responsibilities, and relationships with the community. The information or discussion in this chapter is purely based on the interviews and thus reflects the reality in the field in terms of implementation of the programme and is not based on government policy documents or orders on ICDS or the version of government officials.
(p.159) The Anganwadi Worker in Delhi Working hours and work profile
Earlier, AWCs had its working hours from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. With the restructuring and changes brought about by the Mission Mode in ICDS, from 2013, the working hours of the AWCs got extended to 4 p.m. in the evening. This is also a response in relation to the acceptance of the increase in the extra workload and also in response to the increase in the honorarium paid to them. This timing only means that they spend these hours in the AWCs; however, there are extra duties or special duties like surveys which are done after leaving the AWCs. Workers open the AWC every day except for Sundays, six days a week, and also sign the attendance register. According to the workers in Delhi, an AWW is always multitasking. The work profile of the AWW in Delhi can be understood to a major extent from what is called a ‘daily register’. This consists of around 17 registers that include: Register for the survey-area-wise which includes all the households in the area, register for property which is the property owned by each household, daily register for the attendance of the worker and the helper, daily diary register which records all the events and duties of the day, register of children’s medicines which are distributed, register for injections, medicines, orimmunization to mothers or pregnant women, register for MMR, register for immunization of children, register for the details of nutrition distribution and nutrition check-up, register for food/diet, register for MM meetings of women in the area, register for deaths in the area, register for children’s details, register for births in the area, register for children’s weight check-up, register for stock in the centre, register for weight charts of children who are attending the centre, register for a monthly progress report (MPR) of all work, register for the movement of the AWWs and AWHs, register for referrals (of children sent to other places for medical needs), and the register for Kishori/Sabla programme. Four of these registers have to be attended on a daily basis. These include: daily Page 5 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region dairy, attendance, diet, and nutrition distribution. The time for each specific work also might vary in terms of when the AWWs take attendance, play with the kids, or distribute food, and so on. Registers like birth register have to be attended only on the basis of incidence. In surveys, all members of a family in the area of an AWC need to be included. This (p.160) was earlier 1,000 individuals for an AWC, now reduced to one AWC for 800 persons. Work schedule and daily routine
Once the children reach the AWC, the worker takes the attendance of the children present for the day. Usually the pre-school time is till 11:30 a.m. when the AWWs teach the kids or play with them and then they make them do many activities, both physical and mental exercises. There is distribution of nutrition from 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. The number of students in different AWCs in Delhi varies from around 30–70. Only three-to-six-year-old children come to AWCs and mostly it is understood that these are children from poor families; some of them may not be attending school or some may be attending government schools, especially the children from slum areas. Children who attend private schools which certainly show their better financial status do not attend AWCs. Extra responsibilities
AWWs in Delhi have a heavy responsibility of extra work which takes much of their time during or after the AWC working hours. These extra work responsibilities include pulse polio, old age pension, distributing de-worming tablet, iron tablet survey, election duties, conducting censuses, and so on. The AWWs do the distribution of these during the working hours; however, some work like de-worming needs extra working hours. Extra responsibilities like animal survey or election duties which are supposed to be paid extra, sometimes do not get paid at all and in fact, workers complained of losing their casual leave for attending to election duties as demanded. ‘Our project officer says, even if I had gone for the election duty, it will be counted as leave’ (personal interview, Manju [name changed], 23 June 2013). Polio survey takes five days and the AWWs are paid Rs 100 per day. However, sometimes the polio drops distribution is done on Sundays and the AWWs are paid only Rs 75 for this day. No other facilities such as travel expenses and so on are provided during the polio drops distribution work when AWWs work from 8 a.m.–5 p.m., and such working Sundays are around ten Sundays in a year. (p.161) Beyond the working hours at the AWC, as mentioned earlier, the AWC staff in Delhi on an everyday basis has other extra responsibilities. Vaccination for children or distribution of polio drops is one among the important responsibilities of the worker. Firstly, they have to go and collect the medicine from the government distributor. Then go house to house in the area to distribute polio drops. This job is distributed between the worker and the helper so that while one of them is distributing polio drops, the other is attending the AWC. During the period of polio drop distribution, the work starts earlier, mostly Page 6 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region around 8 a.m. The worker and the helper are paid Rs 100 per day and Rs 75 on Sundays for attending to this extra responsibility. Sometimes, the extra responsibility is in the form of animal survey in the area. This includes dogs, cats, cows, buffalos, rats, goats, chicken, and so on. This survey too is done after 2 pm as an extra responsibility when the AWC is closed. Workers are offered Rs 6.15 per house for this survey. Other responsibilities include anti-bacteria tablet survey and distribution to the children who attend the AWC. Survey of the handicapped or physically challenged is also done four times per year which is also an additional responsibility. Though extra payment is offered for these extra responsibilities, this is mostly delayed forever or never implemented. There are so many surveys to be done that sometimes people get angry with the worker who visit their homes. Sometimes, they refuse to help or give information or accuse them of disturbing them always with too many queries. The honorarium
As mentioned earlier, the AWWs are paid an honorarium per month, not salary. The honorarium of a worker in Delhi at present is Rs 5,000 per month, of which Rs 2,300 is given from the central government and Rs 2,700 by the state government. However, both the workers and helpers have never received their honorarium on time—mostly it reaches them four to five months late. In the receipt that they are given while collecting the wages, it is mentioned as ‘salary’, though it is not meant to be so. Thus, since AWWs do not enjoy employee status, there is no job security. In a study done on the AWWs in Delhi by FORCES, 96 per cent of the AWWs said in their interviews that they do not receive payment on time (FORCES 2007). Further, almost all the workers in (p.162) the present study said they were never paid on time, which means every month, and in fact the payment would happen once in three months or sometimes even once in five months. In the case of AWCs run by NGOs, this has even become ten months. The workers said they did not feel motivated to work at the centre on an everyday basis since the government was not serious about paying their honorarium every month. At times, AWWs even have to purchase registers, earthen pots, and water containers with their own money. Sometimes, the AWWs have paid the rent themselves in order to avoid being harassed by the landlord. The study by FORCES also shows that the majority of the AWWs were irregular as they were demoralized due to low wages and untimely payments (FORCES 2007: 25). Moreover, every year, the workload is going up with added responsibilities, while there is not much hike in the honorarium. (Increasing workload of the AWW is an important issue taken up by the unions, which is discussed in the next chapter of book). An increment is added to the honorarium once they complete the first five years, which is just 31 or 32 rupees. The workers are not in a position to demand an increment, since if they do they are told that they are not given salaries, but an honorarium, and they are not ‘workers’ who are employed. However, AWWs workers get this money as increment twice in their service time. A helper is paid Rs 3,000 as honorarium in Page 7 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region Delhi, though again they get paid mostly four or five months later, much like the worker. Considering the fact that they were paid around Rs 700 till recently, this for them is a decent wage in comparison.
The Anganwadi Helper (AWH) in Delhi Working hours
The daily routine of an AWH in Delhi is as follows: the helper reaches and opens the AWC around 8 a.m. and signs in the register; she has to clean the place and then leave for the houses in the area by 9 a.m. to pick up the children who are registered with the AWC; then she comes back to the AWC and have to be around till the AWC is closed in the afternoon. If the AWW is not around, then the helpers have to sometimes teach the kids or otherwise give them toys, and play with them. If food for the children is cooked at the AWC itself, which is at present very rare, they have to make it ready by 11 a.m. If the food (p.163) is collected from another agency or an NGO, they have to distribute the food by 11:30 a.m. Once the classes are over and the feeding of the children is done, they have to take the small children back home. The helper’s actual working hours is sometimes more than the AWW’s, since they need to reach the AWC early and leave late. Now with the working hours being increased to 4 p.m., it gets even more delayed and moreover, the honorarium is not expected to go beyond this even with the increased working hours. It is important to know if a woman who works as an AWH could get more money than this in any other work, like factory or construction work, then why she would continue in this job and moreover, with so much increase in everyday expenses, and decrease in the value of the rupee, how are they expected to survive with this meagre amount of money as wages. Extra responsibilities
The helpers in Delhi also share the extra responsibilities of the centre. If there are extra responsibilities, then they need to assist the AWW. They do not need to directly attend to the register but can help the worker in fulfilling these tasks. And on some occasions, they are called by superior officers like the supervisor to their office, for either submitting a register or other small tasks. The helpers also have tasks like collecting all the necessary commodities to keep the AWC clean and get stationery items for the children, which are either distributed directly by the government or through NGOs. They have to travel locally to collect these things for which they must spend from their own honorarium. There are no extra payments for these purposes. When MM meetings are to be organized with the local women, it is the responsibility of the helpers to inform the women in the area about the meeting. Girl children who are registered for the Sabla/Kishori programme also have to be informed of their meetings or other activities with the AWC.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region Mostly when a particular task is done by the worker, the helper assists whether it is vaccine distribution or taking classes. From the time of opening the AWC to closing it, the helper is expected to be actively present, that is, from 7:30 in the morning with the cleaning of the place till finishing of the extra work and closing down the AWC. Extra responsibilities also include collecting medicines from the dispensary or buying stationery for the day like chart paper for the kids. Except for the writing (p.164) jobs, the helper could be asked to do any other task. According to them, the distribution of polio drops is one of the most difficult tasks for them. This is due to the fact that there are many inhibitions around polio vaccination among the people and many refuse to allow the helpers to accomplish this task of distributing the vaccines. However, not only in this case, on many other occasions, sometimes both the helper and the worker have to face non-cooperation from the community; they are either not allowed inside homes, or there’s a refusal to share information, or hindrances are created in the distribution of medicines. Helpers have much work outside the AWC and those helper women who have small children have the advantage of being able to use the AWC where they work (which becomes both their personal space and workplace) for the care of their own children. The helper’s work schedule
The main responsibility of the helper is to distribute food. Earlier, food grains were supplied by contractors recognized through tenders by the state government and these were collected by helpers who would cook and distribute the food in the AWCs. However, today like in many other states, in Delhi too, NGOs have taken over the distribution of food; so the food is not cooked in the AWCs any more by the helpers. The NGOs distribute cooked food and the helpers have to arrange for bringing the food to the AWC and distribute it. The menu is decided by the NGO though there are guidelines given by the ministry on the type of food to be distributed overall. However, some items on the menu and the days in which they are distributed have a big demand compared to others, since some food is preferred by the beneficiaries more than the others; this ends up in more demand for food on particular days of a week and consequently the quantity is less considering the demand. The food distributed also varies in different areas. Mostly, there is a high demand for food; however, sometimes, the quality of the food is not good enough and in such cases the beneficiaries do complain to the authorities or refuse to accept it. There is always good demand for good-quality food and it gets finished early. It also depends on the class status of the beneficiaries, that some people can be choosy about accepting the food while some others will appreciate anything because of poverty. Some use the AWC only for the food and do not attend (p.165) classes or use other facilities of the AWC. Once the Sabla/Kishori project started (which I will explain later in this chapter), AWCs started providing food for adolescent girls too. This meant food is now provided twice a day separately for small children and adolescent girls. Both the quality and quantity of the food is a Page 9 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region reason for constant worry for the workers. The worry is about any form of protest from the beneficiaries about the food. Less quantity or good quality, both lead to problems of not having enough. Bad food also means less number of children coming to the AWC. Sometimes, the beneficiaries also move from one AWC to the other in search of better food since some NGOs distribute better food than the other. Other benefits for workers and helpers in Delhi
Some states have recently initiated a life insurance scheme for the AWWs; however, this is in the form of a group insurance on a project basis. Different states have different tales to tell on this insurance scheme provided for the workers. The AWC staff can take 20 casual leaves per year. However, they cannot access long holidays, since this can be availed only at different points of time, not consecutively. Leave can be availed for not more than two days in continuation; otherwise there would be a cut in their wages. They have access to maternity leave twice in a period of six months, though workers in many states are not paid during this period. However, there is no other medical leave option. In this case, workers and helpers have the same rights as far as the option of leaves is concerned. Most of the AWC workers in Delhi have attended some level of training. There is a one-month-long training and a one-week-long training, depending on the level of experience of the worker. Less number of helpers have attended trainings in comparison with the workers. AWCs organize MMs where women from the area get together for meetings held once in a month. The supervisors of particular projects inform the AWWs to call for MM meetings on specific occasions, like when polio vaccines are to be distributed. Each MM addresses one specific issue. Any woman who lives in the area can join the MM meetings. They sign the registers kept for MMs in the AWCs. For MM meetings, women always come with the hope that they will get some benefit from coming to these meetings as in the form of awareness or resources. Though it is more of a recent (p.166) development, in the past decade, many states now also want AWCs and their staff to organize SHGs, either by forming new SHGs or managing them. These SHGs and MMs are all mixed up together in terms of their organization and management since mostly it is the same women who are involved in all these formations. Moreover, a responsibility like an SHG needs extra skills and serious attention from the side of the AWC staff. However, it is further expected that there should be multitasking when it comes to these many levels of organizing by the local women and even further that MMs, NGOs, SHGs, and AWCs in the local areas should work together towards a successful implementation of the ICDS. Housing an AWC
Renting a building for an AWC is an important issue for many states, especially in the urban areas. In a city like Delhi where renting a room is extremely expensive, it becomes too difficult to get a place to run an AWC within the budget. A recent report on anganwadis in Delhi shows that Delhi does not have Page 10 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region adequate anganwadis considering the number of beneficiaries in demand. Based on DWCD data, it says that when the standard number of children prescribed for an AWC is 40, Delhi has on an average 84 children attending them. DWCD data show that the number of anganwadis functional in Delhi in June 2013 is 10,897 when the need is much higher (The Hindu 10 November 2013). Every AWC is provided with Rs 750 as rent to be paid separately per each venue. This is the rate for urban areas, while rural and tribal areas are paid different rates. Whether the rent is higher or lower in actual terms, the AWC will have to adjust within this money. If you take a place for a higher rent, the staff will have to adjust the money from their wages. The rent money comes along with the honorarium paid to the AWC. There is a need for bigger space for most of the functional AWCs, not just for the classroom—many a time the classroom is used mostly for other purposes too; however, what worries the workers is the absence of toilets, drinking water facilities, or electricity in majority of the AWCs. There is no additional money provided for electricity or water. And the provision for any better facilities certainly seems to have a direct impact on the functioning of the AWC. From 2013 onwards, the rent money has been increased; however, as far as the staff of an AWC are concerned, it becomes their responsibility to make sure they find a place. And for this reason, many (p.167) women, both the helper and the worker, try to run the AWC from their own homes. They do this since they cannot afford to get a room with the rent money they receive. Sometimes, they try to build an extra room in their own homes and rent it for the AWC; otherwise, they end up spending too much for a job which might lead them into debt. Moreover, those who run the AWC from their homes have to pay the electricity and water charges for the AWC from their own pocket. However, when they run an AWC in their homes, they feel that they have saved the rent money, and also if they are women who have small children, they are able to take care of their children too. Sometimes, renting of their own homes for running the AWC coincides with using the facilities of the AWC for their children, making it almost a home affair. Getting the job
The appointments at an AWC of the worker and the helper in Delhi are done through the ICDS offices and in some cases, through NGOs, as an outcome of the recent processes of NGO-ization.1 The selection process has also been outsourced or subcontracted to NGOs in the area. Once the ICDS office notifies or advertises vacancies to the public, applications are submitted to the office by women from specific areas. Many times, in fact, women get to know about the vacancies through unions and sometimes through personal contacts. Women who are selected are informed through a list displayed in the ICDS office. The selected women get a call for an interview for the profile of a worker. Though the job offer is temporary, many women continue to work till their retirement age that is, till 60, or say for more than 20 years. Women who attended these job interviews said they were asked in the interviews why they wanted this job and Page 11 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region they replied that it was for money to support the family, a supplementary income other than the (p.168) husband’s income. Some of them were also asked if they knew about the work an AWW did and were asked to explain the modalities of surveys, the distribution of drops/vaccines, and so on. However, whether employed through an NGO on contract or directly through the ICDS office, the staff is paid the same honorarium today, though in the beginning of the NGO-ization process, the staff in an NGO-run AWC was paid lesser. It was only after the unions (especially AIFAWH) took up this issue and the AWC staff went on a protest that these AWCs were merged directly under the ICDS and same wages were paid, though they were not successful in getting the arrears of this period. The involvement of NGOs in recruitment and other areas is distributed among different kinds of NGOs big or small. Majority of the appointments take place through NGOS. According to the workers, if 100 people are selected, 20 are selected directly and 80 are given to the NGOs, and the NGO jobs are on contract, while the ICDS job is ‘more permanent’ since they do not specify the tenure. The contract with the NGOs were mostly only for three years. The nature of the job is temporary. There is constant fear among the workers that they might lose their job any time, and especially with a change in the government. The workers and helpers face the conflict where the society sees the AWC job as a government job when in reality it is made clear to the workers that the scheme could be closed any time. In the words of a worker, ‘the scheme is “sarkari” (government)…. all functionaries are “sarkari, we are the only ones in this scheme who are ‘‘gair-sarkari [private]’’ (FORCES 2007: 24). As far as the appointment process of the helpers is concerned, mostly helpers have not gone through interviews or any other selection procedures during their appointments. Interestingly, in the case of helpers, there were many who had someone from their families who had already worked in an AWC as a helper, mostly their mothers. In the appointment order for the job, the job designation is of a ‘social worker’; however, the community sees it as a ‘sarkari’ (government) job. These days, it is through the unions that women in the community get informed about the advertised vacancies. The adolescent girl in the scheme
Initially, ICDS focused on children of 0–6 age group and pregnant mothers, the attention towards adolescent girls shifted at a later stage. (p.169) The primary reason for this realization was that for the health of the young mothers and their infants, it is important to address the health and education of the adolescent girl. The present Sabla scheme is a new version of an earlier scheme for adolescent girls called Kishori. It replaced the earlier programme called Kishori Shakti Yojana initiated in 2006–7. The Sabla scheme was launched in 2010–11, and is a bit more elaborate than the Kishori programme, though both address adolescent girls of the same age group between 11–18 years. In many places or Page 12 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region communities, the Sablas are still called Kishoris. The rationale behind the initiation or the implementation of the scheme through the ICDS is the realities around early motherhood or young mothers in India. Other than providing nutrition to the girls, there are other works that are part of it, such as teaching about body hygiene, checking weight, distributing iron tablets, sharing information about diseases like HIV/AIDS, about pregnancy, maternal mortality, and so on. Regular meetings are held on these issues. The number of girls attending the programme varies from centre to centre though the usual number is of a maximum of 20 and a minimum of seven to eight girls. The MMs play an active role in organizing the Sablas in each locality and also contribute actively in discussing issues with the girls, and also impart sex education. This scheme is directly linked to the ICDS, as it is indirectly related to the welfare of the mother and the child, it is implemented through the AWCs; this is an added and important responsibility as far as the work profile of the workers and helpers in AWCs are concerned. Thus, the AWCs became an important link between the adolescent girls in the community and the ICDS. It added to the work or even doubled in some ways the work of AWWs and helpers. As far as the implementation of the Sabla scheme is concerned, in many of the AWCs, helpers complained that many girls did not like the food, so they do not eat. It is also said that sometimes the girls do not want to attend the meetings and that the staff have to really push them into attending these meetings. Being a new programme, these meetings through Sabla is a new experience for the staff and is a different form of work. As mentioned in the work profile, a different register is kept for Sablas with the details on the provisions for them, like the distribution of iron tablets and so on. Since Sabla is still a relatively new project, it is still in an experiment mode in some areas and in some places three days a (p.170) week. The food for Sablas comes to the AWC around lunchtime and is distributed separately. However, it is an important criticism about the scheme that school-going girls will never be available during lunchtime to come to the AWCs, in which case the very purpose of the scheme is not going to be fruitful. The staff at the AWCs has often wondered that instead of sending the food to the AWCs, why can the government not distribute the same food through government schools? Since it is true that the programme is supposed to be only for adolescent girls and since the majority of them will be attending schools, the programme will be then helping only those girls who are not attending school. However, for the government, the main target in the Sabla scheme should be the drop-out girls.
Anganwadi Workers in the Other Areas of the National Capital Region (NCR) Uttar Pradesh part of NCR
The NCR in Uttar Pradesh at present includes the following districts: Ghaziabad, Meerut, Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), Bulandshahr, and Baghpat. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India and its below poverty line (BPL) Page 13 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region population is also very high. The sex ratio here is 908 women per 1,000 men. In 2011 the literacy rate in Uttar Pradesh was 70 per cent which was below the national average. The Planning Commission’s report on Poverty Estimates (Planning Commission, 2004–5) revealed that around 59 million people in Uttar Pradesh are BPL. For the same reason, there are a lot of people who use the AWC service. There were 897 operational ICDS projects in 2010, with 1,366,776 sanctioned AWCs in which 1,241,749 were operational. In 2009 there were 146,223 AWWs and 143,648 helpers in position in Uttar Pradesh.2 Table 4.2 shows the districts which are part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in NCR with the data of the number of anganwadi centres, workers, and helpers. Table 4.2 The districts which are part of the state of Uttar Pradesh in NCR with data of the number of anganwadi centres, workers, and helpers National Capital Region (Uttar Pradesh) District
AWCs
AWWs
AWHs
Meerut
1,748
1,673
1,700
Ghaziabad
1,779
1,779
1,779
G. Buddha Nagar
894
894
894
Bulandshahr
2,505
2,502
2,415
Baghpat
953
852
866
Source: Data drawn from the government website: http:// icdsupweb.org/hindi/index.html & http://wcddel.in/icds.html, accessed on 11 September 2013. Mostly the work profile of the staff at AWCs remains the same everywhere. There are however important issues like wages, appointments, (p.171) food distribution, or renting of an AWC which are different between states and also in this case between different states under the NCR. Unlike in Delhi, since AWCs in Uttar Pradesh are not paid rent by the government, there is no system of a working space for an AWC. Wage is one important issue of difference. The workers and helpers in Uttar Pradesh are paid much less in Delhi mainly due to the fact that the share from the state government is almost nil. The condition of work and workers in the Uttar Pradesh region is not much different from the Delhi area as far as the work profile is concerned. However, the wages of both the worker and helper as mentioned earlier are too low in Uttar Pradesh. A helper’s salary used to be Rs 850 till last year. This was increased to Rs 1,700 in 2013. The worker used to get only Rs 1,600 which has now been increased to Rs 3,400, though no one has been paid any arrears. AWCs get Rs 2,500 per month for the expenditure incurred on food. A worker in the Uttar Pradesh region gets an honorarium of Rs 3,400 and a helper gets an honorarium of Rs 1,700. They Page 14 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region work six days a week, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Within the state also, sometimes we can see differences in terms of the working hours by way of starting early or ending late; however, what is ensured is that the working hours in all the AWCs remain a minimum of five hours or more. There is one AWC per 1,000 or 1,100 families. Around 30–40 children attend each of these AWCs per day. The work profile, appointment procedures, and extra responsibilities are mostly the same as in the Delhi region. However, there are some additional responsibilities or extra work, like the survey of APL/BPL population, census work, or election duties, which mainly include the (p.172) distribution of election slips to all households in the area and the verification of the same. We are called any time to work. Sometimes for polio drop distribution, sometimes for working for voter identity cards, and these are not just the work of the anganwadi, but the work of the panchayat, and sometimes outside our area of work, we have to travel to the town for these works. And the extra money for these work, mostly doesn’t come. Works like duty for the election has to be done for free and we are forced to do this work just because we can identify the local people who come to vote. (Personal interview, Poonam [name changed], 6 December 2013). These additional responsibilities are compulsory and with extra payment officially; however, these responsibilities are sometimes paid or not paid. Sixteen registers are maintained in each AWC. There are also some new registers added with new special projects and sometimes workers are forced to spend extra money for new projects in terms of conveyance and other things. While there are extra responsibilities, no extra money reaches the workers. In most cases, expenditure for infrastructure or conveyance is not paid. The only additional money which has reached them is Rs 200 for the purchase of uniforms twice a year. In Uttar Pradesh, the government spends Rs 2.25 per child which is too less for the present times. This amount is supposed to be increased to Rs 4 as per the Supreme Court directive in 2009.3 Unlike in Delhi, there is no budget for AWCs to rent a place as the venue of running the AWC. A fixed amount of money goes to the budgeting as rents for the AWCs, with separate amounts for urban and rural areas. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, in some parts, AWCs are run in panchayat ghars; however, in many areas, there are no facilities at all and it sometimes becomes entirely the responsibility of the staff of an AWC to find a place, a room somewhere, sometimes a temple, in a gurudwara, or under a tree. Anganwadis are run ‘near a temple, on the roadside, in someone’s house in the slum, near a drain which is wide enough … there are no bathrooms, no facilities for drinking water … there is (p.173) no system, no planning’ (personal interview, Kanti [name changed], 6 December 2013). This means as in the case Page 15 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region of Delhi earlier, lack of availability of toilets for the children and for the staff, and also lack of drinking water facility. However, many AWCs are run today in government schools under the Multi-sectoral Development Programme (MSDP) in Uttar Pradesh. Under this programme, it is allowed to use the school premises to run the ICDS programme.4 As far as the NGO-ization of AWCs in Uttar Pradesh is concerned, the responsibility of distribution of food is handed over to the local NGOs. Other responsibilities such as appointments, as in the case of Delhi, is not handed over to the NGOs in Uttar Pradesh. So, appointments are done directly under the ICDS. The transfer of responsibility of food distribution to NGOs is also a recent decision, but not implemented completely. In many places in Uttar Pradesh, the staff of the AWCs are planning to protest against this move and try for its reversal. Already there is opposition to the new developments of privatization among the ICDS, where workers feel that when responsibilities like distribution of vitamins is financially supported by institutions like the WB and the distribution of food by the local NGOs, what will be left of the AWC as its own work. Moreover, in the present situation programmes like Mid-Day Meal Scheme in government schools are not working properly and many children in schools have no access to free lunch; so, the demand for such services from AWCs are only going to go up. Further, on days when the schools are closed, huge number of children turn up for food at the AWCs. However, beyond the service through distributing food, the contradicting situation is that on the issue of the number of children or families registered with AWCs are coming down. This is happening since less children attend AWC, as children are being sent to primary schools, including those who are less than six years old and also since three-to-six-yearold children are given some scholarships (p.174) for attending schools. In such a situation, they quit AWCs. ‘Primary schools, especially the private schools are allowing small kids of 3 years … this is a problem. Why are children who are younger than 5 years allowed in schools? The government should do something to stop this’ (personal interview, Gayathri [name changed], 6 November 2013). Also, as a result of different facilities and programmes distributed between government schools and AWCs, there is more and more duplication of services which also leads to failure of policies in terms of successful implementation. The Kishori scheme has been implemented in Uttar Pradesh from 2006 onwards, however, workers said that the girls are selected to the scheme for a few months, 3 to 6 months, and this is a drawback. ‘Very few girls are part of the scheme, maybe 3 or 4 in one centre and they too keep changing in every 3 months and another set of girls come’ (Personal interview, Kavitha [name changed], 5 August 2013). The poor people in the state who are the beneficiaries are sometimes so desperate that while they send their children to the AWCs, they also try their level best to help the AWC function and contribute to it in whatever way Page 16 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region possible, especially in moments of crisis. Such support can include helping with collecting food materials from different sources in the community in situations when the supply has not reached, collecting money from the community in the context of financial crisis or delay, or support in terms of human resources wherein they take up staff duty on rare occasions. In the absence of workers’ unions and proper support from the state government, the only option left for the AWC staff is to seek support from the community in whatever way possible. As far as the political questions and issues around worker’s rights are concerned, the workers of the AWC in Uttar Pradesh confronts the same dilemmas as in Delhi, that their work is social or voluntary; however, the community sees it as a sarkari job. However, within their limitations in terms of work space and resources, and other struggles, many women were proud to take credit for the changes or improvement in the field of health of poor women and children, such as a decrease in the MMR, a reduction in child mortality rate (CMR), and so on. A 2009 study on the AWCs in some districts of Uttar Pradesh (Dhuru 2009: 1–13) shows that anganwadis in Uttar Pradesh are uniformly poor. Most of them do not function, are not open at all and the few that are open, function only for a few days in a month. These AWCs (p.175) only distribute food or supplementary nutrition and do not engage in any other activity. Most of them still do not serve hot, cooked meals. Many functional centres are known as daliya distribution centres since they are only distributing food and not engaged in other activities like PSE. Mostly there is insufficient flow of funds and increased budgets are never released or received on time. There is no coordination between the anganwadis and the health agencies. NGO-ization, privatization, and corruption are important hassles to address. Caste discrimination or exclusion of the lower castes from the services is also high in the state, while most of the time disabled children get left out of the services of the AWCs. Haryana part of NCR
The Haryana part of NCR at present includes the following regions: Faridabad, Gurgaon, Mewat, Rohtak, Sonepat, Rewari, Jhajjar, Panipat, and Palwal. Table 4.3 shows the districts in Haryana state that are part of NCR, with the number of AWCs in the area along with the number of workers and helpers. Table 4.3 The districts in Haryana state that are part of NCR, with the number of AWCs in the area along with the number of workers and helpers National Capital Region (Haryana) District
AWCs
AWWs
AWHs
Faridabad
1,199
1,193
1,163
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region
National Capital Region (Haryana) District
AWCs
AWWs
AWHs
Gurgaon
574
565
574
Mewat
900
868
880
Rohtak
761
738
755
Sonepat
1,071
1,061
1,065
Rewari
760
755
758
Jhajjar
790
785
777
Panipat
675
669
674
Source: Data drawn from http://www.wcdhry.gov.in/ child_development_f.htm, accessed on 11 September 2013. The state of Haryana in the popular mind is associated with its caste politics, sex-selective abortions, violence against women, and so on. The Census data of 2011 show its literacy rate as 76 per cent and its (p.176) sex ratio as 879 for 1,000 males. Its IMR is 54 and MMR is 186. By 2011 it had got 148 ICDS projects with more than 14 lakh people as beneficiaries. It sanctioned 25,187 AWCs by 2012 and 512 mini-AWCs. There are 24,874 AWWs and 24,352 AWHs in position, which is 97 per cent of the sanctioned posts. In Haryana, till recently as in the case of Delhi an AWW got Rs 5,000 per month as honorarium in which the share from the central government was Rs 2,700 and that of the state government Rs 2,300; an AWH got Rs 2,500 per month in which Rs 1,350 was from the central government and Rs 1,150 from the state government.5 While the issues around sex ratio, violence against women do not show a good picture of Haryana, the state is also known for its worker’s rights struggles and active unions. Today it pays the highest amount as honorarium and also other benefits to its women workers in ICDS. As mentioned in the earlier chapter, the highest amount as honorarium is paid by the Haryana state government followed by Delhi. From January 2014, the Haryana government has been paying around Rs 7,500 to its AWW and Rs 3,500 to its AWH. The Haryana government also recently extended the limit of the retirement age of an AWW to 65 years. It has also provided the option of transfer for the AWW, who can now, even after marriage, continue to work as an AWW from her new location. There have been some measures recently from the central government also towards the welfare of the AWWs. In Haryana, other than an increase in the honorarium paid to the workers, an increase in the number of casual leaves from 12 to 20 per year, an insurance cover called ‘Anganwadi Karyakarti Bima Yojana’ under the Life Insurance Corporation’s social security scheme with a premium of Rs 280 per
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region year, an increase in the retirement and pension benefits, along with some other state-specific welfare measures have been announced.6 (p.177) Other than the Kishori Sakti Yojana described earlier, Haryana state runs a few schemes through the AWWs, like the Balika Samridhi Yojana, to promote the education of girl children, Apni Beti Apna Dhan for the girl child born in lowercaste families, Swayamsidha scheme for women’s empowerment, and so on. Fourteen per cent AWCs are run in schools, while 30 per cent are run in rented premises. The responsibility of preparation of nutritious food is given to SHGs and mother’s groups who support the functioning of the AWCs through the organizing of the local women in these SHGs. In recent times, there has been a move by the Haryana government to distribute food coupons to families, instead of cooked food, by which the families of an AWC can buy food accordingly. Mother’s groups were given the funds instead of food materials. The activities of these SHGs are considered as part of the implementation of ICDS and these women’s groups also come under the supervision of the local panchayats. The workers resisted this move strongly through the unions and this move, though implemented for a while, was then withdrawn. The AIFAWH in the state fought strongly against the coupon system, the formation of SHGs through AWCs, and also the privatization of ICDS. Unions consider that the creation of SHGs had a negative impact on the functioning of ICDS since these SHGs are formed by and through the AWWs, and are mostly based on financial dealings or interests. The AWCs and mother’s groups or some SHGs share a common bank and account, and funds are transferred officially through these accounts. Many a time, with the formation of SHGs, the financial burden of the AWC was transferred to the SHGs and mother’s groups who in fact ended up running the AWC with their own effort. Recent developments in the state around the ICDS and its workers have shown some positive developments helping to improve the conditions of the workers in comparison with the other states, though the same cannot be said when it comes to the beneficiaries. One of the major impediments still faced by the state is its skewed sex ratio. Along with this, the condition of women in general as far as women’s empowerment is concerned remains a big challenge considering increasing violence against women in the state. Increasing workload, impractical targets, and the transfer of responsibilities to the community through SHGs and mother’s groups are some of the most important challenges for the AWCs in Haryana. (p.178) Rajasthan part of NCR
The Rajasthan part of NCR at present includes the district Alwar only. There is a total of 61,100 AWCs in Rajasthan in more than 300 projects. It has a total of 57,897 workers and 52,431 helpers. In the district of Alwar alone which is a part of the NCR, there are 2,079 AWCs with a similar number of workers and helpers. In the state of Rajasthan, other than the support from the central government, Page 19 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region ICDS is supported by WB. From the late 1990s, the expansion of ICDS took place with the help of WB. A study in 2005 on ICDS in the state of Rajasthan showed that 51 per cent AWCs are WB supported and 49 per cent by the central government. WB not only takes an active part in the scheme, it also monitors the scheme on behalf of the state. An AWW in the state of Rajasthan is paid Rs 3,300 while the helper is paid Rs 1,700. However, the amount vary according to the years of experience and educational qualification of the staff and the criteria for the division is based on workers who have an experience of less than five years, more than five years, less than ten years, more than ten years, and more than twenty years. The difference in wages could however only be between Rs 150 to Rs 300 in the state.7 Many responsibilities of an AWC in the state at the moment are handled through the SHGs run by women in the local communities. Encouraging the creation and support of SHGs is an important agenda today as far as the ICDS in Rajasthan is concerned, important responsibilities of the ICDS like nutrition or food distribution is done by these SHGs. The SHGs in the area meet once a week regularly. The working hours of an AWC is between 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. in summers and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in winters. The change in the timing according to the season is appreciated by the workers in the state. Through the AWCs, free medical camps or check-up are arranged for women in the community once in a week. Other benefits like maternity leave, and distribution of saris for the AWC staff, remain the same as in other parts of NCR. There is group insurance which is again an important step supported by ICDS in Rajasthan, and the SHGs play an important role in the implementation of this. From the anganwadi staff, Rs 150 (p.179) is collected or deducted from their honorarium every month towards this. However, the workers complained that they have not been given any receipt towards this amount and for many, in case of termination or suspension from work this amount has not been repaid to them. Workers opined that they preferred individual insurance instead of the collective one. While the work profile of an AWW remains the same as in the other parts of this study, there are state-sponsored programmes the implementation of which is added to the responsibility of the AWW. There is also the concept of ‘Adarsh’ anganwadi centres—model or ideal AWCs which should be located in government buildings with enough staff and facilities. Other than the AWW and AWH, Rajasthan has appointed a ‘Sahyogini’ for each gram panchayat to assist the ICDS programme. Rajasthan also has another section of women health workers as part of their Women’s Development Programme (WDP) who holds a similar profile as the AWW or a Sahyogini. They are called ‘Sathins’. Mostly, the Sathins share the same office space as the AWWs though they are supervised by the gramsevaks (panchayat officials). (A brief story of Sathins is discussed in the next chapter of the book). The DWCD decided in 2002 to dispense with the Sathins since they felt it was a duplication of the AWW work profile. However, this decision was not implemented and the Sathins were restored and continued Page 20 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region as a part of Rajasthan’s well-known WDP (Navlakha 1995; Sawhny and Dubey 2001). There are around 5,000 such Sahyoginis and they are also trained along with the AWWs. In the district of Alwar which is part of present NCR, there are 2,079 AWCs.8 A study by the WB says that in Rajasthan, the AWW still gets family planning targets despite this work being handed over to the functionaries of the health department, and recommends that the AWWs be relieved of such additional responsibilities.9 (p.180) The important unions of the AWWs are very active in the state, especially BMS, and the unions have commonly demanded the regularization of the AWWs’ job. The workers opined that through the unions, they have also questioned the role played by the WB in the ICDS and have demanded better active role directly by the state government. The workers have also questioned the role given to the SHGs in the implementation of many activities as part of the ICDS. As far as the state welfare schemes or developments programmes are concerned, one important challenge for the state is the duplication of work between different schemes and the role of the workers within development schemes like Sathins and others like Sahyoginis, AWWs or ASHA workers.
Caste Politics around Anganwadis Important issues were revealed through these interviews related to the everyday life and work and also larger social and political factors affecting their work in the community. These include issues of caste politics, class politics, impact of privatization, and broad issues around gender politics in the case of anganwadis. As discussed earlier, an AWW or helper is expected to be from the local community. It is important to see a deeper meaning of the term ‘community’ here. In India many a time a local community as small as just a thousand people, may also be shaped by religion or caste. Though this is not a said rule, many a time, it also has to be seen that people belonging to one religion or caste live together in a local area. While making it a rule that an AWW should be from the local community, the idea was to make sure that local people should be comfortable or familiar with the person. Here, it is also expected that a person belonging to a different religion or caste may not be easily accepted by the people of the local community. It still happens sometimes that either the worker or the helper in an AWC belongs to a minority community in the area. This does not necessarily create a problem, but it does leave the option open for a situation which can be uncomfortable. Other than between the staff of an AWC and the community, there are also caste-related issues possible between the staff of an AWC, such as between the worker and the helper and vice-versa or between the supervisor, CDPO, or other senior and junior staff. (p.181) While in the interviews most of the staff said they did not believe in or practise caste hierarchy or discrimination, they were however proudly referring to their caste identity if they belonged to the upper caste. A clear caste hierarchy between the worker and the helper became visible in many cases and the other Page 21 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region way around too, but in extremely rare cases. This goes along with class hierarchy between the two—the helper and the worker which makes it obvious that there is a clear link between the way caste and class work together. Women who worked as AWWs and belonged to the upper castes came forward, specifically mentioning their surnames intentionally to show that they belonged to the upper caste. Majority of the women who worked as helpers, on the other hand, remained quiet in the presence of the workers, and were less forthcoming about their caste. When asked about caste discrimination or the impact of caste difference in the functioning of the AWCs in relation to its beneficiaries, workers denied the presence of any such form of caste-related issues. However, they did mention the occurrence of such issues among them, especially between senior and junior staff in the ICDS. Some mentioned that the prevalence of castedemarcated areas especially in slum areas10 is such that there are AWCs which catered only to children from a particular caste or sub-caste. On the ground, the workers mentioned that they are aware of the existence of AWCs which only the lower-caste people attended. In these AWCs, the staff too were from the lower caste; for example, the workers mentioned such AWCs including Bhangi colony anganwadi, Harijan anganwadi in the Jama Masjid area, or in Meetapur in Delhi. The existence of what is called harijan or dalit anganwadis or separate anganwadis for dalits or other forms of caste discrimination is reported in other parts of the country like Gujarat and Karnataka. Such situations appear in the social context (p.182) of anganwadi within a community not only in the context of dalits but also in the case of the Muslim community or Muslim-dominated areas. Further probing or research focusing on such aspects of the running of anganwadis and the reflection of the social hierarchies within its relationship with the community will certainly bring in the failures and difficulties faced in the implementation of the ICDS at the local level. In the contemporary situation, to get selected as an AWW (interestingly this is applicable mostly only in the case of worker, not helper probably since the helpers profile is not seen as suitable for upper caste women) it has become necessary, to some extent, to be well connected or to be from ‘good’ or powerful families. The reasons for this increasing demand and interest in the job for the middle class is attributed to factors like the increase in the honorarium and also the interference or involvement of local institutions like the panchayats in the selection process. Further, as discussed earlier, both class and caste factors play an important role in the selection process considering local politics and power networks. As far as the appointments are concerned, at the level of the supervisor’s post, there is a quota for Scheduled Caste (SC) towards the appointment to this post. In this context, the appointment of a senior person at the level of the supervisor can lead to caste conflicts between the staff. In the context of caste hierarchy, and the politics surrounding such hierarchy, there are apprehensions that an upper-caste junior staff may not obey a supervisor who has been appointed through the SC quota. It is also said that when an SC person Page 22 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region is selected as supervisor, she gives preference to other SC people to get appointed in their AWC as helpers or workers. However, this is seen by the staff, as was mentioned in an interview (personal interview, AIFAWH union official, Delhi, 17 November 2012) as a better situation than a lower-caste junior staff being discriminated by an upper-caste person at the higher level. Another such situation is when superior officers who get selected through quotas appoint people of their own caste as their colleagues as a way of dealing with the caste issue. Another issue which is of a more serious nature and more visible is the caste discrimination or prevalence of caste hierarchy between the lower-caste women who are helpers and the upper-caste workers or other superior officers of an AWC. Possibilities of caste discrimination or any form of caste practice outside the AWC and their official working space, between the AWC and the beneficiaries or the people from the community, are also real and both these two issues have to be (p.183) seen differently. As far as the members of the community are concerned, all people who need the services from the AWC have access to it and everybody allows the AWWs to work for them in the community as long as they provide some form of service or benefit. The creation of dalit/harijan anganwadis is certainly a disturbing trend. It is important to realize how different positions in a particular anganwadi get filled with selectively lower caste as its staff members, from CDPO, supervisor to helper in a government-run scheme. A reflection of the existing caste hierarchies within the space of an AWC in its relationship with the community is understandable. However, it is beyond comprehension to see how it actually gets into the very process of selection of its staff. If the state intentionally contributes to the creation or set-up of an anganwadi where all staff employed will be from the lower caste and only lower-caste children or women attend these anganwadis, it is a serious matter of concern and an important issue for further research. While the reservation policy is applicable in the appointment of staff in the anganwadis, the particular situation has to be seen as totally against the ethics and politics around the idea of reservation. Further, AWCs provide the possibility of creating a space in which workers and helpers, and also the beneficiaries who are from different castes, work together; they also provide a secular space for the community, within whatever difficulties they face. Here, though caste discrimination is an issue which needs to be addressed, when it comes to the reality of communities already divided on the basis of religion and caste, it becomes difficult to address the caste question in the context of an AWC. This situation makes one rethink the issue of what exactly it might mean to have an AWW from the local community. It is a relevant question to think what will be the factors by which a community will be ‘comfortable’ with women workers in their AWCs or whether there should be a
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region way of looking at it beyond or above the identity of the woman worker around her caste, class, or community.
NGO-ization and Privatization of ICDS and Anganwadis In the earlier chapter, we discussed the process of external assistance in ICDS involving private partners both at the national and local levels. The process of privatization and NGO-ization is happening at different (p.184) levels in different states within the country, and privatization and NGO-ization of the AWCs are happening at a fast pace. Everything related to the functioning of an AWC, like the appointment of its staff or the reports of the work done by the staff are submitted to the NGOs, and the NGOs do the appointments for all posts and they pay the wages and sometimes monitor the activities of the AWCs too. In other cases, only the food is provided by the NGOs—this involves the local NGO in the specific area who gets a contract as a supplier of food. As far as other states in the country are concerned, many are at different levels of privatization and NGO-ization, and many states are initiating new collaborations with big NGOs at the national or local level in running the ICDS. Following the demand to universalize the ICDS in 2006 in some areas of Delhi, local NGOs were handed over the entire responsibility to run AWCs, including appointments, payments, and so on. When NGOs started appointing the staff for AWCs, it was on a contract basis and the control over appointing and dismissing workers was entirely on them. The unions argued with the government against this procedure and demanded an explanation from the government on the future of work and the rights of these workers since they were appointed through NGOs unlike the others in ICDS. Union workers in states like Delhi strongly demanded an end to any involvement of NGOs in any form in the ICDS. ‘NGOs exploit us. They give wages according to their own convenience. Not only that they delay it, they also pay as they wish. Those who have worked for 30 years and those who joined just last year, both get Rs 5,000 under the NGO rule…they have made all of us the same’ (personal interview, Leela [name changed], 26 December 2013). To end the process of NGO-ization, they demanded that since the government could do the selection process, they should at least do the appointments themselves and hand over the AWCs later to the NGOs so that the workers will not have any problems later. However, the government did not agree to this and handed over the entire task to the NGOs. Much later, due to the pressure from the unions and the resistance against the move by the staff of AWCs, the government had to agree that those who were now working as workers or helpers, selected through NGOs will be taken in by the government into the ICDS. The process of appointments through NGOs continued till 2009, and in 2009, the Delhi government had to take the AWCs back from the NGOs (p.185) and hand them over to the ICDS and through this the workers and helpers appointed on contract are now directly under the ICDS. This was a result of long protests by the workers’ unions.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region Further, as mentioned in the earlier chapter from 2006–9, many ICDS AWCs were fully under the control of NGOs. The struggle by the workers’ unions is also in the situation that for those appointed by the NGOs, the three years of work in this period (from 2006–9) should be counted as their work experience or as their service period. Though initially the government did not agree to this, later with the pressure from workers’ unions, they agreed to the demand and this became handy for many workers since now they could apply for senior posts like that of a supervisor which requires ten years of experience. Sometimes, helpers who worked on contract later applied for the post of worker if qualified. After working for many months or years as helpers, sometimes they did get posted as workers. Many times, women who are not ‘permanent’ and are on ‘contract’ are invited to be a worker because of leave vacancies of others. When they get promoted to ‘worker’, they are sent to new places, wherever there is a temporary vacancy. However, when the leave vacancy gets cancelled, they are sent back to their old positions and places. Thus, the helper who gets promoted from the post of a helper to that of a worker gets demoted again once she is sent back to the old position. As per the selection procedure, people are selected as workers after application, short listing and interviews. After some get selected, the rest are shortlisted as a waiting list. So whenever there is leave vacancy, those who are next on the list are called to fill in. The situations mentioned here raise some questions. Since they are on temporary jobs, what are the procedures of these transfers and promotions in the temporary social service job? When moving from one post to the other, they are not given any contracts; there are no procedures and sometimes totally new appointments are made to fill in the leave vacancies, and these workers do get thrown out once the vacancy is over. Moreover, while these vacancies are filled, they also have to give it in writing that they will not join any workers’ union. With the process of NGO-ization, there were complaints of corruption, both in terms of decisions taken on the selection of NGOs and the appointments of AWC staff through the NGOs. As far as the selection of staff is concerned, some were taken from the already existing (p.186) selection list by the ICDS and others were selected afresh. In terms of the decision taken on the selection of involvement of NGOs, it is clearly an initiative from the government itself to involve local-level NGOs for various functions at various levels. So, in a place like Delhi, there are areas like Madanpur Khadar where the running of the AWCs has been entirely given to the NGOs (the AWCs and NGO-ization of them in the Madanpur Khadar area is discussed in detail later in this chapter). On the other hand, in almost all areas, as mentioned earlier, cooking and distribution of food has been handed over to the NGOs, while in some others, it is mainly appointments, evaluation or monitoring of AWCs, which have been handed over to the NGOs. The government of Delhi started a Gender Resource Centre (GRC) —Samajik Suvidha Sangam—in 2002 through which it initiated a Mission Page 25 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region Convergence, incorporating different GRCs at the community level. The aim of these GRCs is to work overall towards the empowerment of women and children, contributing to all welfare programmes by the government. These centres are to monitor the welfare programmes and they are initiated through the process of PPP. Thus, the involvement of the private sector in the welfare programmes has been made possible since these GRCs can be run by or outsourced to the NGOs. Through these GRCs and Mission Convergence, the government reached out to the involvement of formal and informal community-based structures like the CBO, resident welfare association (RWA), SHG, and other local organizations. From the local field NGOs, a few selected NGOs are selected as mother NGOs (MNGOs) to lead the role of assigning the tasks to other NGOs. The information on all welfare activities have to be given to these NGOs and the MNGOs are responsible for managing the records; they also have to verify and evaluate this information before submitting them to the GRCs. The MNGOs work with the department’s different offices on a regular basis and there is no clear procedure set out as guidelines in the selection of these ‘mother NGOs’ or the ‘field NGOs’. The DWCD and its welfare officers decide on the selection of these NGOs as far as the outsourcing of these works of evaluation or monitoring of welfare programmes is concerned and the nature of their collaborative work with NGOs. In the absence of proper government audit of these activities, there have been complaints from anganwadi staff and from beneficiaries of massive corruption in these processes in some places. In the absence of government institutions (p. 187) taking responsibility for the implementation and its supervision directly, it seems obvious that the government has contributed to creating a situation where corruption and mismanagement in these welfare programmes have become rampant. While the government officials and NGOs work hand in hand in managing these programmes, during the interviews with the workers and helpers many issues came up criticizing the local NGOs involved. Not only were they charged of corruption, the staff felt that many AWCs did not run properly because the NGOs would not do the payments on time—sometimes for months the workers were not paid. While the NGOs took the money from the government, they delayed the payment for workers for long or did not pay at all. Further, it was also reported by the staff that when some NGOs appointed helpers, they made/used the houses of the helpers as the office space for AWC and did not pay the rent money which is Rs 750 per AWC in Delhi. When they chose the helpers, they made it a point to select those who agreed to this condition, and the helper was paid only Rs 300 as honorarium since now the helper had her own home as her workplace. In the interviews, the workers alleged that this has happened in AWCs in the poor working-class colonies of Delhi. In Delhi, in the area of Madanpur Khadar colony area there continues to be AWCs run by the NGOs. Madanpur Khadar, a working-class colony in Delhi, is also a rehabilitation colony for those who got evicted from the city, due to Page 26 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region development projects; here, all the anganwadis are still directly under the NGOs. This means that, as discussed earlier, the NGOs not only take care of the resources of the centres but they also do the appointments or evaluate or monitor the functioning of the AWC. Moreover, NGOs also have taken over the role to pay the rent money through them other than the honorarium. The workers and helpers have to sign their attendance in the NGO offices located in the area on an everyday basis. Other factors around the functioning of the anganwadis remain the same. Those who work under these NGO-run anganwadis mentioned some specific issues they have to face unlike the other centres. Most importantly, for them, they do not get any form of appointment order for the job. This not only means that they remain workers on contract with no contract, but they also cannot count on their work experience. Secondly, the workers in these anganwadis do not get the (p.188) provision to take leave which is otherwise available to others. They are not able to access maternity leave which should be available for any woman worker in whatever circumstances. They are also forced to work on second Saturdays and not able to demand sanctioning of leave if and when they need it. Thirdly, the payment of the honorarium for the workers in these NGO-run anganwadis is delayed for long periods, sometimes six months to one year. In these circumstances, they are forced to continue to work in the centres without pay and without leave. Though the NGO-ization of many AWCs in Delhi happened in 2005 and later, as discussed earlier, they have withdrawn the process, and the running of the AWCs were returned to ICDS. However, four NGOs (B.R. Ambedkar, Nival Samuday, SHAPE India, and Kalamanch) are at present running these centres. The area also has a GRC as initiated by the DWCD which is also outsourced to an NGO called CASPLAN). The AWCs run by these NGOs in the Madanpur Khadar J.J colony are which is predominantly occupied by very poor working-class families. While NGOs are in control of the AWCs, the issues discussed earlier like transfer of funds from one to the other, delay in payments have increased as visible from this case. Moreover, workers are exploited more which also has an impact on the functioning of the AWCs. Not only in Madanpur Khadar, in most of the cases where NGOs are involved, the AWWs do not get paid for many months. In the NGO-run AWCs, the NGOs have also reduced the number of days of leave for AWCs in Delhi, as in they have converted the second Saturdays from holidays to working days. NGOs are also accused of making the AWWs do extra work without extra payment. Increasing workload is an important issue of concern for AWWs in many states and NGOization has played an important role in this. As far as the distribution of cooked food by NGOs is concerned, many AWCs had to hand over this role to NGOs since they did not have enough space in most of their offices to cook the food. And this contributed to the possibility of handing over the cooking to NGOs. It came out from the interviews that once an incident took place when a small kid Page 27 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region among a crowd of children pushing and jostling each other for food, fell into the cooking pot and died. This led to more fear among the AWC staff regarding cooking inside the AWCs. Lack of enough space as discussed earlier in this chapter is a serious issue for AWCs especially in the urban areas. Though the staff (p.189) of AWCs feel that it is most important that AWCs have its own space, even if it is within a school or a government institution, in most situations, especially in urban contexts, even with the increased amount of money promised as rent in the Mission Mode of ICDS, this seems to be a distant possibility. With the possibility of access to contracts for distributing food to AWCs or in the name of giving training to AWWs, many NGOs came together to form NGO coalitions which are called ‘Health Hubs’. Health Hubs are mostly run by corporate houses as part of their CSR programme (CSR and its role in ICDS is discussed in detail in the next chapter) in collaboration with the government through the DWCD. The government of Delhi supported the initiative of Health Hubs in 2011 to run the various ICDS facilities under one roof.11 Bringing AWCs into one place where all facilities will be provided by corporate houses was with the expectation of improving the quality of services with the support of the corporate houses. As far as the government is concerned, with the corporates running these AWCs, it helps to save the rent money in Delhi to run the AWCs. Almost all the facilities available in an AWC, including help for pregnant women, training of AWWs, and so on are provided through these Health Hubs. However, when the AWCs themselves were shifted to these Health Hubs, AWWs and helpers had to take the children from the area to these Health Hubs for accessing any facilities. The staff of AWCs protested against this move too since it was extremely inconvenient for them; however, in Delhi these Health Hubs continue to function. In the interviews it also came out from the workers and helpers that many times the NGOs do not submit the details or bills of the expenses for food, and due to this, the government does not pay back the money they spent on food. When this happened, the NGOs used the money for the payment of salaries for payment of food bills, and this led to delay in the payment of salaries of workers. While the NGO-ization has stopped, the Health Hubs are continuing, and in the name of these Health Hubs there are many NGOs which are still active in the ICDS (p. 190) programme. The Health Hubs are again a duplication of the work of the AWCs where the AWWs will have to take the children to these Health Hubs, and the same kind of information, education will be given to them. Instead of giving more resources to the AWCs, giving resources to the NGOs through these Health Hubs have just duplicated the work with less efficiency. More than that, at once, Heath Hubs are given Rs 3 lakh per year through the ICDS programme as a contribution to the services made by these institutions.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region One side of the story which is difficult to get access to with evidence is the accusation of corruption against the government officials or officials dealing with the ICDS. In many parts of the areas under research, the workers and union officials accused the government officials of engaging in various forms of corruption in relation to the implementation of the ICDS. These charges include minor issues pertaining to the budget for buying saris twice a year for the staff, which has remained unspent or got redirected for many years to other areas, like for buying food, the payment of salaries, contingency money to buy broom, cleaning stuff, registers, charts, and so on. In some places there is also accusation of money for food or salaries being used for office expense (of the ICDS) whether to pay bills for electricity and water or the appointment of security or other office staff. Officials explain the reason for these situations as the absence of fund distribution on time from the government, which then forces them to redirect the fund. However, there are also accusations of massive corruption in appointments of the AWC staff. As in the case of helpers, they are often not given appointment orders. When the appointment orders are not issued, not only can the appointments be easily manipulated, there are also many technical issues which are overlooked in terms of their service years or of retirement age. Sometimes, the retirement of a worker is not reported to the government and unofficially a new person is appointed through bribery and continues to work under the mercy of an officer. Many such cases were reported during the interviews in Delhi. Other than accusations of bribery, there are accusations of class and caste biases in many of these appointments. However, these are issues which are very difficult to prove or fight against since the workers have to fear the loss of their jobs—more so because the job is of a purely temporary nature and the workers remain entirely at the mercy of the government officials. (p.191) As there is a move to universalize the ICDS, there has to be an increase in the number of AWCs in the NCR and the funding towards this too. The funding for an AWC project or for each child is different in different states though the overall budget is released by the central government. The workers of the AWCs also feel that the funding for each AWC and for each child should increase. ‘Money given for each child has to be increased since the amount given at the moment is nothing considering the market prices for things … how can nutritious food be given with small amount of money?’ (personal interview, Sudesh [name changed], 4 November 2013). Though there is an increase in the overall funding of ICDS, this does not seem to be matching with the demand both for the expenses in relation to each child or in terms of the other expenses around the ICDS. An important phase in the privatization of ICDS started later with the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–12) onwards as mentioned earlier under the guidance of the WB, which is the process of PPP in the ICDS. With the implementation of PPP, many AWCs were given on sponsorship or adoption to big NGOs or Page 29 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region corporate institutions. In the interviews with the workers in the NCR, they felt that the NGO-ization of the ICDS was being promoted for the following reasons: With the NGO-ization process, more and more workers are being given contract appointments through the NGOs. As far as the workers are concerned, unionizing becomes difficult when the worker is on contract for a shorter period and with no appointment order. With further sub-contracting and privatizing in the ICDS, the appointments on contract instil fear among the workers that any form of protest for worker’s rights might cost them their job. As a new phenomenon, the workers informed that there are many NGOs which have started giving training for the selection to the post of AWWs. Many women and girls from poor families are attending these trainings with the hope that they might get a job as a worker or helper in the anganwadis. The training of girls from the community is for three months, three days a week and they have to pay Rs 1500. NGOs which run these training or coaching centres for AWCs also conduct a written exam and give away certificates that these girls have undergone training for the worker or helper posts in their NGO, though they make it clear that this does not guarantee them a job.
(p.192) Gender Politics around the Women Workers in Anganwadis Even with difficult work situations which continue to fail them in many ways, the workers feel strongly that they have played an important role in changing the situation positively, have contributed immensely to the country in the context of women and child mortality and fertility, have been able to eradicate many diseases, and have also educated children from the poorer families. They also see that there is a need to improve the situation and they need to do more for the poorer sections in their community. Many feel overburdened with work and are sometimes forced to compromise on contributing to the work in their household or for their own children. Not only does this leave them without time to take care of themselves or get any rest, and as in the case of helpers, many chores like cooking and cleaning which they do at the AWC is what they have to repeat in the form of unpaid work in their own homes. Here, the focus has been on the paid work these women do in the public or work space as part of their work profile, even if it meant running an anganwadi in their own homes or having their own children in the anganwadi. Still, there has been no pondering over their unpaid housework in particular for a deeper understanding specifically because the attempt is to understand the devaluation of their paid work and not the gender politics and division of labour around their unpaid housework. In the interviews, the workers openly expressed that if their work is seen as just women’s work and that is the reason for them being paid less, they should rather just sit at home and take better care of their own children since nobody else is helping them with their work at home. An AWW as a housewife certainly has to be the housework or unpaid work at home. Most of the women workers did see housework as their own responsibility as women. Further, some of them Page 30 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region even opined that the work they do cannot be done by men since as women they are capable of easily addressing to the needs of an anganwadi. While they work at the anganwadi and work at home meeting the requirements of their domestic space, it is also relevant to note that there are certain amounts of work within the duties of their paid work in the anaganwadis which are not paid. Such work, which is unpaid but done in the context of an extension of work in the anganwadis also do not get counted or (p.193) recognized in any form. There is this category of unpaid work within their paid work as an AWW. And this comes out clearly from the description of work profile and schedule both in the case of workers and helpers. There is no calculation or value added to the many forms of work like bringing children from homes to the anganwadi or time spent generally travelling to collect resources which are other than their regular work schedule. The mixing of the workplace and home which is actually an extension of the conceptual definition of the anganwadi, made it more and more complicated for women who were engaged in taking care of children from the neighbourhood or community in their own home space as a rented anganwadi centre. It is a situation similar to the situation of adivasi women in this country where valuing their work within the types of work they do and the time allocation for each unpaid work like collecting water or fuel becomes invisible work. The fact that only women can do the work of an anganwadi is in some ways accepted by the AWC staff too since they feel that in a country like India, if you need to do the kind of work which an AWW is doing, like visiting homes to enquire about the health of women or children, it can be done by women only since talking about issues like pregnancy or family planning to strangers is considered a taboo. Interestingly, the workers also conveyed through the interviews that they feel that it will be difficult for men to do some of these jobs like going from house to house with queries on the health of women and children though there could be some jobs which men can do better like distributing vaccines, collecting and distributing food, and so on. Many times, with extra responsibilities, workers are on duty for eight hours or more from nine in the morning. Since children or women come to AWC on an everyday basis the workers have to be regular and on time. Many things which are part of their work profile like distributing vaccines, and so on, have to be planned early and done on time and cannot be postponed or cancelled. However, as discussed earlier, if we see the working hours as eight hours in the regular job, then these women could earn much more in any other field in a factory or any home-based work. Most of the workers belong to the same community and mostly in areas in need of a functioning AWC, which are in extremely poor condition in terms of their development. The surroundings are not good where the lack of a decent workplace, good roads, and so on affect their work and in bad weather or conflict (p.194) situations, their work can come to a standstill. Women staff who are younger can still send their own children to the AWC or Page 31 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region take care of them in the AWCs run in their homes; however, many women workers have a service of more than 15 years now and their children are grown up. In some places more anganwadis are run on rent while in many other places the workers continue to use their home as the space for the centre. As in any other formal sector work, the women workers in AWCs have similar rules of maternity leave, retirement, and so on, while ironically at the same time they have lost their struggle to get minimum wages and other things. Many of them, especially helpers, are from a poor background find it unreasonable that they are doing ‘sewa’/social work when their own children are hungry, have no access to schools, or do not have access to good health facilities when they keep themselves busy with other people’s kids. However, many workers and helpers these days are from the lower middle class and are well educated. Some are even postgraduates who are working for such meagre wages. Moreover, as shown earlier, sometimes these workers have to spend money from their own pocket to buy stationery like registers and charts, or for travelling locally, especially in the absence of money reaching on time. For those who are from a very poor background this can be really burdensome. AWCs function and are in need mostly in such communities that it is unjustifiable to expect the community to cooperate with the workers to make it run. In the initial years the qualifications for being an AWW showed some preference for single women. Certainly there was preference for young women from the local community. More than this, there was specific reference to the preference for single, divorced, separated, or widowed women. However, as in the case of educational qualification, this single status was not specified or considered an added qualification. Interestingly, there is a change in this position from then to now. Today, it is specifically mentioned and even adds up to the qualification for women to be married. In the selection process, women who are married are being given additional qualifying marks. There have been instances as an outcome of this decision when women who appeared or were trying to get selected to the scheme get married while they are in the process. This has led to changes in the selection method and even changes in the list after the selection. Further, this has led to many (p.195) disputes and controversies, and women from many states have gone to court challenging the selection process. In the next chapter, there are discussions on such cases happening in different states in the country. Though, there is no clear explanation for this change in the position on marital status of the worker, it is indirectly mentioned in the judgments of specific cases that married women are better experienced for the job profile of the AWW. The earlier preference for single women was meant to help women from a poor background. However, the social and economic background in which women were single would have worked as anganwadis in the past as in 1970s or 1980 to present is certainly different. Women who are selected as AWC staff today are Page 32 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region being selected with the support from their families, especially in the case of the AWWs and their marital status, along with their class status have contributed to negotiating their work space and the power relations around it in the community. There have been many instances in contemporary times, especially in the case of women workers who have husbands in power either as panchayat leaders or in political party positions, acting as power centres with their support and the support of their families. In this way, many women who are AWWs, especially those who are not in the working-class areas or slums, have become very powerful and this has led to a change in the overall condition of these workers at least in some parts of the country. It is true that these women get to become an AWW with the support of their family status and power; however, in some occasions it is also true that they themselves change into agencies of power in the process. Sometimes, the work itself may not be welcomed by the members of the community, as sometimes people do not want to share certain information or they may not like to sign on any papers. This was especially the case with the distribution of polio drops. Many workers complained of people giving wrong information or refusing to give vaccination to their children because of misconceptions. There are communities in which workers might face resistance and they may not have access to some homes even after repeated queries about women’s or children’s health. Sometimes, people resist out of fear and misconceptions about sharing information or accepting help, and sometimes they may demand more medicines or food from the workers exceeding their own share. Workers specifically mentioned situations where some people in the community believed that polio drops will affect (p.196) children’s reproductive or sexual capacity in the future and refused to give it to their (male) children since they believed it is a hidden family planning agenda against their interests. It is mentioned that sometimes people also refuse to inform when women are pregnant or have new-born babies considering the fact that they may not get the benefits from the government considering the two-child norm of the government.12 The most pertinent demand from the staff of AWC is that considering their workload which is increasing day by day, they should be regularized in their job with proper salary. This means putting them on a pay scale and at least paying them minimum wages as guaranteed in the constitution for workers. While the government or the community wish to consider them as social workers, interestingly the workers do not appreciate this. The workers feel that if they are doing ‘social work’, then they should not be bound to do this. They do not agree that they will be doing ‘social work’ with so many restrictions. They should be in that case left to work according to their own interest and work the way they want to. As ‘social workers’, why they should retire from their job is another question since in social work, they should be able to work as long as they want to. They should not have to face punishments like being given memos or not Page 33 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region given leave, asked for reports, cut in their wages, called any time to work, and so forth, if it is just ‘social work’. They should be able to work according to their free will and capacity. However, as one worker from Uttar Pradesh said, ‘We consider ourselves sarkari (government) employees, why should we do such work otherwise? If we are doing “social work”, we shouldn’t be paid at all!’ (personal interview, Sunita [name changed], 4 July 2013). Some of the repeatedly mentioned demands from the workers in the NCR during the interviews include: the need to decrease their workload, better workplace or venue for the AWCs, closing down of the newly created of Mini-AWCs, and the need for an identity card. Of (p.197) course, working in an anganwadi has contributed personally to these women in many ways. ‘The good thing is that anganwadi work has almost made us leaders in the community. We have learnt to speak in public without fear’ (personal interview, Vimlesh [name changed], 14 July 2013). As far as the workers are concerned, many of them have been part of the ICDS for decades since it has been going on from 1975 onwards. One worker, who has been with an anganwadi for the past 30 years, said: There was an old woman who came to one of the Mahila Mandal meetings. She said she gave birth to ten children of which only four survived. Another old woman also told us the same story. So I asked her how many children her daughter has. She said her daughter-in-law has two children and both are in good health. So I told them this is the change we have brought forth and this change has happened only because of us. You keep coming to us and we will tell you what all to do. But why is it that what we have done is not counted by the Government as work? Last year, four children died in our village and we were as sad as the mothers of those children …. (personal interview, Mohini [name changed], 4 July 2013). These workers have continued working with this scheme for more than three decades and will end their service with no rights to any benefit from the Government and no pension in a retired life. An AWW from Uttar Pradesh said: Why are we not given any pension? I have worked as an AWW for 30 years and my whole life and youth has been spent in this work and now when I am old, why is it that I won’t get any money? Who will take care of me in my old age with no money? It is like you keep doing sewa (service) your whole life and later you are just thrown out as an orphan (personal interview, Shantha name changed], 4 July 2013). They have continued within the limited resource and support it offers with the hope that being a government-initiated project and considering the relevance of
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region their contribution to the betterment of the society, someday the situation will improve in terms of the nature of the job and their wages. With the introduction of the new ‘Mission Mode’ and the massive level of privatization of the project, there are more reasons to worry about their future prospects. The attempts towards universalization (p.198) of ICDS seem to be in contradiction with the changes brought about by these new processes of privatization and NGO-ization, and the demand for better worker’s rights seems to be taking place now in the face of an equally strong resistance to it and also towards the continuation of the project itself. With a service of sometimes more than four decades, many workers have high expectations and opinion on their own contributions to the community through their services and they see the increasing need for the continuation of it. However, with the entry of corporate powers or other big NGOs in the implementation and also in the local planning of the project, the possibility of bargaining for worker’s rights or even unionization seems to be more difficult to achieve. While the focus here has been on the experiences of the workers and helpers of the ICDS in the NCR, women workers of AWCs in other regions in India will have different stories to tell. Though some issues could be similar as the workers complain of increasing workload or poor wages, there are other kinds of issues which come up as in harassment of workers by the local community leaders due to the different rules and procedures followed in other states; for example, in Bihar, the signature of the panchayat is required on vouchers of an attendance register of workers in order to get paid or to avail leave. In many instances, AWC workers complain of sexual harassment and such instances of sexual harassment go mostly unreported or taken up officially. We have not moved forward much since the Bhanwari Devi incident in the state of Rajasthan in 1992 when a dalit AWW, Bhanwari Devi was gang raped in retaliation by the upper caste men for stopping an incident of a child marriage. During the interviews, even with much probing, some workers mentioned minor incidents of harassment by government officials, local politicians, or panchayat members. For example, the AWWs have to obtain certificates from panchayat officials to draw their honorarium and this is an occasion when the possibility of officials asking for ‘personal favours’ leading to sexual harassments. Most of such incidents are certainly not reported, not only because of the inability by these workers to take it up and fight against it, but also because of the lack of sensitiveness towards the fact that they are being harassed while they are at work, and a workplace for an AWW meant the whole village and whatever happens to them in this work field should be counted as sexual harassment at workplace. While harassment as (p.199) part of their everyday work may go unreported or unaddressed, incidents of severe harassment or rape have been
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region reported from other states and have been taken up by unions like ALFWH. With unionization, it is claimed that such incidents have come down. Here from the experiences of the workers in AWCs in the areas of the NCR, it is clear that, in contemporary India what is or was expected to be achieved through the ICDS, has not yet successfully reached its destination as far as the communities or eligible beneficiaries are concerned. Further, though as a welfare scheme, ICDS did have a good impact especially in the earlier decades, in the present times, not only have many new projects and schemes been conceived without proper thinking and planning, which has duplicated and added to the overall inefficiency and failure of these programmes, with privatization and NGO-ization, the possibility of corruption and financial mismanagement has become higher than before. With the workers demanding regularization and better wages, taking into account their work experience and contribution to the betterment of the communities, the devaluation of women’s work in the name of ‘honorary’ or voluntary/social work is not going to answer the questions raised by individual women workers or their unions. The workers in the AWCs clearly do not see their work as free social work which is coming to them ‘naturally’. They are equally or more concerned about their own future and the future of their children. As an AWW from Delhi pointed out, ‘Our work is to take care of small children and pregnant ladies in our village. But we also have a family and financial needs. Who will take care of our family? The government should see this. When we are taking care of the community, that kind of care should be given to us too’ (personal interview, Babita [name changed], 6 December 2013). Considering the fact that there is increasing poverty and demand for better services to the poor women and children with the support of the government, AWC workers are raising questions which are relevant for women and children from the poorer sections of our society and they take pride in their demand for workers’ rights. Notes:
(1) The term NGO-ization in some contexts refers to the entry of NGOs which is seen as de-politizing discourses. The presence of an NGO is addressed in social movements as NGO-ization of resistance or NGO-ization of politics. The term is also used to show the entry of NGOs in any political and public space where in many situations, privatization of the public sector has also happened. NGO presence is addressed in social movements as NGO-ization of resistance or NGO-ization of politics. (2) This information is available on the website: www.wcd.nic.in, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region (3) The Supreme Court directive of 2009 on the Right to Food and ICDS is available at www.cbgaindia.org of the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability. (4) The MSDP was conceived by the Ministry of Minority Affairs in the year 2008–9 as part of the Eleventh Five Year Plan to improve the socio-economic conditions of minority communities. It is a special area development scheme designed to address the ‘development deficits’ identified by a baseline survey. As a part of its objective to contribute to absolutely critical infrastructural linkages, it provides the space to run anganwadi centres mostly in government schools. (5) This information on the ICDS in Haryana is also available at the Haryana state government’s official website: www.wcd.hry.gov.in and in http:// panchkula.nic.in/women_child_devlop.asp. (6) This information is based on the report titled ‘Working Conditions of Anganwadi Workers’ by the Committee on Empowerment of Women (2010–11), Eight Report submitted to the Fifteenth Lok Sabha, August 2011. (7) Some of this information is also available on the official website of the Rajasthan government: www.wcd.rajasthan.gov.in. (8) This information is available in a study ‘Quick Review of Working of ICDS’ sponsored by DWCD and conducted by the Society for Economic Development and Environmental Management, New Delhi, in 2005. (9) This information is based on a study by WB titled ‘Analysis of Positive Deviance in the ICDS Programme in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh’ published in 2004. (10) In the past one decade, a huge number of working-class colonies and people have been evicted from the city of Delhi in the name of development, and they were relocated or rehabilitated in tiny plots of land in the border areas of the city. With the relocation (as visible otherwise in some situations in the earlier contexts too), the migrant population or others in these colonies are given plots according to their religion/caste or sub-caste identity. There is nothing official about it; however, it is obvious from the way plots are granted and lanes are divided within these colonies. In such colonies, naturally the presence of the staff and the beneficiaries who belong to the same caste is a reality. (11) A report on the Health Hubs in Delhi is available on the website http:// vashishtbroadcastingpvtltd.com/news_contents/view/hub-of-10-anganwadicanters-opened-at-village-kondli, accessed on 28 March 2013. (12) The two-child norm is one of India’s family control policies which encourages parents to limit their families to two children and creates disadvantages for couples with more than two children. Disadvantages include Page 37 of 38
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Anganwadi Workers in the National Capital Region disqualification from panchayat council positions, denial of eligibility to certain public services and government welfare programmes, including maternal and child health programmes. The two-child policy is modelled on China’s one-child policy under which couples are forbidden from having more than one child.
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0006
Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the debates and struggles around the worker’s rights of the anganwadi workers in the country. It covers a review of issues through the anganwadi workers unions, the reports, pamphlets, and other documents of trade unions working with the anganwadi workers and an analysis of the various activities of the unions among the AWWs. It also attempts a brief review of the relevant judgments from various courts and the questions raised in the Indian parliament on issues related to anganwadi workers. It reviews briefly relevant Constitutional Acts in the context of worker’s rights of the anganwadi workers broadly relevant to the implementation of the ICDS. Though some of these information and views have been gathered through meetings and interviews with policymakers and union leaders, mostly the information and views discussed in this chapter is from primary sources as in the form of documents and reports. Keywords: AIFAWH, BMS, Unionization of anganwadi workers, Constitutional Acts, Minimum wages, Regularization, Court judgments, Indian Parliament, Community participation, FORCES, Corporate Social Responsibility
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers. —Adrienne Rich 1976: xvii
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights Women’s bodies and the way they are produced/socialized into our societies as responsible mothers/caretakers together make women less valued as workers in the world of production and work. As women workers progressed into making their own history, it became more and more complex and difficult to divide them into respectively varying categories of paid work, unpaid work, and less paid work. Other categories invented within these by governments and societies include the ones like voluntary and honorary. Honorarium is/should be given in honour. It is honouring the women who do whatever work for their readiness, desire, and the commitment to do it. It is certainly not seen as wages and it has to be clearly seen as a gift made in honour. So, it is important to see if the honorary women workers in India, in this context, are engaged in an honorary work, in the legal, constitutional, and political definition of the term. It is not possible to place the concept of the honorary worker within the framework of the constitutional definitions of work and the worker in India. And for the very same reason, most of the government documents or orders and court judgments on the same are either merely (p.201) administrative and technical in nature or politically motivated or influenced by the particular political alliances in power. As a concept, the very existence of the honorary worker is a glaring example of how a political and legal system directly contributes to the exploitation and marginalization of its own citizens as workers. Further, while the term honorary continues to be a good example of the same, as mentioned in the earlier chapters of this book, there are many other layers of work and workers, specifically women workers joining in similar government-run projects or schemes which are of similar nature and with the same exploitative working conditions in the complete absence of the implementation of workers’ rights granted through the Indian constitution. Interestingly, all such similar schemes of work, be it ASHA workers or workers in the Mid-Day Meal scheme,1 are all women workers. While the senior positions within such schemes like the AWW in these days are taken by more and more middle-class women from families which are also with political affiliations, other posts like the helpers of the anganwadis, Mid-Day Meal workers, or ASHAs who are not directly under the ICDS, are mostly from extremely vulnerable poor families, lowest in the hierarchies mostly of both caste and class, struggling in search of a livelihood through this work. It is important to recognize that within the making of the ICDS and its growth, from the very beginning, from the 1970s onwards, women workers who have been involved in the scheme have raised questions and concerns regarding their difficulties within the workspace and also have struggled against the exploitative conditions of work. However, proper unionizing and alliances and solidarity between unions of workers in these schemes have happened only in a much later stage, mostly from the 1990s. It is still very clearly evident that whatever improvement in the conditions and terms of work of these honorary workers have happened, it is merely through their capacity and commitment to resist and Page 2 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights struggle while keeping the scheme going. As discussed earlier, (p.202) the AWWs are in a direct relationship with the Indian state unlike workers in other fields of the unorganized sector. This brings in a distinctive case depicting the exploitative relationship between the Indian state and its women workers. In ICDS, as in a few other similar schemes or programmes run by the government, women workers face unfair unequal treatment in a government-run programme. For the same reason, an analysis of the scheme from a worker’s rights perspective provides an understanding of the same in other similar schemes and programmes run by the Indian state. It is important in this context to see how these workers understand and assess their own condition as workers and how they have struggled and resisted discrimination by the government. The struggle of the AWWs and those who support their struggle is part of both their rights as workers and to expand the facilities of the ICDS; its continuation and upgradation, which in whatever form has benefitted the country immensely in the past few decades. However, recent debates around universalization and the move by the government towards restructuring the ICDS by initiating the PPP in the ICDS have raised important questions regarding the greater need for continuation and upgradation of the scheme. The initiation of the PPP led to a new phase in the expansion of the ICDS with the entry of corporate powers, along with the earlier collaborations with other non-governmental institutions. The earlier chapters have already briefly discussed the present development indicators in the country and its status in the world in comparison with other countries, especially from a gender perspective. It is evident that contemporary India presents a grim picture with its many development indicators wherein it seems difficult to justify the possibility of overturning anything related to the ICDS scheme. As discussed earlier, it is in a political context when India’s position in the HDI has slipped down drastically, because of many issues like increasing poverty and gap between the rich and the poor, increasing number of workers in the unorganized sector with no basic rights, poor health access system, malnutrition, lack of education and literacy, as well as lack of access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, or electricity that we are discussing what is happening within one of its best social welfare schemes and its implementation. Adding to these crises of the contemporary Indian state is the failure of almost all of (p.203) its welfare policies to reach out to the poorest of the poor and provide any further support from the governments towards schemes for poor people like the public distribution system (PDS) and the PHC.
Prominent Unions The history of the ICDS, its success, and its continuation has a lot to do with the success of the struggles and resistance by its workers/helpers, the organizing of the AWWs through workers’ unions, and the response towards these both from the government and its policymakers and also from the beneficiaries of the ICDS. The AWWs’ unions have recognized that any failure in the scheme is in many ways an outcome of the inadequacies in addressing the needs of the AWWs Page 3 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights and helpers. Workers’ struggles for their rights and also for the successful implementation of the scheme is well documented by the unions involved, especially by the AIFAWH under the CITU. Both AIFAWH and the women’s wing of the BMS today have the largest unions for AWWs. It is important to look into the political positions and steps taken by these unions towards improving ICDS and contributing to the worker’s rights of AWWs. Unions with many political ideologies and affiliations are active in organizing AWWs in the country. Unions like the Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS) and the National Federation of Trade Unions (NFTU) which were active earlier, however, became inactive by the 1990s. Different regions have histories of different political parties attempting formation of unions among the AWWs. However, unions which emerged in the early 1990s are at present very active with the AWWs in the country, especially the CITU and the BMS. These two unions have organized the AWWs and helpers, thus contributing in a big way towards better and successful implementation of the ICDS scheme. AIFAWAH is a union under the CITU. The CITU stands for socialist form of production, distribution, and exchange through a socialist state. In 2007 it raised the demand in the Indian Parliament demanding application of labour laws on AWWs. It demanded the Ministry of Women and Child Development to state whether labour laws are applicable on AWWs which will include the question of their job description, working hours, leave, age of retirement, retirement benefits, and so on. Moreover, a list of works, as a clear indication towards what exactly are the job (p.204) responsibilities of the AWWs, was tabled in Parliament by the CITU.2 The CITU also questioned the concept and creation of mini-anganwadis and the condition of the workers in these mini-anganwadis. It demanded equal wages for women working in the unorganized sector and the implementation of increased remuneration to AWWs.
(p.205) All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWAH) The AIFAWH was formed by the CITU in a national convention in Delhi in 1989. Its first conference was held in Udaipur in Rajasthan in 1991. Subsequent conferences were held in Calcutta in 1994, Bhopal in 1998, Puri in 2002, Bengaluru in 2005, and the sixth conference in Chandigarh in 2009. During these more than 20 years, AIFAWH has led several militant struggles on the demands of anganwadi employees; it has also been consistently fighting for the universalization of ICDS and its effective implementation. It has been making efforts to rally the support of the beneficiaries of ICDS—the lakhs of women and children belonging to poor peasants’, agricultural workers’, and unorganizedsector workers’ families in this struggle. On two occasions it has collected crores of signatures from the beneficiaries all over the country on a memorandum to the prime minister against the privatization of ICDS and for improvement in the conditions of the anganwadi employees.
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights The AIFAWH regularly publishes booklets and leaflets and conducts campaigns on ICDS and AWWs. The important documents published by the AIFAWH include ‘Scaling New Heights’ which is a collection of episodes of anganwadi employee’s struggles published in 2005, ‘Marching Ahead’ which includes a state-wise collection of reports on (p.206) the movement by AWWs published in 2009, ‘Save ICDS’, which is a report against the move towards privatization published in 2008, ‘How Can a Nation Develop without its Children?’ which is a document with a brief history and on contemporary issues facing ICDS, and ‘Review the ICDS Mission’, published in 2013. Many of these reports are also an end-result of protests and struggles, and the documentation of the experiences of AWWs in these struggles at the state and central level in which lakhs of workers participated. The sustained campaigns and struggles led by AIFAWH and its affiliated unions in different states have not only helped in achieving some benefits for the anganwadi employees, they have also created self-confidence among these lakhs of women workers, most of them working in villages, hills, and urban slums. At the central level, the AIFAWH organized many protests, hunger strikes, and massive rallies raising the issues of AWWs and their worker’s rights’ from 2004 onwards. The important issues taken up at the centre include the question of their regularization, minimum wages or the demand for better wages, better working conditions, proper housing facilities for anganwadis, social security benefits, and also protests against the privatization of anganwadis. As part of its organizing of AWWs, at the state level too, committees were formed at different levels and new leadership among its women workers have emerged through these union activities. While in some states the opportunity to contest in local elections especially through reservation for women in local elections helped these women to raise themselves into powerful and responsible local leaders, the last decade has seen umpteen examples of such women coming into politics and power through the unionization of anganwadi women workers. This phenomenon has not been limited to anganwadi women, it is also now reflected in other fields like the scheme workers in other projects like the ASHA, however not as effective and larger impact as in the case of AWWs. In 2006, due to a successful struggle by the members of the AIFAWAH, a Review Committee under the prime minister was set up to look into their demands. However, this committee’s report reiterated that the existing structure of honorarium and length of service as well as guidelines on leave be continued. It removed the difference in remuneration to matriculate and non-matriculate workers and gave many other recommendations, though most of these recommendations were (p.207) regarded to be too superficial, leaving not much impact on the lives of the workers (Palriwala and Neetha 2009: 33). Such struggles have also been followed by conventions and solidarity movements with the support of other organizations and struggles raising their demands consistently. Delhi has been witness to many such rallies and protests with the Page 5 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights participation of lakhs of AWWs and helpers representing almost all states of the country. The forms of struggle also included submission of memorandums to the government, marches to parliament, and other forms of protests both at the central, state, and local levels. While many of these protests were organized by the AIFAWH, some were also with the support of left political parties. Some of the issues which the union has taken up and been successful in addressing in recent times include the attempt to privatize and NGO-ize the anganwadis and also the issue of increased honorarium for the workers. The struggles by AIFAWH also led to increasing awareness about the importance of ICDS in ensuring the right to food, education, and health for children below six years. At present, AIFAWH has units in 23 states in the country across Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala and Tripura to Punjab. Members of AIFAWH actively participate in the joint trade union campaigns and struggles, for the improvement of the conditions of the workers in different sectors, of agricultural workers, peasants, and women.3 In the context of the AWWs, AIFAWH addresses the failure of the Indian state in implementing its own constitutional policies towards the distribution of resources for common good, equal pay for equal work, a living wage, and conditions of work ensuring a decent standard of life, free education for all children, and so on. It criticizes the Indian state, for it has … blatantly abandoned each and every one of these directions and it is handing over the rich natural resources of the country to the big national and multinational corporations against national interests, adopting policies that are leading to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, worsening the conditions of workers, resulting in widening of inequalities and deterioration in the nutritional and health status of the people. (www.aifawh.org, accessed on 12 January 2013). (p.208) According to AIFAWH, the Indian state has also failed to successfully implement its Acts like the Maternity Benefit Act, the Equal Remuneration Act, and so on. Other Acts like the Unorganized Workers’ Social Security Act,4 the Right to Education Act, and the Food Security Bill and so on are also being criticized for lack of gender sensitivity. AIFAWAH sees the initiation of ‘programmes’, ‘schemes’, ‘campaigns’, and ‘missions’ by the government as a strategy to avoid responsibilities, (the responsibilities of officially accepting them as workers and of creating proper institutions for consistent and structured welfare support to the community) and is being practised increasingly under the neo-liberal regime. In 2012, in its seventh conference, AIFAWH demanded the end of cheating of women workers in the name of schemes. For AIFAWH, the politics of creating ‘schemes’ and ‘programmes’ is such that it can be withdrawn or suspended any time. They are time-bound being extended or expanded on the basis of support from the funding agencies and they are also structured and restructured according to the directions of these agencies. Moreover, in the present context, Page 6 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights as part of the public–private partnership and in the name of community participation, much of the burden of running these schemes and programmes are actually being given to the local people. Since women who work in these schemes are not recognized as workers, they are given fancy and innovative names (reflecting the creativity of our bureaucracy)—‘social workers’, ‘activists’, ‘yashodas’, ‘mamathas’, ‘Sahayikas’, and so on. According to AIFAWAH, what an AWW experiences is ‘socially accepted exploitation’ (personal interview, AIFAWH official, Delhi, 27 June 2011). By denying the status of workers, most importantly the government robs them of minimum wages, and deprives them of job security and social security benefits.5 In the Delhi region, AIFAWH has (p.209) by now 700 registered members (personal Interview, AIFAWH official, Delhi, 27 June 2011). Though the number is relatively low for a union, the leaders claim that they focus on quality of work and do not want to indulge in a casual attempt to increase the quantity of the membership. It is the workers who are the backbone of the union work, with their active and sincere commitment, and their incorruptible approach. In a memorandum to the government, the AIFAWH elaborated with specific details the workload, extra responsibilities, and the conditions under which the AWWs work. They explained that because of the close relationship of the anganwadi employees with the people, their services are being utilised for the implementation of various other schemes and programmes of the Government under the health, education, revenue and Panchayat Raj departments. Some of the jobs in which the anganwadi workers and helpers are involved are related to the Health Department like creating awareness on ORS, Upper Respiratory Infections, Directly Observed Treatment System (DOTS) for Tuberculosis, AIDS awareness, motivation and education on birth control methods etc. They are also involved in jobs related to the Education department like Total Literacy Programmes, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, DPEP, and Non formal Education etc. In some states they are even involved in the promotion of small savings, group insurance, in forming Self Help Groups, in conducting surveys to identify BPL families, Leprosy survey, Filariasis survey, cattle census etc. Most of the basic information about the people in the village— births, deaths, number of handicapped persons, BPL population, etc. is invariably available in the anganwadi centres. The anganwadi workers in several states are also asked to actively involve themselves in stopping child marriages and other such practices. In short, over the years, anganwadi centres have developed into multiple service delivery centres for the benefit of children and women, at the grass root level … though as per the ICDS scheme, they are supposed to work for only four and half hours in a day, in practice, they have to work for more than 6–7 hours in a day to fulfil all these responsibilities entrusted to them.
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights (FOCUS 2006: 89) (p.210) For AIFAWH, it is important to see that with the increasing multiplicity in the services, a central and regular service like ICDS continues to be a ‘voluntary arrangement’, and according to AIFAWH, this is partly because the AWW’s duties are perceived to be an extension of the domestic childcare and women’s work to the public sphere, both of which are often invisible and unpaid. AIFAWH has been fighting against privatization of ICDS, for recognition of workers, minimum wage and pension for workers, against the privatization of PSE, handing over of AWCs to NGOs and corporates, and for freedom of association for its workers. From the experience of the workers in the ICDS, AIFAWH discusses the harassment and repression of AWC workers by the government, problems experienced by workers including attacks from terrorists, Maoists, and so on, various forms of privatization being implemented in different states, adoption of AWCs in different parts of the country by corporate like Reliance, Vedanta, BALCO, JK cements, JP Cements, Aircel, and the handing over to corporate NGOs like ISKCON and Nandi Foundation. According to AIFAWH, big corporates are coming forward to ‘adopt’ the AWCs and become patrons of child development since they are interested in utilizing the AWCs and the services of the anganwadi employees to access the vast rural markets to sell their products or as a vast market for manufacturing food products. Corporates like ISKCON have come up with mechanized kitchens in states like Uttar Pradesh where huge quantity of food can be produced at one stretch for distribution, both for the AWCs and for the Mid-Day Meal programmes, and the funding for this goes to company. AIFAWH argues that instead of giving such responsibilities to the corporates, the responsibility of child development and universalization and strengthening of ICDS should be totally the responsibility of the government. They have also taken a strong position against the very concept of community participation in the name of which the government is handing over the management of the anganwadi centres to the panchayats, NGOs, SHGs, Mothers’ Committees/Groups, and so on. AIFAWH focuses more on developing a democratic nature of functioning within the union, with politicization of its workers, along with policy intervention and coordination with other unions in the struggle with joint forums and common demands.
(p.211) Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) The BMS claims to be the largest central trade union organization in India, and was established in 1955. It claimed a membership of more than 65 lakh by 1999.6 BMS claims to believe in ‘integral humanism’, is pledged to ‘maximum production and equitable distribution’, and it declares its ‘belief in the concept of God as the sole moral proprietor of all wealth’. BMS stands for ‘modernization’ but not ‘blind westernization’ and it visualizes a nationalist politics away from ‘party politics’. It also stands for removing foreign influence on Indian society and it is against the New Economic Policy and the New Industrial Policy. In its struggle for worker’s rights, BMS has demanded social Page 8 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights security for the unorganized-sector workers and standardization of different layers of workers like the AWWs, ASHA, and Mid-Day Meal Scheme Workers, and to give them the status of government employees. It demanded the extending of social security to domestic workers, ASHA workers, Vidya volunteers, guest teachers, shiksha mitra workers, Mid-Day-meal workers, AWWs, sales/medical representatives, and so on. BMS started its work with AWWs from early 1980s onwards.7 Its first registered union of AWWs was in the state of Orissa in 1986, later in 1990 in Haryana and in 1991 in Delhi. BMS by then already had good strength in their membership in the rural areas of the country, organizing workers in different sectors, especially in the government sector. It claims a membership of around five lakh women by now, spread all over the country, and has registered anganwadi unions in 20 states. The registration towards becoming its member takes place mostly at the district level and some at the state level. In Delhi, it has around 16,000 members and around 20,000 in NCR. The most important demands of the BMS AWWs union are: to improve the working conditions of the workers and the anganwadi centres, to end the discrimination and harassment of the workers, and to reduce the amount of extra responsibilities being imposed upon the AWWs. Along with these there is (p.212) a demand for the regularization of work, giving the AWW the status of a government employee and also payment of minimum wages to the workers under the category of minimum wages for highly skilled workers. Interestingly, the workers or the leadership did not express any major difference in their views or demands from AIFAWH. The most important demands of this union also remained the issue of payment of minimum wages and the regularization of workers. However, BMS union leaders specifically stressed on the need to decrease the workload of AWWs. As far as the views of its members on the exploitation and discrimination of women workers is concerned, especially in the context of less paid or unpaid labour of women, they justified unpaid labour in the context of the household as women’s responsibility being women and not as exploitation of their labour. However, they strongly questioned the exploitation of women workers who get less wages, and other forms of discrimination as in the case of the AWWs. As far as the AWWs are concerned, BMS stands for the implementation of social-security schemes, pension facilities, and Provident Fund, along with decrease in their workload. BMS says that the AWCs have become the focal point of delivery of many services at the village level, and while the central and state governments evolved several new welfare schemes for the benefit of the poor, this in turn added to the workload of the AWWs and AWHs. The AWWs are performing the jobs of over ten departments like Medical and Health, Family Welfare, Education, Social Justice and Empowerment, Labour and Employment, Animal Husbandry and Housing, and so on. More and more AWWs are highly skilled and well educated. The Sangh is of the view that the present condition of the AWWs is due to the failure of the Indian state by not complying with the norms of Page 9 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights Article 309 while recruiting the AWWs and Helpers. BMS demands the absorption of the AWWs and helpers in government service, providing them a minimum wage of Rs 10,000 per month. Further, this benefit for BMS should be provided for all categories of workers in the unorganized sector. In an interview, the office-bearers of BMS explained that at present, every state government keeps adding more work responsibilities on the AWWs, and in some states like Orissa, the number of responsibilities have come to around 45 in the list of work, which includes work responsibilities both from the state government and the central (p.213) government. BMS feels that AWWs in many states work more than eight hours and sometimes 12 to 13 hours, depending on the extra workload they are given. Many states give only a pittance as honorarium. It has prepared a list of extra payment on additional works, and it shows that states like Manipur, Mizoram, and Bihar pay the lowest amount for all the additional works. As far as the honorarium for the workers are concerned, the Haryana state government is paying the highest at the moment: Rs 4,500 for the workers and 2,500 for the helpers, along with the payment share from the central government. BMS is against the NGO-ization and privatization of the anganwadis. The union also feels that the ICDS and the anganwadis are here to stay forever since the country always needs a mechanism to address issues of childcare and for this reason, the government should stop considering it as a project. They are also open in expressing that their fight against privatization and the implementation of the Mission Mode will continue till these steps are withdrawn. The unions have played an important role and continue to do so in creating a debate around the worker’s rights of women in government-sponsored schemes while otherwise it remained an issue ignored by all. It is seen generally as women who get to work in government-sponsored schemes are comparatively in better conditions of work in comparison with many other women workers in India in its informal, unorganized sector. However, the issue of exploitation of women workers is more glaring in the context of government-sponsored schemes. Mostly, the attempt as visible in the discussions in the earlier chapters is to lessen the burden on the government as much as possible as far as these schemes are concerned. So, not only does it help to bring in private institutions and agencies into the picture as a helping hand, sharing the burden of providing for the poor, the other aspect of it is to use the presence of the women workers as a clear way of cutting down on spending on the implementation of the scheme. The discussions on the conceptual and political understanding of women’s work in the first chapter of this book has covered those debates on how feminists have studied and resisted the exploitation of women’s labour in relation with the capitalist market and also by the capitalist state. It is relevant here to see in the Indian context how the debate and dialogue between the state, the unions, and women’s rights activists are reflected in the negotiations with consecutive governments and in the laws of the (p.214) country and the ways Page 10 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights in which these laws in relation with the case of these workers have been challenged in other bodies like the parliament and also in our courts by both AWWs and by workers’ unions. However, before we discuss the struggles and the relevant debates which took place in the Indian Parliament in the past regarding the issue of AWWs and in the court on the rights of these women workers, it is useful to discuss in brief the relevant laws and provisions in our Constitution relating to women workers’ rights. This will help to see the broader context in which these struggles are taking place and how these workers and unions have bargained with the state and its institutions in putting their demands in place. Here, most importantly, there are three Acts in the Indian Constitution which are relevant in the case of the AWWs and all these three Acts are used or misused by the state in the case of the struggle for the rights of AWWs. The fact that AWWs still do not have the right to minimum wages or equal remuneration as workers makes it important to explain some specificities of these Acts.
Relevant Acts in the Indian Constitution While the term ‘honorary’ does not fit into the definitions or references to work or wages in the constitution, it is relevant to refer to few constitutional acts which are useful in understanding the debates related to workers’ rights especially women workers rights in the Indian constitution. The Minimum Wages Act 1948, Factories Act 1948, and the Equal Remuneration Act 1976 could be considered relevant in the context of AWWs. The Government of India issued an Industrial Policy Resolution in 1948 which addressed many problems faced by industrial workers and along with it fixed statutory minimum wages in industries and promoted fair-wage agreements. With the passing of the Minimum Wages Act 1948, it attempted some regulation on the wages paid and also an improvement in the working conditions in the industries in the country. The government also set up a Fair Wages Committee in the same year in order to determine the principles of fair wages which include minimum wage, living wage, and fair wage (Swaminathan 1987). This section briefly discusses some of the relevant constitutional provisions and Acts relevant to the issue of women workers’ rights, especially in the context of the AWWs. Since the debates on anganwadi women (p.215) workers are mostly centred on the issue of whether or not they should be construed as workers and whether they should be paid minimum wages at all, it is relevant here to see sections of these Acts and the definition of work and workers in it. The Minimum Wages Act 1948 in the Indian Constitution provides for fixing the minimum wages in certain employments. The Act defines wages as: … all remuneration, capable of being expressed in terms of money, which would, if the terms of the contract of employment, express or implied, were
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights fulfilled, be payable to a person employed in his respect of his employment or of work done in such employment. (emphasis mine) (The Minimum Wages Act 1948, Section 2 (h)) And the Act defines the employee as … any person who is employed for hire or reward to do any work, skilled or unskilled, manual or clerical, in a scheduled employment, in respect of which minimum rates of wages have been fixed; and includes an outworker to whom any articles or materials are given out by another person to be made up, cleaned, washed, altered, ornamented, finished, repaired, adapted or otherwise processed for sale for the purposes of the trade or business of that other person where the process is to be carried out either in the home of the out-worker or in some other premises under the control and management of that other person; and also includes an employee declared to be an employee by the appropriate government. (The Minimum Wages Act 1948, Section 2 (i)) Here, more than in the definition of wages, the definition of who is an employee seems to be problematic when seen in the context of women workers like AWWs. What exactly constitutes or decides the minimum rates of wages to be fixed and who and on what basis even among those who represent ‘the appropriate government’ will declare a person to be an employee is important to be established. In a similar case in the Factories Act 1948, the worker is defined as a person (employed directly or by or through an agency), (including a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principle employer, whether for remuneration or not), in any manufacturing process or in cleaning any part of the machinery or premises used for a manufacturing process, or in any other kind of work incidental to, or connected with, the manufacturing process, or the subject of the manufacturing process. (The Factories Act 1948/Amendment Act 1987, Section 2 (L) (p.216) And a factory means … any premises including the precincts thereof, whereon ten or more workers are working, or were working on any day of the preceding twelve months, and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on with the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on, or whereon twenty or more workers are working, or were working on any day of the preceding
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights twelve months, and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carried on without the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on. (The Factories Act 1948/Amendment Act 1987, Section 2 (m) In this case, the definition of the worker and the workplace is very specific to the context of a factory or the manufacturing process. However, what the situations or cases are in which this definition can be extended and how this could be or have been possible in the past in different cases is important to look into. In the cases with ten or more workers in one workplace, what exactly constitutes or makes a workplace a manufacturing process has to be understood to see if this can be relevant in the case of the anganwadis. The Supreme Court of India, in a judgment in the case of state of Karnataka and others versus Ameerbi and others on 7 December 2006, said that the Minimum Wages Act is … applicable to the workmen working in the industries specified therein. It is not the case of the respondents that the ICDS program would constitute an ‘industry’ or anganwadi workers are industrial workmen. There cannot be any doubt whatsoever that it is one thing to say that the state would be liable to pay minimum wages irrespective of its financial constraints but it is another thing to say that as to whether such a claim can be raised in respect of those who are working under a project. It is not a case where the concept of minimum wage, living wage or fair wage can be brought in service. (Supreme Court of India, State of Karnataka & Ors vs Ameerbi & Ors on 7th December 2006, CASE No.: Appeal (civil) 4953-4957 of 1998) The case addressed the issue of whether AWWs hold civil posts or not which was to be determined on the basis as to whether there is a relationship of the employer and the employee between the AWW and the state. Here, the judgment by the Supreme Court shows it is stuck with the term ‘workmen’ and has used this term in order to disqualify AWWs as workers since they are not ‘industrial workmen’. More than (p.217) this, while the Supreme Court says that the state would be liable to pay minimum wages to all workers irrespective of financial constraints, this judgment has raised doubts on such a claim. Here the right to a minimum wage seems to be based on the interpretation of the nature of the post and the definition of the worker. The court’s position that AWWs are not ‘workmen’ and that they do not hold civil posts, interestingly, can be seen as in many ways going against the Constitutional rights guaranteed for workers and also against judgments from the very Supreme Court which guaranteed equal rights for equal wages and certainly minimum wages to workers either temporary or even on contract in projects.
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights Other than the Minimum Wages Act and the Factories Act in the Indian Constitution, the Equal Remuneration Act 1976/Amendment 1987 is also, though not directly relevant, worth mentioning while discussing the case of AWWs. The Equal Remuneration Act addresses the payment of remuneration of equal rates to men and women workers. Here, the status of the anganwadi/honorary worker is restricted to women workers. So, within the sector, there is no question of discrimination or unequal treatment between men and women. However, anganwadi work can raise two other relevant issues: The possibility that since they are women workers, they are paid less than the minimum wages and the very possibility of a work being restricted to women can also be questioned on the basis of discrimination between men and women in terms of access to work. Here, the denial of a worker status to the AWW, the denial of minimum wages to them and also the denial of accessibility of this work to men can all be put to question on the basis of Constitutional rights. Further, more than what is already discussed on the basis of the rights under the Factories Act and Minimum Wages Act, the Equal Remuneration Act is useful here to see if anganwadi women workers are discriminated vis-à-vis other workers because they are women. The Equal Remuneration Act of the Indian Constitution promises not just equal pay for equal or similar work, it also promises the prevention of discrimination on the basis of sex. According to the Act: No employer shall pay to any worker, employed by him in an establishment or employment, remuneration … at rates less favourable than those at which remuneration is paid by him to the workers of the opposite sex in such establishment or employment for performing the same work or (p. 218) work of a similar nature… No employer shall… reduce the remuneration of any worker. (Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, Section 4 (1)&(2)) As visible from the above, the Act specifically addresses the question of remuneration in the context of same or similar work. So, it is directly relevant to the question of AWWs since there is no question of discrimination happening between workers or between men and women in their case. However, it may be relevant in this context to see that the Act ensures that there is no discrimination against recruitment of women. It is also possible to interpret that the Act does not address the question of discrimination against men since in the case of the selection of AWWs only a woman can become an AWW. Further, in the case of AWWs, the Act is relevant only if the state can be considered as their employer. All the above-mentioned Acts are in one way or the other addressing the question of work, worker, and workers’ rights. However, it is also visible that in the case of the AWW, her existence is not really recognized under any of these Acts. She is not recognized as a worker or employee of the state, she is not paid Page 14 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights minimum wages and she is discriminated in her work since she is a woman. Though the Indian Constitution does guarantee these rights to all its workers, when it comes to the AWW and many other workers, working in similar schemes, none of these Constitutional rights are accessible to them. The following sections of this chapter discuss the debates on this issue—the issue of the workers’ rights of the anganwadi women workers—both in the courts of India and also in the Indian Parliament.
Questions Raised in Parliament Debates in the Indian Parliament on the issue of AWWs reflect both the extent to which the unions or initiatives from the workers have managed to make their voices reach the authorities and politicians, and how the people’s representatives from time to time have responded to these concerns. On most occasions, when members raise an issue or represent a demand of the AWWs or the ICDS in the Parliament, it has been a response to a campaign or protest organized by the workers through unions either at the state level or at the central level. There were a number of occasions when questions related to AWWs were (p.219) raised and following are some of the points noted on the basis of the records of Lok Sabha debates and Rajya Sabha debates on the issue. A review of these questions certainly does not mean to cover the history or issues around anganwadis or AWWs in the states which is in the centre of the discussion, since that will need a further expansion of the study in an in-depth manner in the whole country. The questions raised helps to reflect upon the voice of the struggles through the unions or their political representatives in Parliament or otherwise the relevance of the issue as it is reflected through these politicians who represented the voice of the anganwadi women in Parliament. In the records of Lok Sabha debates, it was in April 1987 that for the first time, the demand for a reasonable payment to AWWs in the country was raised in the Lower House. Shri Balwant Singh Ramoowalia (Sangrur, Punjab) spoke about how the aims and objectives of the development and welfare schemes initiated by the government have lost their way at the implementation stage itself. For him, the anganwadi scheme was started for the uneducated slum dwellers and people living in other backward areas of cities to improve their standard of living and basic knowledge. Anganwadi women workers go from door to door and work six hours a day and are paid only Rs 275 per month which is not at all sufficient to feed a family. Instead of considering this as an honorarium, the government should be ready to pay them wages (Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 26, No. 26–35, 1–8 April 1987: 296). In July 1989 Mr Moturu Hanumantha Rao representing the state of Andhra Pradesh and Kanak Mukherjee representing the state of West Bengal raised the poor working conditions and the need to increase the salary for AWWs in the Rajya Sabha (Rajya Sabha Debates, Vol. 151, No. 6–10, 25 and 31 July 1989, Page 15 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights 282–3). In the April 1990 Lok Sabha debates, Sarju Prasad Saroj representing Mohanlalganj in the state of Uttar Pradesh, raised the issue of the contribution of AWWs to the implementation of the ICDS and the need to impart suitable training and funds for better payment for them (Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 5, No. 31–3, 28 April–2 May 1990: 438). In August 1990 Sarala Maheswari, representing West Bengal, raised the plight of the anganwadi employees. She said that anganwadis provide employment to a huge number of poor women in the country and it is unfortunate that (p.220) the government is not keen on addressing the limitations and problems in the scheme, including the regularization and increase in the payment of the anganwadi women workers (Rajya Sabha Debates, Vol. CLV, No. 1–4, 7 August 1990: 286–7). Lok Sabha records also show that in December 1991 debates, Mr George Fernandes, representing Muzaffarpur in the state of Bihar, reported a scandal involving crores of rupees in the supply of food unfit for human consumption to infants through anganwadis in the capital and of the action taken by the government in that regard. In his submission he raised issues around the implementation of the scheme and also about the workers in the scheme in the absence of the government paying any attention to the problems. Based on a newspaper report, he pointed out names of three blacklisted companies which had made no agreement with the government and that these companies supplied items to women and children in the anganwadis which were not fit for human consumption (Lok Sabha Debates, Vol. 6, No. 8–10, 2–4 December 1991, 610). In August 2006, in a special mention addressing the problems faced by AWWs in the country in the Lok Sabha debates, Basu Deb Achariya from Bankura and Rupchand Pal from Hooghly raised the issue of making the AWWs permanent workers. The issue was raised in the context of a relay hunger strike by thousands of AWWs and helpers in Delhi, representing different states. They reminded the Sabha of the commitment made by the UPA government through its national CMP to make AWWs permanent as Grade C and D employees, along with an enhancement of their honorarium.8 He also mentioned the demand by the AWWs for the universalization of ICDS by the government. He demanded a Supreme Court order regarding the regularization of AWWs along with universalization, reminding the Sabha that these women workers are doing a valuable service to the country. (p.221) The records on debates in the Rajya Sabha in March and July 2006 mention the demand for regularization and implementation of better wages for the AWWs raised by Brinda Karat, representing the state of West Bengal, who reported a hunger strike by thousands of AWWs, explaining that the working condition of these workers is very exploitative. While they are mandated to take only 6 tasks, the government is making them do a minimum of 18 tasks. This situation demands the need to commensurate the work they are doing and get them on
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights wage scales and recognize them as government employees (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 208, No.4, 27 July 2006, 223–4). Lastly, in 2009 December, a private members’ bill was also introduced in the Lok Sabha, titled ‘Integrated Child Development Services (Regularisation) Bill 2009’ by Arjun Meghwal which addressed the need to provide for regularization and universalization of the ICDS services in the country and for matters connected therewith. This bill proposed institutionalization of the scheme, establishment of adequate number of anganwadi centres in every settlement or village throughout the country, and that the central government shall set up a committee to be known as the National Committee for the Welfare of Persons working in Anganwadi Centres and release necessary funds for the effective implementation of this Act. Most of these debates show that better wages and regularization has been a consistent matter raised, though it has never reached a positive culmination. The introduction of a bill for regularization of workers though a private bill was an interesting and important move. However, there has been no follow-up on this matter too and the bill got shelved along with the move towards privatization and universalization of the ICDS. The fact that these debates have come up in the Sabhas consistently in the past few decades reflects the active struggle and resistance on the part of the AWWs for their rights and also the acceptance of the same by members or representatives of different political parties and their unions.
Prominent Court Cases Quite a few times, both AWWs and their union representatives from different parts of the country have taken the Indian government both at the state and central levels to the court on multiple issues related to AWWs. (p.222) The court cases fought, won, or lost by the AWWs and by others on behalf of AWWs contributed to the workers’ rights of the AWWs and of the woman worker in general in India. The issues are of a wide range whether it is retirement age, appointment criteria, minimum wage, or the right to contest in the elections. This section will review some of the important cases and court orders regarding the same; these include a Karnataka Administrative Tribunal order in 1996, Karnataka High Court Order in 2008, and the Supreme Court orders from 2001, 2006, and 2008.
Karnataka Administrative Tribunal Order in 1996 In 1996 Ameerbi and others filed an application in the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal against the State of Karnataka under Section 19 of the Administrative Tribunal Act 1985, praying to hold that the AWWs and helpers working in various anganwadi centres are entitled to be treated as civil servants and shall be deemed to be so treated always and shall be entitled to be regularized in the government of Karnataka (Smt. Ameerbi and others vs State of Karnataka, The Page 17 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, Application numbers of 2841 to 2845 of 1996). These applications were referred to a larger bench of the tribunal. While referring this matter to the larger bench, the tribunal made the following observations. The tribunal considered the case of AWWs as a matter within its jurisdiction since … if a post is directly under the control of and post of a Department of Government, then it partakes the character of civil post. Further … if an activity carried on by Government or under its control which can be characterised as an essential Governmental function then the person employed to carry on such activity are to be held as civil servants. (The Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, Ameerbi and others vs State of Karnataka on 9 August 1996, CASE No. 2841–2845 of 1996, Section 4) The tribunal saw it as evident that the AWWs are under the control and supervision of the authorities who obviously have the right to control the manner in which they must carry out their duties and that the relationship between both as one of master and servant. In the case of AWWs, the tribunal says … the right of the state to select for appointment, the right to appoint, the right to terminate the employment, right to prescribe conditions of (p. 223) service, the nature of duties performed by the employee, manner and method of work, to issue directions and right to determine and the source from which the salary (honorarium) is paid and host of circumstances clearly go to show that there exists relationship of master and servant. (The Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, Ameerbi and others vs State of Karnataka on 9 August 1996, CASE No. 2841–2845 of 1996, Section 14) Moreover, some characteristics of this work, like the fact that the work is transferable, issuing of memos by the authorities, nature of duties and the time table issued, controlling and regulating of the provision of leave of absence, the regularity of the honorarium, and the similarity in the selection process like regular government employees were also mentioned by the tribunal. The tribunal also mentioned that considering the working hours, the remuneration paid is absurdly low. However, since the tribunal cannot function like an industrial tribunal, addressing the issue of wages, it is for the state government to constitute an expert body to examine the case of the AWWs.
Supreme Court Order, 2001, 2004, and 2006 on the Expansion and Universalization of ICDS One of the most prominent judgements which have had a major impact on the implementation of ICDS came from the Supreme Court of India in 2001 followed by some additions and interim orders later. In Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, the ‘right to life’ is a fundamental right and on the basis of this, in 2001, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL Rajasthan) submitted a writ petition to the Supreme Court of India seeking the enforcement of the right to Page 18 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights food, arguing that the right to food is an aspect of the fundamental ‘right to life’. The Supreme Court made it clear that the right to life should be interpreted as a right to ‘live with dignity’, which includes the right to food and other basic necessities. The PIL initiated by the PUCL petition is known as ‘PUCL versus Union of India and others, Writ Petition (Civil) 1996 of 2001’. Through an interim order in November 2001, the Supreme Court directed the government to fully implement nine food-related schemes (including the ICDS). As mentioned earlier, the court order also universalized the ICDS with quality. The unversalization of ICDS was included in the national CMP of the UPA government in May 2004. The NAC submitted detailed recommendations for achieving ‘universalization (p.224) with quality’ in October 2004 as well as follow-up recommendations in February 2005. The expenditure by the central government on ICDS was nearly doubled in the Union Budget 2005–6.9 However, an attempt towards the implementation of this order came up only after another interim order in October 2004 from the Supreme Court which explicitly directed the government to expand the number of anganwadis from 6 lakh to 14 lakh in order to ensure that every settlement is covered. The Supreme Court also ordered that all sanctioned anganwadis shall be operationalized immediately. According to this order, all SC/ST hamlets should have anganwadis as early as possible and hamlets with high SC/ST populations should receive priority in the placements of new Anganwadis. The order also demands that all slums have anganwadis, contractors shall not be used for supply of supplementary nutrition, and local women’s SHG should be encouraged to supply the supplementary food distributed in the anganwadis. Local women’s self-help groups and MMs can make the purchases, prepare the food locally, and supervise the distribution (CIRCUS 2006: 32). The Supreme Court in 2006 through another interim order also directed that rural communities and slum dwellers be entitled to ‘anganwadi on demand’. These anganwadis have to be sanctioned or implemented in not later than three months from the date of demand in cases where a settlement has at least 40 children under six, but no anganwadi.
Supreme Court Order in 2006 on the Regularization of Anganwadi Workers Posts as Civil Posts In 1996 AWWs filed an application under the Administrative Tribunal Act before the Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal. The matter was later referred to a larger bench of the tribunal. The tribunal opined that although AWWs and helpers are paid an honorarium, they hold civil posts. However, reversing this tribunal order, the Supreme Court of India (p.225) in its judgment in December 2006 in Civil Appeal Nos. 4953 to 4957 of 1998, arising out of the judgment of the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, stated that AWWs do not hold statutory posts or civil posts and that they do not carry any function of the state. During the hearing of this case, the state council argued that
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights … they (AWWs) are volunteers from the community who merely act as a conduit to implementation of some welfare schemes. They may have to work for a maximum period of 4ys. They are not holders of civil posts. They can contest elections. For the filling up of such posts, no advertisement is required to be made, nor the provisions of the recruitment rules are required to be compiled with. If they are to be treated as State Government or Central Government employees, the scheme would become non functional. (And so) in the event of the judgement from the Tribunal if to be upheld, would lead to serious financial implications.(State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953-4957 of 1998) decided by the Supreme Court of India on 7 December 2006: p. 2) However, the respondent lawyer argued that … casual railway employees, part-time employees having been held by this court to be holders of civil post … there is no reason as to why the respondents would be treated differently… paying less than minimum wages would amount to beggary. (State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953–4957 of 1998) decided by the Supreme Court of India on 7 December 2006: p. 2) The Supreme Court in its judgment admits that ‘there is a relationship of a master and servant between the state and a person holding a post under it’ which can be interpreted as the relationship between the AWWs and the authorities or the state. The judgment further states that ‘the existence of this relationship is indicated by the state’s right to select and appoint the holder of the post, its right to suspend and dismiss him, its right to control the manner and method of his doing the work, and the payment by it of his wages or remuneration’, emphasis mine). While admitting the existence of employer and employee relationship between the government and AWWs and helpers, the Supreme Court declared that the AWWs and helpers are not entitled to be treated as government employees as they are not holding a civil post and that their recruitment was not as per Article (p.226) 309 of the Constitution. It further explained why. According to the Supreme Court: … the posts of anganwadi workers are not statutory posts. They have been created in terms of the scheme. It is one thing to say that there exists a relationship of employer and employee by and between the state and anganwadi workers but it is another thing to say that they are holders of civil post. (State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953–4957 of 1998) decided by the Supreme Court of India on 7 December 2006: p. 6) The judgment further explained Page 20 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights … a post denotes an office … a post under the state is an office or a position to which duties in connection with the affairs of the state are attached, an office or a position to which a person is appointed and which may exist apart from and independently of the holder of the post … a post may be abolished and a person holding a post may be required to vacate the post, and it emphasizes the idea of a post existing apart from the holder of the post. A post may be created before the appointment or simultaneously with it. A post is an employment, but every employment is not a post. A causal labourer is not the holder of a post. A post under the state means a post under the administrative control of the state. The state may create or abolish the post and may regulate the conditions of service of persons appointed to the post. (State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953-4957 of 1998) decided by the Supreme Court of India on 7 December 2006: pp. 6– 7) Clarifying the kind of work carried out by anganwadi women workers, the judgment said AWWs however, do not carry on any function of the state. They do not hold post under a statute. Their posts are not created. Recruitment rules ordinarily applicable to the employees of the state are not applicable in their case. The state is not required to comply with the constitutional scheme of equality as adumbrated under Articles 14 and 16 of the constitution of India. No process of selection for the purpose of their appointment within the constitutional scheme existed. The AWWs are indisputably free to contest an election while a holder of a civil post may not be. (State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953-4957 of 1998) decided by the Supreme Court of India on 7 December 2006: pp. 7–8)
(p.227) Karnataka High Court Order 2008 In the matter of the selection process of AWWs by the state governments (Smt. T.J. Manjamma vs State of Karnataka), the Karnataka High Court, in its judgment in February 2008 observed that the ‘objectives of the ICDS which if it is to be taken seriously and understood, virtually places an AWW in the position of an angel who may have to have magical powers to fulfil all the junctions delineated under the scheme’. According to the order: A reading of the role of the Anganwadi worker assigned in the scheme would give an impression that the Anganwadi worker will virtually substitute for the State in respect of the medical care, educational facilities to children up to age of six, educating the mothers both in bringing up of children and the nutritional aspects of bringing up the children and providing nutritional food to the identified children coming within the Page 21 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights jurisdiction of each Anganwadi centre. (T.J.Manjamma vs State of Karnataka, Writ Appeal, No.957/2008, Order W.P.No 13326/2005 (S-RES) Dated 1/4/2008). The judgment also states that the state here only acts as an agency to implement the central government scheme and does not have independent powers and is to be guided by the scheme and the directions contained in the scheme. There seems to be a large number of writ petitions which challenge the constitution of the committees which selected the workers, and other cases which question the selected workers. The judgment refers to the illegal presence of local MLAs in the selection committees for the AWWs and it criticizes the state government’s enthusiasm to interfere in the appointment of AWWs. The court also mentions that while choosing an AWW, special care should be taken in her selection so that the children of the SC and other weaker sections of society are ensured free access to the anganwadis. Referring to the role of the state government, the counsel appearing for the central government submitted that the state government acts only as an agent of the central government in the matter of implementation of the ICDS programme; that it has no independent role to play in the implementation of the project; and that it has been roped in for effective implementation of the scheme. The counsel also submitted that the scheme being a scheme visualized for implementation throughout the country, there cannot be any variation from state to (p.228) state and therefore there cannot be any flaw or drawbacks in achieving the objects of the scheme. The state government needs to make sure that the scheme is implemented in consonance with the guidelines from the central government. Addressing the role of panchayats in the appointment of the workers, the counsel submitted that while the scheme is sought to be implemented at the panchayat-raj level, the state government interfering even with the implementation of the scheme amounts to an unwarranted interference with the functioning of the panchayat raj institutions. The judgment also stated that the state government is an agent of the central government in the implementation of the ICDS scheme and if it disregards its direction and acts beyond its authorization, it is for the central government to take suitable action and to ensure that the state government not take law into their own hands.
Supreme Court Order 2008 on the Selection of Anganwadi Workers In 2008, in the Dipitimayee Parida vs State of Orissa case, filed in the Supreme Court of India (Civil Appeal No.6158 of 2008), the court set specific guidelines towards the selection and appointment of the AWWs. Marks are awarded to women who apply on the basis of fulfilling basic qualifications. An AWW should have passed the matriculation exam. Five marks are given in the case of SC/ST candidates and three additional marks if she is married and three marks if she is a widow or a divorcee, provided she resides in that village, and maximum five marks for experience, and other marks based on the interview. The additional three marks option given to women if married, led to the filing of the case Page 22 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights wherein an appellant got married after the filing of the application for the job of AWW. Though she already had basic qualifications, she got additional three marks after getting married and the dispute was whether the extra qualification, acquired through marriage, subsequent to the prescribed date of applying, can be considered or not. The consul for the appellant argued that ‘whether a woman is married or not although not wholly relevant, but being not an essential qualification for appointment as an AWW’. However, this judgment also reiterated the argument that the recruitment of AWW is not governed by any statute and they are pursuant to a scheme framed by the central government. Guidelines towards (p.229) appointments are set by the state government. On the question of the marital status of the AWW, the judgment with reference to the scheme says that ‘as the scheme deals with the welfare of the children, it is expected that a married woman would be able to deal with them more efficiently … widows and divorcees are granted additional marks in order to give incentive to them to work with the children’. This judgment refers to the qualifications in the selection procedures of an AWW in detail, both educational and other, especially the marital status and the possibility of additional marks being given to the worker on the basis of any of these. There are hundreds of such cases in different states, challenging the selection process and procedures, filed by AWWs or those who lost out in the selection process. However, with regard to the rights of AWWs as workers, the Administrative Tribunal Order from the state of Karnataka has been a landmark in the struggle by AWWs. It was because of a strong union among the AWWs in Karnataka and their commitment to fight for their rights that they managed a favourable judgment from the state. However, this victory was undone later by the Supreme Court which in a very weak and appalling judgment reversed the tribunal order giving a bizarre reference to the possibility of heavy financial burden on the government by allowing minimum wages for these works and recognizing them as workers in civil posts. The Supreme Court order in 2006 is also in violation of or in conflict with many other matters with regard to the existing worker’s rights rules and regulations in India. However, by supporting the universalization of ICDS with quality, it also gave a possibility for improvement of the situation with an active involvement and change in the existing position of the ICDS and its workers. Two other court orders which are relevant in the case of AWWs include the Supreme Court Order to the Public Interest Litigation filed by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights and Others against the Union of India and others in 1982, and the Bombay High Court, Nagpur Bench Order in 2010, in the matter between Vidya and the State of Maharashtra. In the Public Interest Litigation filed by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights and Others against the Union of India and others in 1982, complaining of violation of various labour laws in Page 23 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights the various Asiad Projects by the Union of India, Delhi Administration and Delhi Development Authority using the Minimum Wages Act and the Equal Remuneration Act, Employment of Children Act, and so on, (p.230) the Supreme Court judgment (The 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports 456) in this case ordered that: Where a person provided labour or services to another for remuneration which is less than the minimum wage, the labour or service provided by him clearly falls within the scope and ambit of the words ‘forced labour’ under Article 23. Such a person would be entitled to come to the court for enforcement of his fundamental right under Article 23 by asking the court to direct payment of the minimum wage to him so that the labour or service provided by him ceases to be ‘forced labour’ and the breach of Article 23 is remedied (The 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports 456, 464). By explaining what is ‘force’, the court said, the word ‘forced’ should not be read in a narrow and restricted manner so as to be confined only to physical or legal ‘force’, particularly when the national character, its fundamental document, has promised to build a new socialist republic where there will be socio-economic justice for all and everyone shall have the right to work, to education, and to adequate means of livelihood (The 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports 456, 465). Even in the context of the Contract Labour Regulation and Abolition Act 1970, if any amenity required to be provided ‘for the benefit of the workmen employed in an establishment is not provided by the contractor, the obligation to provide such amenity rests on the principle employer’ … (The 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports 456, 479). Now the next question that arises for consideration is whether there is any breach of Article 23 when a person provides labour or service to the state or to any other person and is paid less than the minimum wage for it. It is obvious that ordinarily no one would willingly supply labour or service to another for less than the minimum wage. Paragraph 15 of the judgment says, it is obvious that ordinarily no one would willingly supply labour or service to another for less than the minimum wage and so it may be presumed that when a person does so, the person is acting under the force of some compulsion since the person is paid less than what the person is legally entitled to. Article 23 of the Constitution prohibits ‘forced labour’ which can arise in several ways. It may be physical force or it may also be compulsion arising from hunger and poverty or destitution or any economic circumstances. In such situations, a person is not a free agent and this would clearly be ‘forced labour’. [So], ‘when a person provides labour or service to another for remuneration which is less than the minimum wage’ … the labour or (p.231) service provided by him clearly falls within the scope and ambit of the words “forced labour” under Article 23. (The 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports 456, 491). In a recent Bombay High Court Nagpur Bench Order in December 2010 on the matter between Vidya and the State of Maharashtra (Vidya vs State of Maharashtra 2011 (129) FLR 556), the petitioner Vidya was working as an AWH Page 24 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights from 2001 onwards and was looking forward to her appointment as an AWW considering a vacant post for the same which she had fulfilled temporarily from 2007 onwards. The court in its order stated that the Anganwadi sevikas and Anganwadi helpers in particular are “workmen” within the meaning of section (2) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 and the scheme under which they are performing their work, nature of which has already been given by us above is nothing but an “industry” within the meaning of definition of ‘industry’ as per section 2 (j) of the Industrial Disputes Act 1947. We have no doubt that ICDS scheme is systematic activity in which there is a co-operation between employer and employee. We also find that the said function under the ICDS scheme does not fall within the meaning of the term ‘sovereign function’ (Vidya vs State of Maharashtra, 2011, (129) FLR 556). Since the court considered it as a matter coming under the Industrial Disputes Act, the court also asked the petitioner to approach the Labour and Industrial Court in the state of Maharashtra under the provisions of the Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Unions and Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act 1971. Many of these court verdicts, both from the High Courts and the Supreme Court of India have shown that the courts have intervened in the selection or appointment, wages, and other benefits of the AWWs from time to time and have supported their right to minimum wages. However, the Supreme Court of India has denied them the identity of a worker and the acceptance of their status as a government servant. Nevertheless, the AWWs and their unions are actively engaged in a struggle for minimum wages and the status of a regular worker of the state, and with increasing number of workers joining this struggle in many states, even with the complexities and challenges involved in the ICDS project through privatization and its conversion into the Mission mode, the workers are hopeful of achieving their rights.
(p.232) Changing Phase of Unionization, Community Participation, and the Public–Private Partnership in ICDS AWWs have very successfully organized themselves in the recent past and have conducted a large number of protests at national and state levels for minimum wages, regularization of work, against privatization, and on other issues like increasing workload or workplace harassment. Through AIFAWH, the AWWs launched a new phase of their struggle in 1999 demanding regularization, minimum wages, social-security provisions, and the status of primary or preschool teachers in different parts of the country. The unions have protested against the handing over of the ICDS to the state government and the low amount paid to the workers of the scheme. The demand for minimum wages and regularization of the job has been taken up by the unions for long and repeatedly Page 25 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights raised in Parliament by many members. The attempt to privatize the ICDS has also elicited strong protests from the unions through organized protests and rallies all over the country. Many AWWs have also experienced sexual harassment at the workplace. The case of Bhanwari Devi, an AWW who got gang raped in revenge for attempts to stop a child marriage from taking place in Rajasthan was widely discussed, and also contributed to the Supreme Court’s historic judgement on sexual harassment, leading to the guidelines against sexual harassment called the Visakha Guidelines. In Haryana state, such an incident was reported and taken up by the union in which an AWW was sexually harassed by a block development officer of the ICDS. The protests by the workers led to the suspension of the officer.10 Such individual incidents were reported from other states too, like Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, and sometimes politicians or even union leaders were among the accused. However, many such incidents go unreported and unpunished since the nature of the job and the workplace makes it extremely difficult for the workers to take it up. (p.233) The past decade has witnessed many massive protests organized by different unions for the AWWs against the privatization of the ICDS as part of PPP programmes and against the adoption of anganwadi centres by big corporate houses. These efforts compelled the state to look into the issues and problems faced by the AWWs. Some initiatives were taken towards this directly by the state administration and others in the form of initiatives by independent groups or organizations. Forum for Creches and Childcare Services (FORCES) set up in 1989, an informal and voluntary network of organizations and individuals concerned with issues relating to working women in the unorganized sector; it has immensely contributed to the care of young children. The inspiration towards the formation of FORCES came following the recommendations of the Shramshakti Report in the year 1988 (which is discussed in the third chapter) by the National Commission of Self Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector. It advocates and campaigns for the need for day-care services for children of the poor and underprivileged. It was formed as a joint front of some women’s organizations, women’s wings of trade unions, childcare institutions, and research institutions committed to childcare and development.11 The FORCES campaigned towards the need for developing structures at the grassroots through voluntary agencies, trade unions, cooperatives, panchayats, MMs, and so forth to run the services efficiently, and it has been lobbying for decentralization of childcare services at the national level. The FOCUS, a study group on AWWs by Citizens Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six (CIRCUS), in its assessment of that any ineffectiveness from the part of the workers as an outcome of the large burden of work imposed on them in the absence of proper financial or social support. CIRCUS published a report, a section of which looks at the issues of AWWs (CIRCUS 2006: 84–98) Page 26 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights —‘India’s Unsung Heroines’. According to this report, characterizing AWWs as voluntary (p.234) workers on the one hand and shifting a large burden of social services on to their shoulders is at the heart of many of the poor outcomes of the ICDS programme (CIRCUS 2006: 89). In August 2000, in response to many such efforts from different initiatives, the government formed a Grievance Redressal Machinery for AWWs and AWHs under the ICDS with the intention of addressing the problems faced by AWWs in their work and workplace hoping to solve their problems expeditiously. Committees were set up under this mechanism at the district level by the state administration with representatives of AWWs and helpers. However, even with this mechanism, nothing much improved as far as the overall condition of workers and helpers was concerned. And with the introduction of PPP in the ICDS, the government again moved away from its responsibility of directly handling the issues related to ICDS, and more and more of the burden of running the scheme has been transferred to the community in the name of community participation, either through AWWs or through independent initiatives of civil society organizations or groups largely run by women workers. ‘Community participation’ has been an important thrust for the implementation of ICDS from the beginning, though the use of the term or concept is relatively new. Community participation in the present context in the ICDS has a broad meaning and this could include panchayats, civil society organizations, voluntary organizations, and non-governmental organizations. As discussed in the earlier chapters, community participation of all forms were incorporated into the ICDS from its origin, and in the new phase of ICDS, especially with the involvement and designing of the programme under institutions like the WB, community participation gained new dimensions and changed the very nature of functioning of the ICDS. Moreover, the involvement of women’s groups, whether voluntary or non-governmental, like Mothers’ Groups/Community’s and MMs have also changed its form and have become fundamental in shaping many programmes in ICDS in such a way that it’s impossible to implement them without the help of these women workers. Mother’s Committees have been formed to help the anganwadis at the anganwadi level, village level, district level, or state level. They work as immediate grievance redressal mechanisms and help with solving the problems faced by the AWWs and helpers. These committees function in the same role as MMs, and wherever they exist they replace MMs. (The third chapter has already discussed the (p.235) story of MMs and also the changes in the ICDS with Project IV and the involvement of the WB.) However, in the context of public–private participation, community participation has taken on a different meaning. Along with the increasing importance of the concept of community participation, the introduction of PPP has influenced, and changed the nature and direction of ICDS drastically. Public–private partnership is a recent phenomenon in the context of globalization and privatization of the Indian economy. The process of Page 27 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights PPP has also influenced similar other programmes or schemes in the country. There are many programmes or schemes similar to the ICDS which also have women workers in similar working conditions. While organizing and unionizing women workers in similar schemes and conditions to demand and fight for their rights as workers, workers’ unions have also learned from experiences of different struggles. One such struggle which has influenced the AWWs too is the struggle of ‘Sathins’ in the state of Rajasthan whose case was referred to briefly in Chapter 5. The Sathin programme was initiated by the state of Rajasthan under the WDP in 1984 (Navlakha 1995; Sawhny and Dubey 2001). The village-level women workers in the programme are known as ‘sathins’ and their role is similar to that of AWWs’. As a part of the WDP, sathins worked in a state-administered programme and later WDP was merged with the ICDS programme at the central level. However, sathins remained outside the ICDS and they were not counted as workers in government service. They too were ‘honorary workers’ and fought for the status of being ‘workers’. The sathins were only supposed to play ‘an inspirational role’ among village women and hence had no rights to a hearing in the capacity of government servants, nor did the principles of equal rights for workers or natural justice as guaranteed in the Constitution apply to them, as they were just ‘volunteers’, not ‘workers’. In 1991 five sathins were dismissed from their service without any valid reason and they went to the Rajasthan High Court challenging their dismissal. However, the sathins suffered a setback in the High Court which went by the precedent set by the Supreme Court in its verdict on the case of AWWs from Karnataka (which is discussed in detail later in this chapter) that WDP is not a government service and so the sathins could not ask for rights of government employees. Following an appeal to the Supreme Court, the judgment again made it explicit that sathins cannot enjoy the status of government servants. The judgment (p. 236) deprived them of their due rights under the labour laws of the land but reemployed the workers who filed the case against their dismissal. However, instead of reinstating them, by re-employing them, the workers were denied natural justice, with the court dismissing their claims for benefits and seniority (Sawhny and Dubey 2001: 1290). The case of sathins in Rajasthan brought to light the precarious and extremely vulnerable position of women workers in similar government programmes undermining their contribution to social development as active agents of the state, and the link between the politics of devaluing women’s work and the Indian state. In many other initiatives and programmes for the welfare of women and children too, ‘honorary’ women workers are the backbones. The ‘National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education’ is popularly called the Mid-Day Meal Programme. The government claims it to be the ‘world’s largest school feeding programme’ reaching out to around 12 crore children in more than 12.65 lakh Page 28 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights schools/EGS centres across the country. More than 26 lakh workers are employed as cooks and helpers in the programme. They are not recognized as workers and until 2009 they were not paid any regular wages. They have no paid leaves and no social security benefits or insurance. Today, this programme too is being privatized and the distribution of food has been handed over to corporate NGOs like the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Naandi Foundation, and so on. Another initiative, the NRHM was started in 2005 to address maternal mortality. Itwas expected to achieve its goal by 2012, but then got an extension of five years. Today, more than 9 lakh women are employed in NRHM as ‘ASHAs’. As discussed earlier, these ‘ASHAs’ are also paid only an ‘incentive’, depending upon the number of institutional deliveries they have promoted, the immunisation targets they have achieved, and so forth with no other benefits. Similar to these are the story of workers in such central government schemes like the National Rural Livelihood Mission, the National Small Savings Scheme, the Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme, and so on, employing thousands of workers mostly doing voluntary social work. As far as the workers of these government schemes or programmes are concerned, the consistent denial on the part of the government in the past few decades to recognize them as workers and the change in the political economy of the country with the impact of neo-liberal policies have resulted in (p.237) further deterioration of their status. The condition of these workers and the nature of these schemes and policies make it necessary to rethink the relevance and meaning of the term ‘voluntary’ in this context. Along with their gender, the class status of these workers is also important to keep in mind while critically assessing the politics of work behind these schemes and programmes and the role of the Indian state in the devaluation of their work. The neo-liberal policies under globalization contributed and accelerated the process called private–public partnership. The introduction of PPP in the ICDS took place in 2008 with the Ministry of Women and Child Development introducing PPP in the ICDS. The intention behind this move was to reduce the responsibility of the government in the ICDS and the devolution of funds and responsibilities to non-state actors through WB-led reforms in the ICDS. The Eleventh Five Year Plan proposed PPP in the ICDS with the active involvement of private agencies, as a result of which many big corporate houses came forward to ‘adopt’ the AWCs in different states. This is a process through which many non-state actors are now playing an important role in reforming the ICDS. As we have already discussed, for the purpose of improving the standards of implementation, the government took the recommendations of WB and ‘restructured’ the scheme. We have also already discussed the reform phase initiated by WB in the ICDS programme in Project IV. Here, in the context of PPP, other than the fact that many big corporate powers have already ‘adopted’ a huge number of AWCs in different states, private institutions are also able to play an active role in the planning, redesigning, and reforming of the scheme in Page 29 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights its new phase. The question relevant here, as raised by Majumdar (2008), is that it is important to see the percentage of WB’s funding in the ICDS and the powers it has acquired by providing this financial support in fundamentally shaping or reshaping the policy. According to Majumdar, while WB is providing less than one per cent of the total expenditure of ICDS, it is able to tune the restructuring of the entire programme. Through financing a small percentage of a public programme, it gets access to totally influence the programme and to an extent shape its future. As part of the PPP, corporate powers like the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), Vedanta, and others have taken up projects in the area of social development, such as nutrition for women and (p.238) children, by supporting selected anganwadi centres in selected states in India. Meanwhile, CSR is an important aspect today in the PPP. The Companies Act 2013 of India, in the Section Accounts of Companies (Section 135), defines Corporate Social Responsibility. According to the Act: Every company having a net worth of rupees five hundred crore or more or turnover of rupees one thousand crore or more or a net profit of rupees five crore or more during a financial year shall constitute a Corporate Social Responsibility Committee of the Board consisting of three or more directors, out of which at least one director shall be an independent director. The CSR Committee shall formulate and recommend to the Board of Directors, a CSR Policy which shall indicate the activities to be undertaken by the company … recommend the amount of expenditure to be incurred on the activities referred … monitor the CSR Policy of the company from time to time. The Board of every company, after taking into account the recommendations made by the CSR Committee, shall approve the CSR Policy for the company and disclose contents of such Policy in its report and also place it on the company’s website, if any, in such manner as may be prescribed; and ensure that the activities as are included in CSR Policy of the company are undertaken by the company. The Board of every company shall ensure that the company spends, in every financial year, at least two percent of the average net profits of the company made during the three immediately preceding financial years, in pursuance of its CSR Policy: provided that the company shall give preference to the local area and areas around where it operates, for spending the amount earmarked for CSR activities: provided further that if the company fails to spend such amount, the Board shall, in its report, specify the reasons for not spending the amount. (Section 135, Companies Act of India, 2013).
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights Through CSR, corporate firms are expected to do some form of social good outside their private interests. The rules around CSR in India make it necessary for corporate companies to spend a minimum of 2 per cent of net profit per year for the benefit of society. Further, funds given to political parties or their own employees will not count in this. Each company has its own CSR policy; however, as far as the corporates in India are concerned, the rules by the government will be applicable to both foreign and Indian companies in India, and it is applicable to any company with Rs 5 crore net profit (The Hindu 2014). This corporate partnership or engagement with the ICDS is a (p.239) new phase in the PPP and it is expected to expand in the context of universalization and NGO-ization of the ICDS. The corporate powers are keen on taking over the ICDS mainly because it helps them to get tax benefits from the government and abide by their legal bond to spend through CSR activities. However, in the context of protests by the AWWs through their unions against the corporatization and NGO-ization of the ICDS, the move towards expansion of CSR activities in the ICDS might face resistance in the future. Some states like Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh have already been successful to a major extent in actively resisting the entry of corporates and also the privatization of the AWCs with the help of unions.
Issues and Challenges Ahead How to address the major challenges facing both the successful implementation of ICDS in the future and also improve the plight of the workers in the scheme is an important task to be taken up, not only directly by the workers or helpers involved in the project, but also by the unions involved, other institutions and individuals. AWWs are by now well aware of the issues and challenges in the implementation of the ICDS since they are already well organized in many states in the country. Though they are still not able to play an important role in the decision-making process at the organizational and institutional level of the project, the lack of any institutional childcare facility, the timings of work, the limited focus on the mid day meal, the fear of people that their children would not be treated well, and so on are major impediments addressed and taken up by the workers (Palriwala and Neetha 2009: 29). However, the absence of sufficient number of anganwadis and funds for expansion of these into making the universalization of the project a reality is the important issue. Further, other than sufficient funds, what is important in this context is also the issue of better facilities and the appointment of enough staff for the anganwadis so that the expansion is meaningful in terms of the quality of services available. The data published by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare show that, with the expansion of posts of AWWs from 1992 till 2009 (as shown in Chapter 4), a huge number of vacancies in different states are yet to be filled as far as AWWs and helpers are concerned, and same is the case when it comes to the requirement for more anganwadis. (p.240) With the process towards universalization and expansion of the ICDS in the present context, the gap is Page 31 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights getting much wider. In this situation, studies by many government and private institutions have also supported the entry of the private sector into ICDS. An NIPCCD survey of the ICDS in 2006 suggested for more active participation of the private sector to ensure better performance other than improving interpersonal relationships between officials. While the survey suggested massive improvements in the infrastructure facilities provided for anganwadis, it also recommended reducing the burden of record maintenance at the anganwadi level. AWWs’ unions have also questioned the increasing workload related to record-keeping since this has happened particularly in those states in which the ICDS has been restructured under WB sponsorship. The NIPCCD survey gave specific attention to look into the hours of work of AWWs, revealing the abundance of work carried out by these workers. Supporting privatization and community participation, it recommended for increased ownership of the ICDS by the people (NIPCCD 2006: 268–77). Among suggestions in general on the ICDS programme, there is also a suggestion to integrate the ICDS with Community Health Volunteers (CHV) and programmes like ASHA, and there is also the demand to move forward from mere food supplementation to comprehensive early childhood care, while at present ICDS only demands ‘takehome rations’ for children below the age of two years who stay at home, and the running of crèche facilities is not part of the programme (Sundararaman 2006: 3679). A study by Neetha and Palriwala in 2009 discussed the relevance of many struggles by AWWs in different states. As shown in their study, issues like privatization of the recruitment process to the senior posts in some states, attempts to increase the payments and other benefits for helpers, group insurance scheme, retirement benefits, paid maternity leave, special provident fund for workers, scholarship for children, and so on come under the demands of the AIFAWH union. The AIFAWH union has taken up issues like the hours and nature of work of AWWs and has also questioned the way the workers were pushed away from their care-giving tasks into community information and monitoring work. According to them, since the 1990s there have been attempts to privatize anganwadis, and there has been the demand that the expenses and the management of the anganwadi centres and the responsibility of child development be devolved to the ‘community’ (Palriwala and Neetha 2009: 32–44 (p.241) ). Though unionizing has not been easy, it is through the unions like the AIFAWH that the attempt to totally privatize the ICDS has been prevented or the process of NGO-ization has been to some extent controlled. The shift in the focus of the ICDS from entirely on poverty and malnutrition to address the need for crèches and early childhood education is taking place under the pressure of the civil society organizations. Unionization has helped to push the government into more efforts to enhance the programme. According to Neetha and Palriwala, this has helped to give care an economic value, to recognize social responsibility in care especially which required the state to Page 32 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights accept that responsibility, and to recognize the need and economic value of nonfamilial care which continues to be devalued. However, there is still an increasing need for the state to look into the issue of poverty and malnutrition in different parts of the country. While there is a need for more to be done for early childhood education or for the establishment of crèche facilities considering the massive number of women migrants joining the informal sector work in the country, steps towards privatization and handing over the responsibility to CBOs do not seem to have contributed much towards the successful implementation of ICDS facilities in these sections of society who deserve them more. It is important to note that steps towards universalization of ICDS in the present context are put together with steps towards privatization. In the two faces of this process of privatization, on the one hand there is direct intervention in the implementation of ICDS by a private institution or company sponsoring the anganwadis as part of the PPP initiative and the on the other, the responsibility of the implementation of ICDS or running of anganwadis is handed over to different forms of CBOs. The intervention from community organizations is mostly through big or small NGOs or through local informal networks. However, as an outcome of this, the state has managed to distance itself more from the programme than earlier. This situation makes it all the more difficult for the workers in the programme to demand their rights. As we have seen earlier, in a state-run programme like the ICDS which has been around for more than three decades, the state has managed to keep the workers as voluntary workers by continuing with the ICDS as a scheme in which the workers cannot demand any right as ‘civil’ (p.242) employees under the state. Through unionization and struggle, with support from both the workers and the beneficiaries of the programme, the workers in the ICDS scheme have been successfully pushing towards regularization in the last three decades. However, in the current situation, with the entry of private institutions, it will become all the more difficult to fight for the regularization of work and also to guarantee successful implementation ‘with quality’ when there is no check on the interference and quality of contribution by the private institutions and NGOs. The replacing of direct contracts given to private individuals or groups on distribution of nutrition by handing over this responsibility to NGOs has not improved the situation and in fact has made it worse as seen in this study. Further, while there is a critique of the role of NGOs in many contexts, on the limitations of the NGO-ization, the process and attempts at NGO-ization are only expanding. Moreover, once the stress on the overall responsibility for successful implementation of the scheme is transferred to the community, the state is at ease to deny the question of its responsibility towards worker’s rights in the scheme. With regard to the successful implementation of the ICDS what is actually expected from the state is to recognize the relevance of the scheme and its contribution in the last few decades and to ensure that it takes full responsibility in continuing it, enhancing its reach with quality as promised Page 33 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights through the universalization of the scheme meaningfully under its direct supervision. However, a critical analysis of what is happening with the implementation of the universalization of ICDS and other similar local community development programmes reveals the lack of political will and inability by the state to address important basic issues in such programmes, leading to their failure. What prevents the failure of such programmes, if anything, is the women workers in this country whose social, economic, and cultural context forces them to spend their labour in these fields of social work which do not lead to any personal gain. In the contemporary context, the more the Indian state is withdrawing from its responsibilities towards these welfare schemes, the burden of it is forced upon the lower middle class and poor women whose gender, class, and caste identities force them to play the role of a social worker. However, increasing awareness among these women workers about the importance of the role they play towards the development of their own community and society is helping them with better bargaining power through collective organizing and resisting of state-sponsored exploitation. Notes:
(1) The Mid-Day Meal scheme, earlier known as National Programme for Nutritional Support for Primary Education was started in 1995. The goal is to improve the nutritional status of school-going children. In 2001 it became a cooked meal scheme involving women workers to prepare the cooked meal. There are around 2.74 million working in the Mid-Day Meal Scheme. (2) This list of job responsibilities includes the following: ‘To elicit community support and participation in running the programme, to weigh each child every month, record the weight graphically on the growth card, use referral card for referring cases of mothers/children to the sub-centres/PHC etc., and maintain child cards for children below 6 years and produce these cards before visiting medical and para-medical personnel, to carry out a quick survey of all the families, especially mothers and children in those families in their respective area of work once in a year, to organise non-formal pre-school activities in the anganwadi of children in the age group 3–6 years of age and to help in designing and making of toys and play equipment of indigenous origin for use in anganwadi, to organise supplementary nutrition feeding for children (0–6 years) and expectant and nursing mothers by planning the menu based on locally available food and local recipes, to provide health and nutrition education and counselling on breastfeeding/infant & young feeding practices to mothers. Anganwadi Workers, being close to the local community, can motivate married women to adopt family planning/birth control measures. AWWs shall share the information relating to births that took place during the month with the Panchayat Secretary/Gram Sabha Sewak/ANM whoever has been notified as Registrar/Sub Registrar of Births & Deaths in her village, to make home visits for educating parents, to enable mothers to plan an effective role in the child`s Page 34 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights growth and development with special emphasis on newborn child, to maintain files and records as prescribed, to assist the PHC staff in the implementation of health component of the programme viz. immunisation, health check-up, ante natal and post natal check etc., to assist ANM in the administration of IFA and Vitamin A by keeping stock of the two medicines in the Centre, to share information collected under ICDS Scheme with the ANM. However, ANM will not solely rely upon the information obtained from the records of AWW, to bring to the notice of the Supervisors/CDPO any development in the village which requires their attention and intervention, particularly in regard to the work of the coordinating arrangements with different departments, to maintain liaison with other institutions (Mahila Mandals) and involve lady school teachers and girls of the primary/middle schools in the village which have relevance to her functions, to guide Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) engaged under National Rural Health Mission in the delivery of health care services and maintenance of records under the ICDS Scheme, to assist in implementation of Kishori Shakti Yojana (KSY) and motivate and educate the adolescent girls and their parents and community in general by organizing social awareness programmes/campaigns etc. AWW would also assist in implementation of Nutrition Programme for Adolescent Girls (NPAG) as per the guidelines of the Scheme and maintain such record as prescribed under the NPAG. Anganwadi Worker can function as depot holder for RCH Kit/contraceptives and disposable delivery kits. However, actual distribution of delivery kits or administration of drugs, other than OTC (Over the Counter) drugs would actually be carried out by the ANM or ASHA as decided by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, to identify the disability among children during her home visits and refer the case immediately to the nearest PHC or District Disability Rehabilitation Centre, to support in organizing Pulse Polio Immunization (PPI) drives and to inform the ANM in case of emergency cases like diahorrea, cholera etc.’ (3) The documents and information on the activities of the AIFAWH are available on its website: www.aifawh.org (4) The Unorganized Worker’s Social Security Act 2008 was passed with timelines for the government to provide the social security benefits for the unorganized sector workers at par with the organized sector workers. The implementation of the Act requires including many other benefits, the constitution of a National Social Security Board and State Social Security Board. The Act is criticized as merely an amalgamation of the many existing social security schemes and also for not giving any attention to India’s unpaid women workers. (5) Details on the position of AIFAWH on these issues are discussed in the AIFAWH Draft Commission Paper, 9–12, October, 2009, ‘ICDS—How to Make Results Meet Expectations’, Chandigarh, www.aifawh.org, AIFAWH, ‘Social Security for Anganwadi Employees’, 6th Conference, Draft Commission Paper, 9– Page 35 of 36
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Resistance and Struggles around the Honorary Worker’s Rights 12, October 2009, Chandigarh, www.aifawh.org, AIFAWH, ‘Can a Nation Develop Without Its Children?’, www.aifawh.org. (6) The information shared here on BMS is from their booklet titled ‘Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh at a Glance’ published by BMS in 2000 and the website: www.bms.org.in. (7) The views discussed in this section are based on the interviews done with the leaders or office-bearers of the union in Delhi. (8) The Congress-led UPA government, when it first came to power in 2004, had promised the welfare of workers in the unorganized sector through social security, health insurance and other schemes, and guaranteed minimum wages and regular employment. It is in this context that questions were raised in Parliament on the rights of anganwadi workers following their protest demanding minimum wages and regularization of their jobs. (9) The outcome and actions taken towards the universalization of ICDS and its challenges towards maintaining quality with the process of expansion and universalization were already discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Universalization means that every hamlet should have a functional anganwadi and that ICDS services should be extended to every child under six, every pregnant woman or nursing mother, and every adolescent girl. (10) This information is based on a note published by the AIFAWH leader Sindhu Menon, titled ‘Women Workers in India, Abused and Discriminated’, on the website: http://www.doccentre.net/docsweb/women-workers/women-wrksabuse.htm. (11) The forum submitted a memorandum demanding a National Programme for Childcare under the Minimum Needs Programme in the Eighth Five Year Plan in 1989. In the memorandum, FORCES demanded immediate action by the government on the inclusion of childcare services under the Minimum Needs Programme, setting up of special fund for crèche and childcare services, and allocation of adequate funds for the year 1990–1 to initiate preparatory work and mount a national campaign.
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Not for ‘Honour’
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Not for ‘Honour’ Just for Rights M.S. Sreerekha
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.003.0007
Abstract and Keywords This as a concluding chapter which reveals a thread connecting between gender, work, and class in the context of studying the honorary workers in the anganwadis in India. The chapter debates the relationship of the Indian state with its women workers, the possibilities for improving the status of women workers, especially in the area of social welfare, addressing the limitations of the present policies and providing suggestions for improvement in their implementation. The chapter analyses the story and struggle of the honorary workers in the anganwadis in the light of the earlier chapters and contributes to a critical understanding of the concept of honorary worker, argues for their worker’s rights’ and also contributes to a rethinking the notions around women’s work and women workers towards politicizing women workers’ rights in India. Keywords: Honorary work, voluntary work, devaluation of work, gender and class, globalization, privatization, welfare policies, scheme worker in India
In contemporary times, a vast amount of literature is being produced in social sciences and women’s studies on issues of caste, sexuality, gender, and identity politics in general. However, along with this, there has also been a concern or position within the same scholarship on the decrease or absence of enough work on issues related to the concept and politics of class and its relationship with these multiple factors and identities. Further, considering the fact that there is a clear and direct relationship between the concept and politics of class and labour, it is visible that there has been a gap in an in-depth understanding of the Page 1 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ contemporary nature of this relationship as well. In this context, this work helps towards being an enriching experience contributing to the area of work on gender, labour, and class. More importantly, through this study, the link between gender and class emerged once again as a core issue which helped to relook at the earlier debates on the same in the contemporary phase of women’s work and women workers in India. While addressing the significance of class in understanding the changing relationship between gender and labour in the Indian economy, with this as a focus point, the entry of a huge number of poor or working-class women into the unorganized sector is an extremely important phenomenon to look into. While there are many studies available now on the ever-expanding informal sector in India, the entry of more and more poor women into government-run schemes as volunteers or social workers is an important area of concern for those (p.244) who want to address the question of discrimination and further devaluation of women’s work. This has been the motivation behind this work. Also within the specific condition of women workers in the ICDS, it has created a strong link between the class dimensions in understanding crucial issues in the present context. When the literature on women workers in India has shown the changes and the deterioration in the status or condition of women workers, this study through the case of AWWs has brought in the possible link between anganwadi women workers and other women working in similar fields or conditions whether under state-sponsored projects or programmes at the national level. The increasing relevance of addressing the vulnerability of the poor workingclass women involved in the state-sponsored social welfare projects is revealed here. The discussions in this book have to be seen in the light of the neo-liberal economy and the changes it has brought forth in the lives of the women workers. Feminist scholars like Mies (1986, 1988), Afshar (1991, 1996), Kabeer (1994, 2000), and Mohanty (1991, 1996) have made important contributions towards an understanding of women workers’ lives in the past few decades, from the 1960s to recent times. Debates on the construction of the ‘poor third world women’ in contrast with the empowered, developed, western women, the feminization, and the introduction of the nimble fingers theory to understand the active and increasing presence of these women workers in the industrial world, the story of the poor women workers in poor countries, their working conditions and their struggles against capitalist patriarchy for survival, and so on have been important debates in order to create a better and nuanced picture on the women workers of the country. In the contemporary context, many women workers have entered the new forms of work spaces available like the Special Economic Zones in the visible public space and the world of paid domestic work in the expanding service sector. These new forms of labour have come up with new conditions of work wherein in order to understand what is happening to women’s work, one has to move forward from the above-said conceptualizations and theories, and Page 2 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ develop a new understanding towards the ways in which the neo-liberal economy is expanding and using women’s labour. Here, it is relevant to see the change in the role of the state wherein the neoliberal state has become a tool in the hands of the private (p.245) capital and as mentioned earlier, with globalization, the state’s withdrawal from actively contributing to the social sector has had a strong and adverse impact on sectors like health and education. Within the conventional understanding of the ‘social’, in terms of the family and the presence of women and children which primarily constitute it, the withdrawal of state support and the change in the state’s welfare policies with the active involvement of private capital through national and international private institutions have marked a new phase in the meaning of welfare and the role of women workers in it. Here, the working conditions for women workers who have entered these new spheres of work and their worker’s rights have to be seen in the context of these changes. Beyond this, there is a need to reveal the role of the state as whether it is playing the role of more of a supporter of the rights of these women workers or it is contributing to further marginalization and devaluation of their work. The case of AWWs in India has revealed that the contemporary Indian state is more actively and directly participating as an agent in the devaluation of women’s work. With drastic changes in the Indian political economy and its impact on women workers, the story of the honorary workers and the opening it provides to think more about women workers in similar state-run schemes helps to analyse different definitions of women’s labour and its meaning in the contemporary context. As one of the initial questions raised in this study, it has been very important to relook or rethink the following questions: who is the worker, what constitutes women’s paid, unpaid, or less paid work, and how it gets devalued in different contexts. These questions are seen here in the gendered social and political economy context of labour in India. These questions are more relevant in the contemporary context since, as visible from the case of the AWWs in India, there seems to be multiple factors like gender, class, and caste working together in contributing to many levels of exploitation of women workers in the country. These multiple factors are actively supported or maintained by the political economy of the state in which both the capitalist and patriarchal forces and the market are playing an important role. In this context, instead of studying these factors and their links separately from each other, it is important to see the role of the state in building an alliance or link between these factors, along with the interest of the neo-liberal market. What is more important is the fact that the state-owned/initiated welfare projects (p.246) too are used in this context as a medium to reach out to the labour of poor women workers instead of providing a support system for these women. A critique of such state-sponsored schemes and projects which directly exploit the poor working-class women in this country deserves an important debate in the academic space.
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Not for ‘Honour’ Different definitions of work discussed in the book from subsistence work, domestic work, or voluntary work have shown that all of them have a gendered history and their historical and political meanings have grown within the sexual/ gender division of labour in the capitalist economy. These debates have shown that the development of capitalism and patriarchy together contributing to each other is intrinsic to this gendering and devaluation of women’s work. A review of the literature on the history of these debates from Marx (1884), Engels (1884), Braverman (1974) to Edgell (2006), and the debates within the socialist feminist school has explained how these processes have taken place and how each of these concepts and their separation from each other in accordance with the convenience and adaptation to the changes in the capitalist economy have taken place at different points in history. The analysis of the concept of welfare and the welfare state and its existence in the context of globalization have shown the changing nature of the capitalist state and the weakening of its direct involvement in the political economy of work with the entry of private capital. Though terms and definitional meanings of work can vary according to local contexts in a political economy, the link between broader frameworks in the capitalist economy and its local situations are visible in the studies of feminists like Mies (1986), Mohanty (1991), or Palriwala and Neetha (2010). Other than in the forms and politics of work or labour, the meaning of a term like ‘service’ has also gone through major changes in the capitalist political economy. A review of the accepted view that men’s labour and women’s labour are two parts of the same coin and the justifications of the different forms of sexual/gender division of labour in the case of what is called subsistence work or reproductive work has in fact helped to form a better critical understanding of the concept of work and the creation of the woman worker. A rethinking on the association of the term ‘work’ only with paid work or mostly what we call paid regular employment and the different meanings and values added to women’s work within the binaries of the private and the public and the productive and reproductive, has been helpful in (p.247) understanding the processes of the changes in women’s work. A better understanding of these definitions of work has also helped to see the limitations in seeing women’s work only within the framework of binaries and the need to go beyond this in order to shed light on the specificities of these processes of devaluation, its assessment, and the search for possibilities of resistance. The creation of the most crucial binary between home and the world outside, the private and the public, is seen as most fundamental and it stands as a basic conceptual tool in any further rational explanation of the devaluation of women’s work. However, a conceptual understanding on the origin of the devaluation of women’s work in itself is not helpful unless it further contributes to a detailed and consistent assessment of the changing features of this process and the new strategies within capitalism to further exploit the labour of women, especially the poor working-class women. Even when we go back to the origin of the Page 4 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ distinction between the home and workplace within a capitalist economy, it is important to keep in mind that some things that have not changed as far as the political condition and resistance against this distinction are concerned. Firstly, even with drastic changes in the private space both due to the entry and impact of advanced new technologies and also the changing role of women’s work; men’s role in the domestic sphere has not changed much with time. The gender division of labour especially in terms of women’s role in the care work within the private space continues to be the same as that of primary care-givers and in many contexts as the only care-givers especially in countries like India. The politics of social construction of gender has not gone through much change even while the percentage of women who do paid work has increased. While the sexual division of labour clearly has had a direct impact on women’s paid work in the public, there has not been much change in men’s contribution to unpaid work. While Marx and many of his companions counted the sexual division of labour as ‘natural’, the socialist feminist debates on the sexual/gender division of labour and the institution of family and marriage have provided a strong critique of women’s role in the family just as housekeepers or mothers. Further, one needs to keep in mind the contributions of feminists like Kollantai (1977) who criticized capitalism’s role in keeping the burden of care on women even while technology changed the form of housework and the family changed into more of a place of consumption. (p.248) The ideas put forth by socialist feminists like that of community kitchens, community childcare centres, or cooperative communities never surfaced as important and successful agenda for the state anywhere. It is important to remember in this context that these concepts in reality are unfortunately replaced in the present times by mechanized kitchens run by corporate companies or big NGOs in which a huge number of women are working in exploitative conditions, and these corporate kitchens are supported by the patriarchal capitalist state. Moreover, the history and politics of ‘unproductive’, ‘unpaid’ work has shown important changes in which many forms of work which were considered unproductive and unpaid earlier have become paid work and are counted in the category of productive work today. The economy of care has grown drastically in the present globalized capitalist era and day by day, new forms of paid work are being added to this category while changes in the economy of care or the service sector too are not contributing to changes in the sexual/gender division of labour till today. With the advancement of capitalism, contrary to what was expected by the socialist feminists, subsistence work and proletarianization of women, especially in paid work, have only increased though this may not be true as far as unpaid work in the context of housewifization is concerned, since one could not argue that there has been an increase in housewifization.
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Not for ‘Honour’ Among the many identities attributed to women, motherhood is considered most ‘natural’. Further, through this study one has also seen that there has not been much change in the ‘naturalness’ of motherhood too in contemporary times. A welfare state’s position on motherhood with the shaping and planning of state policies considering women either as mothers or women and children as a category together is clearly visible in our women specific policies in India. The accepted notion of children being the primary responsibility of women is the base of most of the state policies or programmes whether it is individual specific or for the community. Folbre’s (1994) argument or idea about children should be seen as ‘public goods’ was not bought by the state or by the community. Motherhood as a concept is a stronger idea and a convenient one for the welfare state. Forced motherhood makes the women’s role of care-givers to children voluntary as women are expected in any way to be voluntary workers within the politics of voluntarism. Though in many contexts voluntary work in general (p. 249) is seen as an upper-class or middle-class phenomenon, interestingly, in the case of women workers, like AWWs, the concept seems to be useful more as a political term with a strategic approach to make use of women’s unpaid labour. As we can see, in many poor countries like India, it is women from poor background, both lower class and lower caste, doing the voluntary work representing the state for public good. It is in this context that we need to locate the role of anganwadi women workers in India. The detailed analysis done in the earlier chapters on who an AWW is, what is her work, and what is/should be her rights as a worker is used in this study as an example to reveal issues and debates on the subject of women workers’ rights along with the changing role of the state and its welfare policies. As shown in the studies on the informal/unorganized sector in India, more than 90 per cent of its women workers work in the informal sector. In the past few decades, especially from the 1990s onwards, globalization, structural adjustment programmes, and privatization have led to major changes in the economy of the country and the condition of its women workers. With the growth of capitalism and industrialization, a huge number of women from a poor working-class background have joined the workforce doing unskilled or menial jobs. Being a country which has been more of an agricultural economy, with the expansion of capitalist industrialization, there has been a shift from women doing agricultural labour to other forms of jobs, especially around the industrial sector—both traditional and modern. As Kalpagam’s (1994) study points out, industrialization changed the quantity and nature of women’s work in India. With globalization and privatization, in a country like India with a big population, huge number of workers, especially women workers, were pushed into the casual, informalsector and service-sector work. With the new forms of work in the unorganized sector, it has become more relevant to see how the state responds to the issue of women worker’s rights. With globalization, the Indian state has been more favourable towards the private sector, and from the 1990s the state policies Page 6 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ towards people’s welfare or worker’s welfare have also changed drastically. With privatization, there has been minimalization of state regulation and the informal sector has expanded with different forms of work, mostly in areas predominantly employing women workers, whether self-employed or doing home-based work. The complexity and contradictions in the impact of (p.250) globalization on women workers in India, as shown by Ghosh (2002) and Majumdar (2007), have worsened the inequalities and unemployment in the labour market for women. Naturally, with an increase in the number of women workers entering the private or informal-sector work, there has been an increasing need for welfare policies in order to support these women and their families. Alongside globalization, the country has also experienced major cutbacks in social-welfare measures. However, for the increasing number of women workers in the informal sector, support for childcare and other resources and benefits from the state is more relevant in these times than ever before. With the withdrawal of the state from these arenas and the entry of private institutions and private capital in the social welfare for the poor, the very meaning of welfare and the functioning of the social-welfare policies have changed drastically. Welfare programmes are focused around mothers inhabiting the world of the ‘social’ where the institution of heterosexual marriage and family is at the centre of development. The very fact that children are seen as part of the social and the family, and not of the political and the economic, has shaped the ways in which women along with children are addressed in welfare policies. Thereby, a child is dependent on the mother and the mother alone is primarily responsible for the endowment of the child. Thus, the way in which social and social policy is defined is very close to how the public and welfare policies are also defined. So, there is the need for the maintenance of children who are primarily dependent on mothers and mothers (mostly poor women) who are primarily dependent on the state and its welfare policies. This history of the welfare state; the difference between the welfare state in the West and in a country like India and how, along with welfare policies, women’s care work gets added and devalued are discussed in the second chapter of this work. Welfare state and its policies seem to have perpetuated the marginalization of women’s labour, contributing to what Brenner (2006) called a ‘public patriarchy’. The measures from the welfare state towards supporting childcare were all a response to the constant struggle and demands from the women’s movement. However, feminists who demanded childcare support from the state have strongly criticized the privatization of childcare. While there have been some positive measures from the Indian government through social welfare policies to reach out to the poor in (p.251) support of childcare, education or health-care activities, as shown in the study, the implementation of these policies and the work around them are mostly dependent on women workers. Moreover, none of these policies have been able to escape the gendered notions of motherhood and the primary assumption that Page 7 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ childcare is primarily the responsibility of women. Welfare practices and policies are meant to address the poorer sections of society whether they include free or less priced distribution of food, education, health services, and so on. As far as the poorer sections of the society are concerned, especially those who are officially under the BPL, these essential services have helped in their survival. In a country like India with a huge population and considering the fact that there is an increasing gap between the rich and poor, the need and relevance for socialwelfare policies are more relevant than ever. Moreover, social welfare policies are the symbols of a very active state which is more and more interested in interfering and resolving the issues of the poorer sections directly. However, privatization of these welfare policies have serious implications since the very act of privatization leads to outsourcing, subcontracting, or NGO-ization which are fundamentally in contradiction with the very idea of welfare by the state. The ICDS is aimed at reaching out to the poorer sections of the society through maternal and childcare at an early stage and gradually expanding itself into PSE, maternal health, and also in improving the status of the girl child, especially considering the bias in Indian society against the girl child. The primary issue of concern here is the very status of it as a scheme, project, or programme and the continuation of it in the same status even after decades. It is important to see the connection between many social welfare programmes, especially those which involve only or mostly women workers and programmes which are in some way or the other categorized as ‘social’ or for ‘welfare’ and designed to remain a project or a scheme and never of any permanent status. It is important to rethink this schematization/ projectization of anything related to welfare, family, women, and children whether they are in planning or policies or even in any other fields related to women-specific arenas. The forever temporariness of the programme or project is one of the most important issues of concern as far as the workers are concerned. The fact that ICDS has existed for more than three decades and it is a woman-worker-centred project add to the (p.252) already discussed assumptions about women’s work or women workers that these workers or their labour is expected to be a voluntary contribution or service wherein women are expected to ‘naturally’ be ready to volunteer. So, the spending of 40 or more years of her lifetime by a woman worker serving the ICDS is seen as her voluntariness and empathy to contribute to the welfare of our society or to ‘her community’ by working for an honorarium, though this work meant a lifetime involvement and source of income for her. However, she is also expected to strictly follow the rules and procedures of being in a government job as far as her requirement for retirement, access to take leave from work, and so on are concerned. Moreover, instead of addressing these issues around the rights of these workers or other workers in similar situations, the trend is to extend the temporariness of such welfare programmes with increasing number of women workers in similar schemes like the ASHA workers, Mid-Day-Meal workers or others. Page 8 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ What is interesting about such welfare policies in India is the fact that women from the poorer sections are entering as paid (less paid) workers in service of families which are slightly poorer than them or equally poor. This tendency, along with the privatization of such schemes, has serious consequences contributing further to the exploitation of the poorer sections by private capital and a burdening with the responsibility of supporting the poor by the poor people themselves, which is against the very meaning of social welfare and social work. The changes which have taken place in the welfare policies aimed at women and children, the workers who are involved in these projects, the expansion or extension of these projects, the increase in the workload of these workers, and so on. These are important factors on which the analysis in the chapters above has revealed an active role of the state in making the labour power of poor women the target in the implementation of these schemes while the very schemes and projects are aimed at their own benefit or welfare. Further in this debate, voluntary work in many contexts otherwise has been seen as work done by either elite or middle-class women, or those who have the resources and time to spare in order to satisfy themselves through volunteering for the service of a community or for a cause. However, here in this context, work which is called voluntary or honorary or social work or service, is clearly ‘forced work’ where (p.253) women from the same or poor communities are involved in working for the women and children from their own communities. As visible from the study, a good majority of AWWs in India represents a section of women from the lower middle class or poor. This is changing in some ways at present with women from upper middle-class families which are locally politically active either through panchayats or other bodies are more and more getting into the AWW job. This phenomenon has more to do with the organizing of these workers through unions and their successful activities in bargaining towards better working conditions, benefits, and power. However, such changes clearly vary between states considering the difference between states in India both in terms of development indicators and the state’s involvement and contribution in the implementation of the ICDS. For this reason, the condition of the AWW in Uttar Pradesh is different from workers in Kerala or Puducherry. Moreover, the difference is also visible internally depending on the areas, whether urban, rural, tribal, or forest areas. Within the city, very poor workingclass colonies or slums have more needs and more difficulties in terms of the implementation of the scheme in comparison to other areas, and the fact that cities are also divided with people from specific communities or castes living together also have its implications when it comes to the functioning of the anganwadis. This brings in the issues discussed earlier in terms of caste-, class-, or religion-based divisions in the specific demarcated areas of the anganwadis and thus also has an impact on the workers involved in the project.
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Not for ‘Honour’ Though the nature and distribution of services under welfare vary between countries, welfare policies in general are meant to address the poorer section of society. This study has not covered similar policies or programmes in other countries. However, what has been an important outcome as far as the study of AWWs in India is concerned, as mentioned earlier, is the fact that it helped to reveal the utmost important relationship between gender and class in the context of women worker’s rights in the contemporary situation. From the chapter discussing the AWWs in the NCR, it became obvious that there is not one pattern of issues; instead, depending on where the anganwadis or workers are located, there are varied dimensions and contexts, including the one between the workers of different locations, between the worker and the community, between the workplace or the area or the community in the which the anganwadis are located, or between states in which (p.254) a particular religion or caste is dominant. These also include whether the AWC is located in a village area, a town, a tribal area or in a slum in the urban area, a lower-middleclass location in an urban area, or a Dalit- or Muslim-dominated colony in a slum. Workers who were involved in the AWCs have different experiences to share depending on the differences between these locations. However, while the study selected workers and helpers from different areas for long qualitative interviews on the basis of which an analysis of their work profile, working condition, and other issues around the scheme has been done, it will have to be expanded to different areas beyond this within NCR and also outside this area in other states in order to assess the diversity in the nature and type of work done by these women and its outcome as experienced by the community. The caste or class dimension also needs to be further probed in detail to avoid generalization or simplification of these factors. Many women explained that the reason for them to become an AWW or helper is the financial compulsion to do some form of paid work. The rising percentage of unemployment or work in the formal sector can be seen as a reason; however, there is also an attraction to work in anything which is in some way related to a government job. This works in both ways—while women working in the anganwadis are not officially in a government job, this desire and hope keep them going in the field even when it is not well paid. More than that, the social status and the fact that women are seen as ‘naturally’ fit for the job is certainly an additional factor. It is thus a ‘respectable’ (Palriwala and Neetha 2009) job for women to enter into paid work. An AWW is also seen as someone who can easily connect to the whole community through her work and this encourages women to join this profession, especially those who are ambitious to join political work or be in the leadership in the community as they are able to use it for better communication with the local people. As explained in the earlier part of the book, MMs played an important role in organizing local women and engaging them in any such programme where their work is seen as voluntary work mostly carried out for public programmes or Page 10 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ services. While anganwadi women workers remain the main gatherers of all kinds of information about the local community, women in the MMs do other forms of voluntary work, whether for children in the community, for adolescent girls or for old (p.255) people. These groups are also used to form local-level self-help groups or micro-credit programmes in which the information and organizing already done by these women render the job easier. Thus at different levels, women from the local community are encouraged to do voluntary work for their own community, while the state remains a mediator or sometimes even a silent spectator when it becomes the responsibility of these women to make sure that the welfare programmes are implemented properly. With the ICDS changing its nature with PPP, in some states the NGO-ization of the ICDS in whichever form has also helped the NGOs, big and small, to actively engage in the local community affairs. When important welfare programmes are handed over to the NGOs, many such situations occur wherein the government organizations and the NGOs collaborate in corruption at different levels. Other than the roles discussed earlier by actively and directly participating in the ICDS and AWCs in many ways, NGOs are also becoming more powerful by offering job trainings to become an AWW or helper. The origin of private training centres for AWWs, the selection of certain selected NGOs as MNGOs and field NGOs, the emergence of health hubs, and so on which were discussed in the earlier chapters are important developments in the process of privatization of the ICDS. Moreover, the involvement of NGOs and other private organizations in a programme like the ICDS has helped them to gather information about the locality, thus enabling them to make a powerful entry into the local resources. Further, through the local women, it is easier for private institutions to have access to any information or resources, while financially it has become all the more profitable to enter the local areas and have access to resources, using the cheap labour of local women. New changes in the existing welfare programmes like the ICDS and also the emergence of workers in other schemes like the ASHAs who contribute through a similar or more voluntary form of work are signs of the increasing complexity of the matter. Moreover, the concurrent running of many programmes in similar fields with similar agendas and purposes creates duplication of work and allows for further devaluation and exploitation of more women workers. While women workers as mothers in their new and diverse roles have become a new trend at the local level, these women are expected to help other women and children from their own community. It is interesting in this context (p.256) to see how the state is able to strategically use the workers from the same beneficiary communities when most of these women and their families themselves are the recipients of the benefits of the programme. With more and more active involvement of the community in the programme, and initiatives like self-help groups or panchayat leaders in the programme, those who are powerful within these local communities are able to make use of the opportunity to create new Page 11 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ networks of power locally. As explained in the fifth chapter, the dynamics of local caste politics reveals this as true. It is possible then that wherever women workers are in some ways related to the local political and powerful families, caste plays an important role even in the selection of workers at the local AWCs. Though it is not surprising that there is a conglomeration of class, caste, and gender dimensions relevant in the functioning of the ICDS or other welfare programmes, it is still paradoxical that in this context the state uses the cheap labour of women from the very same communities to contribute to their own welfare. Moreover, it is a reality that in order to make this possible, the very same social hierarchies which already exist in these local communities are used by the state authorities towards the implementation of its welfare programmes. Thus, apart from the fact that welfare may mean different things for the rich and the poor, the processes of implementation of welfare policies are thus in some ways contributing to the development of the existing hierarchies of the community. Instead, in order to replace this, the state should ideally initiate both formal regular systems and offices to plan and implement such welfare policies with regular job and payment for all those involved in such projects. Otherwise, it will not be ironical to suggest that voluntary or unpaid work in order to help women and children from poor communities should be initiated either by involving women from upper classes through their CBOs or by encouraging these women to participate in the implementation of such welfare programmes or social work voluntarily. What we see today is the direct involvement of international and national NGOs and other private institutions collaborating with the Indian state, and taking over the planning and implementation of social welfare programmes. In many ways they are able to interfere with the shaping, planning, or designing of these programmes, changing the very nature of these welfare policies. The concept of social welfare (p.257) itself changes thus with a focus on factors like training, counselling, or information sharing. As discussed earlier, the actual agenda of directly engaging with help in health, education, and childcare facilities for the poor have taken a back seat. In a country like India, access to material resources still remain the main issue, as training, counselling, or information sharing can only be a secondary priority. The content of these trainings or counselling and the very process of getting access to local-level information in an in-depth way for these private institutions can have other implications in terms of how these institutions might use this information for their own institutional benefits. This is more of a possibility with the entry of SHGs involving local women and microcredit programmes initiated through women from the MMs, AWCs, or ASHAs, and so on, working together with private corporate institutions at the local level. Moreover, increasing community participation in welfare in this way is one way of handing over the burden of poverty and struggle for equality of the poor to the poorer sections of the community.
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Not for ‘Honour’ Workers like the AWW or the ASHAs cannot be counted as fully part of the informal sector. In many ways the workers in these projects are working directly under the government and are also availing of many facilities just like any government employee, though they are not counted as government employees or even as ‘workers’. Though anganwadi work is in the service of the community and the women who are engaged in this work are doing public service which is expected of the mothers or women of a community, it can be argued that the work done by a domestic worker and by an AWW can be seen as two sides of the same coin—one in the private space and other in public. Moreover, the responsibilities of the AWW is more in terms of a social worker though the nature of work and the fact that this work is expected to be done only by a woman gives it a more specific feminized, gendered face. The decision to universalize the ICDS service has coincided with fact that the need for childcare and support for children from poor families have only gone up in present-day India. A good majority of women working in the informal sector in India do not have access to childcare facilities. However, the recent change in the ICDS programme, making it into a mission mode, has made the workers in the AWCs anxious about their future in the field. As far as the AWWs are concerned, it has been a long struggle to reach wherever they are at the moment in (p.258) terms of recognition of their existence as workers, the right to unionize or the right to avail of facilities like maternity leave or continuation of work till the retirement age as in other government jobs. However, the struggle has not reached its desired destination considering the fact that they are still not recognized legally as workers and this is the most relevant aspect which needs urgent consideration. The discussion of the court cases on this issue in the earlier chapter has shown how the workers lost their fight for regularization of their work or for minimum wages; however, it has also revealed the fact that the government is in fact running away from its responsibility towards these workers in the name of financial burden and not due to the inability to see them as workers by definition. The question of worker’s rights and minimum wages to the AWW and others thus takes us back to the question of who is a worker from the point of view of the state and how the state can be forced to rethink that position. It is important that with a better understanding of the gendered nature of women’s work, one needs to politicize women workers’ rights. Women workers in other fields too are experiencing gross violation of their rights as workers whether it is in the field of domestic work, construction work, or sex work. While a good majority of women who are doing paid work in the informal sector in India are facing similar problems, women workers in these welfare projects or schemes constitute a peculiar example. Considering the fact that the devaluation of women’s work has a long history, feminist scholars both in India and abroad are engaged in contributing to the expansion of definitions of women’s work into different arenas, whether old or new; at the same time, the contribution of the Page 13 of 15
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Not for ‘Honour’ state in this process needs to be given special focus in the present day. An expansion of the theme of work and women’s work is about re-entering the debate on the distinction between paid, unpaid, and less paid labour. Along with this is the long-time demand of the worker’s rights movement for equal wages for equal work. Other than taking us back to the fundamental questions around the definition of work, workers, and women’s work, this debate equally and strongly takes us back to the discussion on the role of the state in the devaluation of women’s work in a capitalist economy. In the context of this study, while going back to some of these fundamental questions of what is work, who is a worker, or who is a woman worker, some interesting observations can be claimed to be of utmost (p.259) relevance. A study of the work of AWW has revealed that politics and value of work have to be seen in a specific context, locating the worker economically, socially, and culturally. In the context of this study, the work done by an AWW is seen mostly both from inside (by many of the AWWs) or from outside (by the community or the state) as something which can be done only by a woman worker. Within the accepted notions and reality of a patriarchal and capitalist condition, this turns out to be what is acceptable for Indian society. However, within this framework, what is still being challenged is the rationale and the politics around the devaluation of women’s work and the exploitation of working-class women. The study has clearly depicted the gendered notions around what work is and who is a woman worker, showing why and how women’s work has become women’s work in the political economy of a capitalist state. Expanding the ‘natural’ space and work in the private/domestic space has also been made possible with the study of the honorary work. Seeing the defining of the poor women workers as honorary workers has clearly been a strategic move by extending the private/domestic into the public. Thus, the creation of the housewife has helped its extension into the creation of the honorary worker. The further expansion of this is into more new state-run schemes like ASHA where the woman worker is appearing more than a voluntary worker into what is called an activist volunteer ready to do free social work and accepts just an incentive depending upon the work she is ready to take up. It is possible to see in the near future more and more of such definitions and social service by poor working– class women as the new contemporary forms of unpaid and less paid labour is utilized more effectively by a capitalist state. The chain of voluntary women workers will thus be expanded further from MMs, anganwadis, Mid-Day-Meal workers, ASHAs, and many more to come. It is not just about the state helping itself from the burden of social welfare schemes for the poor. It is further a sign of new forms or versions of entry of the private into the public both from the side of the individual and of the community. With the help of these volunteer women workers it also the private capital coming through the PPP that is able to find its cheaper access to local space, local knowledge/information, and local market.
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Not for ‘Honour’ It is also important here to see the changing market value for the ‘homemade’ in the light of new developments. The contemporary times (p.260) show the value added to the superiority of the so-called homemade products in the market. The meaning of homemade here clearly refers to the purity and superiority of the product as it is supported by the women labour in the household space and not polluted by the market. This should remind us of the discussion earlier on the arguments by both feminists and other scholars against the entry of the market into the household and the family wherein the pure small-scale production process in the household got polluted. Instead of the pollution of the domestic by the entry of the market, the private and its purity with women’s labour and love should be now extended into the public space more directly and actively than before. This is a new version of capitalism and its ideas of profit for further exploitation of women’s labour. While the word of unpaid work remains static to some extent, it is the expansion of the less paid work which brings in more profit for the present capitalist market. Whether this form of less paid work and its contribution to the productive world is happening within the definitions of the private world or the public space for the community, it is certainly profitable for the capitalist state and its market. The valuation or devaluation of women’s work is still a developing debate in feminist epistemology and methodology, whether in the case of tribal women’s work or sex workers. Many sections of women’s work still need a better conceptual and political understanding and tools of research. Different feminist standpoints are also needed to expand the meaning of work, in order to make it more inclusive. This is true in the case of the relationship between the devaluation of women’s work and the state as an agency contributing towards this. While it is extremely important to organize women workers in order to fight discrimination against women workers, in order to make this struggle stronger and meaningful, the very process of devaluation needs to be once again researched more deeply, addressing the relationship between the gender division of labour and patriarchy in the local communities and the political economy of the state.
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Appendix
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
Appendix M.S. Sreerekha
(p.261)
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Appendix
Table A.1 Monthly Honorarium of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in India (1975–6 to 01.04.2011) Qualificati on
1975–6
01.04.78
01.07.86
02.10.92
16.05.97
01.04.02
30.06.07
01.04.08
01.04.11
NonMatriculate
100
125
225
350
438
938
938
1438
2938
Matriculate
150
175
275
400
500
1000
1000
1500
3000
NonMatriculate with 5 years Exp.
–
–
250
375
469
969
969
969
2969
Matriculate with 5 years Exp.
–
–
300
425
531
1031
1031
1031
3031
NonMatriculate with 10 years Exp.
–
–
275
400
500
1000
1000
1000
3000
Matriculate with 10 years Exp.
–
–
325
450
563
1063
1063
1063
3063
MiniAnganwadi
–
–
–
–
–
500 (w.e.f. 01.01.07)
–
750
1500
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Appendix Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.
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Appendix (p.262)
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Appendix
Table A.2 State-wise Funds Released and Expenditure under ICDS Training Programme in India (2007–2008 to 2011– 2012-upto 31.12.2011) (Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12 (up to 31.12.2011)
Release
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu re
Andhra Pradesh
715.56
846.19
584.99
720.45
1332.63
1219.94
1855.21
1307.60
763.06
887.86
Arunachal Pradesh
36.10
18.60
13.18
17.50
56.13
13.18
70.25
70.13
51.67
121.90
Assam
366.44
176.13
0.00
190.29
297.71
297.71
500.86
398.34
316.84
0.00
Bihar
516.56
632.42
494.09
519.17
799.07
774.04
804.25
863.89
692.09
819.93
Chhattisga 280.00 rh
159.30
0.00
237.30
325.20
329.56
346.73
436.40
298.72
164.21
Goa
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
22.54
0.00
0.00
0.00
9.20
9.10
Gujarat
192.00
184.07
202.10
207.60
235.86
229.45
390.30
552.51
274.48
293.95
Haryana
91.80
107.52
80.99
110.53
85.98
205.60
283.78
300.93
130.29
169.14
Himachal Pradesh
163.00
173.67
49.38
55.43
46.74
161.78
57.42
114.85
65.07
96.66
Jammu & Kashmir
24.55
0.00
0.00
0.00
194.26
0.00
280.88
0.00
0.00
166.58
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12 (up to 31.12.2011)
Release
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu re
Jharkhand
60.00
106.45
120.48
139.63
456.99
150.00
288.38
381.50
180.91
237.85
Karnataka
198.73
250.30
27.81
208.47
250.00
385.32
349.10
475.91
428.74
282.94
Kerala
239.11
181.22
24.58
130.48
545.04
249.95
156.41
311.42
302.04
63.67
Madhya Pradesh
265.91
550.68
366.67
476.44
457.58
470.08
742.65
689.44
291.74
565.68
Maharasht 404.38 ra
454.00
303.76
387.47
80.08
637.11
783.70
573.92
400.23
343.71
Manipur
0.00
28.00
34.22
54.99
0.00
126.60
63.30
56.00
56.00
Meghalaya 34.28
29.97
15.59
25.23
7.96
54.82
39.83
47.63
40.42
19.49
Mizoram
10.01
18.95
10.43
4.16
31.09
11.66
22.00
14.31
14.18
3.44
Nagaland
25.79
17.78
12.70
9.96
477.81
31.09
38.63
38.63
21.73
17.65
(p.263) Odisha
263.93
258.12
241.89
249.96
481.51
428.78
447.27
519.05
308.22
399.02
Punjab
54.00
69.37
17.38
68.04
295.08
74.69
127.48
159.53
0.00
35.28
Rajasthan
119.77
212.98
90.88
113.62
23.32
214.11
210.71
329.36
352.16
244.55
Sikkim
9.06
6.51
11.45
6.51
313.56
19.91
22.49
14.24
18.57
10.55
17.33
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12 (up to 31.12.2011)
Release
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu re
Tamil Nadu
0.00
139.76
0.00
140.52
35.39
157.68
354.57
173.75
280.44
623.21
Tripura
29.77
42.57
67.79
56.45
689.30
39.22
32.57
40.40
31.02
29.27
Uttar Pradesh
520.23
540.08
307.32
343.09
121.29
692.88
529.35
772.90
800.69
128.40
Uttarakha nd
76.17
47.03
0.00
39.73
276.71
109.92
95.20
160.50
79.85
119.47
West Bengal
728.60
234.28
181.70
308.00
2.97
620.41
297.68
574.72
279.44
431.62
Andaman & Nicobar Islands
2.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
2.21
0.00
2.41
2.40
0.00
0.00
Chandigar h
1.46
3.17
1.07
1.07
0.00
0.00
3.58
3.58
3.31
0.00
Daman & Diu
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12 (up to 31.12.2011)
Release
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu Release re
Expenditu re
Dadra & Nagar Haveli
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
72.49
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Delhi
20.35
35.07
31.16
36.90
0.00
62.43
59.96
64.25
29.98
0.00
Lakshadwe 2.87 ep
0.00
0.00
0.00
26.53
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
Puducherr 0.00 y
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
India
5499.19
3265.39
4838.22
8453.41
7641.32
9320.25
9455.39
6521.09
6341.13
5469.76
Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.
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Appendix (p.264)
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Appendix
Table A.3 Financial Progress under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) in India (2007–8 to 2010–11–Upto 28.02.2011) Year
Budget Estimates
Revised Estimates
Expenditure
(Rs. in Crore) Percentage
2007–8
5293
5396.30
5256.46
97.40%
2008–9
6300
6300
6378.55
101.30%
2009–10
6705
8162
8154.52
99.91%
2010–11 (as on 28.02.2011)
8700
9280
8776.71
95.43%
Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India.
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Appendix (p.265)
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Appendix
Table A.4 State-wise Funds Released and Expenditure under ICDS Scheme (General) in India (2007–8 to 2011–12) (Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12
Release
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Andhra Pradesh
26015.86
24002.05
27163.56
47238.14
30.09.200 34974.13 8
38787.19
34784.04
35544.83
43824.92
36146.69
Bihar
21909.01
17293.86
17508.23
20764.15
30.06.200 28965.41 8
31936.06
24380.95
13155.65
45764.14
5261.26
Chhattisg 9498.18 arh
8368.37
8992.46
12051.94
30.09.200 14068.71 8
5700.38
11717.92
9252.35
23488.81
11415.52
Goa
507.00
Not Reported
406.56
**
30.09.200 816.47 8
827.87
802.74
802.05
837.32
740.15
Gujarat
11050.69
11556.23
16491.86
15596.07
30.06.200 15631.96 8
20852.35
18542.23
11863.21
44001.56
21697.18
Haryana
7115.76
6517.28
8455.60
8798.38
30.09.200 7940.70 8
10813.28
10534.06
11760.06
16230.64
8665.19
Himachal 3802.02 Pradesh
4570.07
8232.21
7159.69
30.06.200 7002.53 8
8175.08
8669.69
4405.61
11838.88
5405.43
Page 12 of 18
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12
Release
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Jammu and Kashmir
8001.09
5184.25
4557.80
8529.92
30.09.200 8282.34 8
8383.48
14470.74
4368.01
15008.35
7667.43
Jharkhan d
9191.01
8939.90
9776.60
9851.86
30.09.200 12697.56 8
14210.21
17629.62
14923.35
20320.74
7667.32
Karnatak a
13934.16
16781.05
19473.26
22474.61
30.09.200 20579.49 8
22455.76
19039.59
25934.32
44673.40
11265.34
Kerala
9687.99
11289.55
15020.66
13726.91
30.09.200 14037.04 8
13939.26
12595.35
9952.02
29313.72
21465.86
Madhya Pradesh
26458.36
21567.61
29168.81
24141.32
30.09.200 19973.34 8
24146.54
30430.04
26445.14
40262.82
5859.40
Maharash 25105.71 tra
30090.33
31996.55
**
30.09.200 31780.80 8
24362.62
41719.66
16180.03
75825.56
9244.67
(p.266) Odisha
15129.70
13495.40
16934.58
18081.79
30.09.200 22026.29 8
20363.01
21230.41
24121.61
35730.75
59554.74
Punjab
5316.95
6166.64
9125.15
8709.66
30.06.200 8779.45 8
10508.30
11704.90
12443.24
17257.36
17039.53
Page 13 of 18
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8 Release
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Rajasthan 12885.03
13696.98
19486.76
20226.22
30.09.200 22254.95 8
20252.76
16803.90
15532.35
32154.17
12178.09
Tamil Nadu
15139.28
18163.08
17203.97
–
23576.79
25965.27
14596.75
36930.24
11658.56
Uttarakha 2690.52 nd
2826.47
4627.72
3259.16
30.09.200 3596.44 8
5171.40
3762.59
5081.57
10422.24
18056.26
Uttar Pradesh
37189.40
34774.06
54349.16
48226.21
30.09.200 50853.63 8
55257.16
48102.00
62027.87
89363.81
1195.20
West Bengal
23845.30
23033.08
33616.96
33083.08
30.06.200 36739.78 8
36741.91
30419.35
32101.28
78956.15
45215.94
Delhi
1569.21
2127.89
3885.71
3246.06
30.06.200 3137.32 8
2952.40
3584.50
3461.85
4888.66
39764.26
174.37
332.37
254.44
30.06.200 222.47 8
303.84
355.54
350.62
712.40
3428.35
15608.35
Puducher 234.36 ry
17653.51
Page 14 of 18
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
2008–9
2009–10
2010–11
2011–12
Release
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
241.55
236.84
299.10
296.05
–
288.66
292.06
322.89
326.59
599.93
302.74
Chandiga 189.39 rh
189.39
250.94
232.44
30.09.200 252.29 8
252.29
240.87
240.87
434.96
179.37
Dadra and Nagar Haveli
68.70
65.45
85.87
88.89
30.09.200 129.84 8
126.57
137.53
69.94
145.33
276.79
Daman and Diu
48.00
48.00
58.81
58.48
30.09.200 56.55 8
56.65
58.18
58.16
82.47
45.74
(p.267) 64.63 Lakshadw eep
Not Reported
62.87
**
30.06.200 121.03 8
75.87
27.49
22.82
169.83
37.82
Arunachal 3302.60 Pradesh
2157.44
3395.68
2741.45
30.09.200 3122.59 8
2429.37
6321.28
3567.93
6964.29
57.94
Page 15 of 18
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8 Release
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
Assam
8582.93
10604.30
26033.82
19677.98
30.09.200 23551.88 8
18713.10
35901.57
22078.69
38346.18
4922.58
Manipur
3203.17
2102.79
2888.69
2966.40
–
3307.42
2464.68
3581.11
3720.66
5868.06
29227.38
Meghalay 1289.14 a
1322.85
1817.13
1586.44
30.09.200 2047.16 8
2505.69
2443.06
2400.38
3496.31
2926.19
Mizoram
1210.29
1039.72
1603.55
1612.93
30.09.200 2081.27 8
1681.91
2293.96
2117.39
2700.24
2022.5
Nagaland 1697.65
1488.51
2527.14
2504.40
30.06.200 4994.32 8
2499.13
2225.38
4539.71
5908.53
1782.94
Sikkim
553.31
348.27
884.29
**
30.06.200 660.21 8
627.69
480.80
710.38
753.70
3199.04
Tripura
3406.26
2107.77
2975.26
2808.10
30.09.200 7362.81 8
3290.20
8099.64
4266.00
6458.26
556.93
–
670.36
–
–
–
742.00
–
663.72
4630.26
Life 200.00 Insurance Corpn.
2008–9
2009–10
691.80
2010–11
2011–12
Page 16 of 18
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Appendix
(Rs. in Lakh) States/ UTs
2007–8
India
310803.3 299306.0 401319.2 377197.1 – 0 5 0 4
Release
2008–9 Expendit Release ure Reported by States
2009–10 Expendit ure Reported by States
Expendit Release ure Reported by States
2010–11 Expendit Release ure Reported by States
2011–12 Expendit Release ure Reported by States
Expendit ure Reported by States
430682.1 434732.8 470120.5 398423.2 790398.4 403093.1 5 6 8 9 5 6
Source: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India. Note: (**:) Yet to be reported. $ : The releases during 2010–11 includes second installment of Rs. 582,662,300 released for construction of AWCs approved in 2006–7. Expenditure under ICDS (General) in respect of Chhattisgarh and Lakshadweep is up to December 2009 and that for Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra is up to December 2009.
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Appendix
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Bibliography
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.268) Bibliography M.S. Sreerekha
Books, Journals, and Reports
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Bibliography Mohanty Chandra Talpade, Russo Anne, and Lourdes M. Torres (eds). 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade and M. Jacqui Alexander (eds). 1996. Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. New York: Routledge. Mongia, J.N. 1980. Readings in Indian Labour and Social Welfare. Delhi/ Lucknow: Atma Ram and Sons. Naidu, Srisha C. 2015. ‘Missing Women Workers, Dollars and Sense, September/ October, 320’, ProQuest Research Library, p. 30. National Advisory Council. 2011. ‘Recommendations for a Reformed and Strengthened ICDS’. GOI. National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). 1998. ‘A Detailed Report of the Pilot Study on ICDS’. New Delhi. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3). 2006. ‘Health and Living Conditions in Eight Indian Cities’, 2005–2006. New Delhi: NFHS-3, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, GOI. National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3). 2009. ‘Nutrition in India’. New Delhi: National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), GOI. National Policy for Children. 1974. New Delhi: Department of Social Welfare, GOI. Navlakha, G. 1995. ‘Under the Guise of Women’s Empowerment: Fate of Rajasthan’s Sathins’, Economic & Political Weekly 30(27): 1645–53. Nayak, Nandini and Naresh C. Saxena. 2006. ‘Implementation of ICDS in Bihar and Jharkhand’, Economic & Political Weekly, 41(34, August 26): 3680–4. Neetha, N. 2006. ‘Invisibility Continues?’, Economic & Political Weekly, XLI(32): 3497–9. ———. 2009. ‘Feminisation or Segregation? Insights from a Disaggregate Analysis of NSSO Data’, in Bhaswati Das and Vimal Khawas (eds). Gender (p. 275) Issues in Development, Concerns for the 21st Century. New Delhi: Rawat Publications. Neetha, N. and Indrani Majumdar. 2011. ‘Gender Dimensions: Employment Trends in India, 1993–94 to 2009–10’, Economic & Political Weekly, XLVI(43): 118–26.
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Bibliography Nelson, Julia A. and Paula England. 2002. ‘Feminist Philosophies of Love and Work’, Hypatia, 17(2): 1–18. NIPCCD. 1975. ‘ICDS Syllabi for Training of Functionaries’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1976. ‘A Guidebook of AWWs’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1979. ‘ICDS Revised Syllabus for Training of Functionaries’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1984. ‘Manual on ICDS’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1987. ‘Training of AWWs, A Compilation of Guidelines and Instructions upto 1987’. New Delhi: DWCD, MHRD, GOI. ———. 1990. ‘Compilation-Guidelines and Instructions Regarding AWWs and their Training’. New Delhi: DWCD and Ministry of Welfare, GOI, upto 1990, GOI. NIPCCD. 1992. ‘National Evaluation of ICDS’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1999. ‘A Compilation of Guidelines and Instructions’, March 1995–May 1999. New Delhi: DWCD, GOI. ———. 2005. ‘Guidelines, Responsibilities of an Anganwadi Worker’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 1987. ‘A Compilation of Guidelines and Instructions on ICDS, upto 1985 to 1987’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 2009. “Research on ICDS: An Overview”, Volume 3, New Delhi: NIPCCD. ———. 2006. ‘Three Decades of ICDS: An Appraisal’. New Delhi: NIPCCD. Okaley A. 1974. Woman’s Work: Housewife, Past and Present. New York: Vintage Books. Oppenheimer, Melanie. 1998. ‘Voluntary Work and Labour History’, Labour History 74 (May): 1–9. Palriwala, Rajni and Neetha, N. 2009. ‘Paid Care Workers in India: Domestic Workers and Anganwadi Workers’, Research Report 4—United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva. ———. 2010. Care arrangements and bargains: Anganwadi and Paid Domestic workers in India, International Labour Review, Vol. 149, Issue 4, December, 511– 27. Pandhya, Rameshwar and Sarika Patel. 2010. Women in the Unorganized Sector of India. New Delhi: New Century Publications. Page 10 of 14
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Bibliography Papanek, Hanna. 1979. ‘Family Status Production: The Work and Non Work of Women’, Signs, 4(4): 775–81. Parliamentary Debates. 2006, 208(4): 223–4. (p.276) Planning Commission. 2000. ‘Plans and Prospects for Social Welfare in India; 1951–1961’. New Delhi: Planning Commission, GOI. Planning Commission. 1982. ‘Evaluation Report on the ICDS Project, 1976–78’. New Delhi: Programme Evaluation Organization, Planning Commission, GOI. Planning Commission. 1988. ‘The Handbook of Instructions Regarding the ICDS’. New Delhi: GOI ———. 2010. ‘Engendering Public Policy: A Report on the work of the Working Group of Feminist Economists’: 2007–2012’. New Delhi: Planning Commission, GOI. Qadeer, Imrana and Sunita Reddy. 2006. ‘Medical Care in the Shadow of Public Private Partnership’, Social Scientist 34(9–10): 4–20. Raj, Kumar S. and Jagbir S Jakliar. 2007. ‘Child Development through ICDS in Haryana’, Social Welfare (November): 23–6. Rajalakshmi, T.K. 2005. ‘All Work and No Pay’, Frontline, Labour Issues 22 (21): 81–3. ———. 2006. ‘Burden without Benefit’, Frontline, 33 (16): 92–3. Rajya Sabha Debates. 1989. 151(6–10): 282–3. ———. 1990. CLV(1–4): 286–7. Rama V. Baru and Madhurima Nundy. 2008. ‘Blurring of Boundaries: Public Private Partnerships in Health Services in India’, Economic & Political Weekly, 43(4): 62–71. Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India. 1974. ‘Towards Equality’. New Delhi: GOI. Rubin, Gayle. 1975. ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex’, in Rayna Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women. New York: Monthly Review Press. Ruddick, Sara. 1997. ‘Maternal Thinking’ in Meyers, Diana Tietjens (eds), Feminist Social Thought, 584–603. London: Routledge. ———. 2004. ‘Maternal Thinking as Feminist Standpoint’ in S. Harding (ed.). The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader, 161–6. London: Routledge. Page 11 of 14
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Bibliography SAARC Development Goals (SDGs). 2013, India Country Report 2013. New Delhi: The Central statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, GOI. Sangari, Kunkum and Sudesh Vaid. 1989. Recasting Women. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sawhny, Arti and Kiran Dubey. 2001. Justice, the State and Sathin’s Struggle, Economic and Political Weekly, 36(16): 1290–1. Shah, Vidyaben. 1991. ‘Role of ICCW in Training of Anganwadi Workers’ in ‘15 Years of ICDS: An Overview’. New Delhi: GOI. Sindhu, A.R. 2010. ‘Save the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Save the Future of India’, People’s Democracy (November 2010). (p.277) Socio-Economic and Educational Development Society. 2007. Evaluation of ICDS, Department of Women and Child Development, Haryana, GOI. Sundaraman, T. 2006. ‘Universalisation of ICDS and Community Health Worker Programmes; Lessons from Chhattisgarh’, Economic and Political Weekly 41(34): 3674–9. Swaminathan, Mina. 1994. ‘Privatising the Young Child, 1994’, Indian Express, Madras, Development News, 7 September, Wednesday, p. 9. Swaminathan, P. 1987. ‘State and Subordination of Women’, Economic & Political Weekly 22(44): 34–40. The Hindu. 2013. ‘Delhi’s Anganwadis Overcrowded, Inadequate’, 10 November, 3. Thomsen, Veronika-Bennholdt. 1984. ‘Subsistence Production and Extended Reproduction’, in Young, Kate, Carol Wolkowitz, and Roslyn McCullagh (eds). Marriage and the Market: Women’s Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons. London: Routledge. United Nations Development Program Human Development Report. 2013. ‘The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World’, New York. USAID Report. 1992. ‘USAID Assisted ICDS Project: Final Evaluation’ by the Pragma Corporation, Falls Church, VA. USAID. 2004. ‘USAID Support to India’s ICDS: Innovative Approaches to Enhance Services’, 9–11.
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Bibliography Varghese, N.V. 1992. ‘Women and Work: An Examination of the Female Marginalization Thesis in the Indian Context’, in Alakh N. Sharma and Seema Singh (eds). Women and Work: Changing Scenario in India. Patna: Indian Society of Labour Economics. Walby, Sylvia. 1986. Patriarchy at Work. Cambridge: Polity. ——— (ed.). 1988. Gender Segregation at Work. London: McGraw-Hill Education. ———. 1990. Theorizing Patriarchy. London: Blackwell. ———. 2000. ‘The Re-structuring of the Gendered Political Economy: Transformations in Womens’ Employment’, in Joanne Cook, Jennifer Roberts, and Georgina Waylen (eds). Towards a Gendered Political Economy, pp. 165–87. London: Palgrave-MacMillan Press. Watanabe, Eimi. 1991. ‘Why UNICEF is with ICDS’ in 15 Years of ICDS: An Overview. New Delhi: GOI. World Bank. 2004. ‘Analysis of Positive Deviance in the ICDS Programme in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh’. India: World Bank, HNP. Young, Kate, Carol Wolkowitz, and Roslyn McCullagh (eds). 1981. Of Marriage and the Market: Women’s Subordination Internationally and Its Lessons, p. 3–17. London: Routledge. Young, Kate. 1988. Women and Economic Development: Local, Regional, and National Planning Strategies. Oxford: Berg Publisher. Zetkin, Klara. 1934. Lenin on the Woman Question. New York: International Publishers. (p.278) Websites
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Bibliography www.wcd.hry.gov.in www.panchkula.nic.in/women_child_devlop.asp Judgments/Court Orders
Bombay High Court Nagpur Bench Order in December 2010 in the matter between Vidya and State of Maharashtra (Vidya vs State of Maharashtra 2011 (129) FLR 556). Dipitimayee Parida vs State of Orissa, 2008, filed in the Supreme Court of India (Civil Appeal No. 6158 of 2008). PUCL vs Union of India and others, Writ Petition (Civil) 1996 of 2001. PUDR and Others and Union of India and Others, 1983 (1) Supreme Court Reports, No. 456. Smt. T.J. Manjamma vs State of Karnataka, the Karnataka High Court on the selection process of anganwadi workers, February 2008. State of Karnataka and Others vs Ameerbi and Others, Appeal (Civil) Application Numbers 4953–4957 of 1998. The Karnataka Administrative Tribunal, Ameerbi and others vs State of Karnataka on 9 August 1996, Case No: 2841–2845 of 1996.
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Index
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.279) Index Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) 126, 126n9, 151, 202, 205–6n2, 212, 237, 253, 256, 258 activists 209 Adarsh anganwadi centres 180 agricultural economy 6, 73, 75, 250 agricultural labour/labourers 61, 73, 76, 79, 83, 94, 250 agricultural sector 77, 85, 99 decline in 82 decrease in employment 95 paid work women 76 post-independent decline in production 75 Aircel 210 alienation 34–5 All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH) 11–12, 14, 154, 157, 169, 200, 204, 213, 233, 241–2 AWW experiences as socially accepted exploitation 209 campaigns and struggles led by, importance of 207–8 criticizes Indian state, reasons for 208 in Delhi, registered members 209–10 demand for cheating of women workers in schemes name 209 documents published by 206–7 focus of 211 formation of 206 members participation in joint trade 208 memorandum to government 210 militant struggles 206 multiplicity of services 211 politics of creating schemes and programmes 209 support of beneficiaries of ICDS 206 All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) 133–4 altruism 53, 55, 57 Page 1 of 20
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Index anganwadi centre (AWC) 92–3, 114, 149, 151, 158, 213, 255 in Delhi 161 housing facility for workers and helpers 167–8 students registered 161 working hours 161–2 (p.280) in Haryana 176–8 in Rajasthan 179–81 in Uttar Pradesh dilemma over workers’ rights and job 175–6 government expenditure on per child 173 honorarium to workers 172 maintenance of sixteen registers 173 workers’ condition 172 anganwadi helpers (AWHs) 114, 153, 213, 232, 235 in Delhi adolescent girl in ICDS scheme 169–71 benefits for 166–7 extra responsibilities 164–5 getting a job 168–9 working hours 163–4 work schedule 165–6 duties of 125 honorarium paid to 262 reasons to become 255 Anganwadi Karyakarti Bima Yojana 132–3 anganwadis, concept of 89 caste politics around 181–4 meaning of 8 NGO-ization and privatization of 184–92 anganwadi sevikas 232 Anganwadi Training Centres (AWTCs) 135, 139, 142, 145 anganwadi workers (AWWs) in India 1, 6, 11–12, 17–18, 110–11, 153, 156, 212, 216, 254, 258 (see also Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in India) age of 148n19 appointments and transfer process 130 assisted by AWH 125 certificate of appreciation 132–3 connect to whole community 255 controversial issues around 7 court cases 222–3 CPDO’s duties 125 debate in Parliament 219–22 definition of 2 in Delhi 159 extra responsibilities 161–2 honorarium paid to workers 162–3 schedule of work and daily routine 161 working hours 160–1 work profile 160–1 Page 2 of 20
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Index devaluation of women’s work 246, 261 duties and responsibilities of 124–5 fixation of age limit for retirement 131 function as depot holder 206n2 gender politics around women 193–200 grants for 120 honorarium paid to 127–9, 262 issue to contest elections 132 Karnataka Administrative Tribunal Order 1996 223–4 Karnataka High Court Order 2008 228–9 MHFW to issue letters and orders 115 MMS and, relationship between 119 money spent for training purposes for 263–4 (p.281) paid absence on maternity grant to 130–1 Planning Commission report on 125 private training centres, origin of 256 reasons to become 255 struggle of 203 Supreme Court Order on regularization of posts of 225–7 on selection 229–32 in tribal areas 116 unions 204–5 in Uttar Pradesh, NCR 171–6, 254 VRWs responsibility to 131–2 workers’ rights of 8 Annapoorna scheme 93, 93n14 Annual Programme of Implementation Plan (APIP) 153 Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) 206n2 position supported by central government 126–7 roles and duties of 126–7 works as a link between ICDS and health department 125 BALCO 210 Baldock, Cora 57 balsevikas 111 Balsevika Training Institutes and Centres 111 balwadis 101 Banerjee, Nirmala 61 Barrett, Michelle 4, 35, 37, 39–40, 65n7 Beechey, Veronica 40 below poverty line (BPL) 12, 171, 252 Bhanwari Devi 199, 233 Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) 14, 181, 204, 212–15 Block Development Officers 115, 122 Boserup, Ester 4, 24, 35–6, 73–4, 78 B.R. Ambedkar NGO 189 Braverman, Harry 23, 25, 31–5, 43–4, 59–60, 247 Brenner, Johanna 44 capacity for labour (see Labour power) Page 3 of 20
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Index capital accumulation 34, 48 capitalism 25, 39, 72, 247 advancement of 48 burden on woman shoulders 30–1 change of household into universal market 34 development in labour-surplus multi-structural in India 78 history of 21 in labour-surplus multi-structural 78 male dominance over women 37 provides paid work to women 27 reproduction in 4 role in keeping burden of care 248 theoretical tendency of 37–8 women contribution to paid work 27 capitalist economic development 35 capitalist economy 10, 21, 23 capitalist industrial development 23 capitalist patriarchy 21, 29, 38, 48, 72 capitalist production 40, 44–5 expansion impact on production 41 capitalist productive relations 37 capitalist state 8–9, 26, 37, 63–4, 68, 70, 214, 247, 249, 260–1 capitalist welfare state 68 CARE NGO 117–18, 140–1, 154 CASPLAN NGO 189 (p.282) caste discrimination 176, 182–4 caste politics in anganwadis 181–4 casual leave 129, 161, 166, 177 Central Social Welfare Advisory Board 115 Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB) 101–2, 115 Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) 157, 204–5 childcare facilities/provision 2, 26, 44–5, 50–4, 68, 106 intervention of state in 50 policies 68 politics of 51 private 53 sexual division of labour 69 state responsibilities and role 4, 50, 70 value of 50, 53 women’s role in 50 Child Development Project Officer (CDPO) 114, 115 child endowment 62 child mortality rate (CMR) 175 children, definition of 52 child-welfare movement in the United States 52 Citizens’ Initiative for Rights of Children Under Six, 2006 93 Citizens’ Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six (CIRCUS) 234 class(es) 31, 47, 150, 202, 243, 257 of AWWs 16 Page 4 of 20
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Index based division of labour 47 conflict perspective 29 differences 31 dimensions 245 hierarchy 182 hierarchy in status 15 lower 6 politics 181, 244 significance of 244 significance of 244 single women, status 38 specialization 24 of wage workers 23 Committee on the Status of Women 75–6 commodification of care and emotions 26 of social-service sector work 60 commodity value 43–4 Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of UPA government 150, 221, 224 community-based organization (CBO) 187 community development block 116 Community Health Volunteers (CHV) 241 community participation 7, 108, 132, 141, 147, 149, 154, 209, 211 in ICDS scheme 7, 12, 141, 147, 149, 211, 233–40 changing phase 233–40 Companies Act 2013 of India 239 Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) 99, 149 compulsory heterosexuality 36 Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) 238 consumption or leisure activities definition of 46 expansion of 46 individual 28 productive 28–9 Contract Labour Regulation and Abolition Act 1970 231 Cooked Mid-Day Meal (CMDM) scheme 92n12 co-responsibility 108 (p.283) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) 107, 190, 239 CSWI Report (1974) 112 dalit(s) 183, 255 anganwadis 182, 184, 199 daliya distribution/centres 176 Dalla Costa, Maria Rosa 45 decentralization 108, 234 Delhi Development Authority 230 Delphy, Christine 35 Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances 119 Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD), MHRD 115–17, 119, 127–31, 187, 190 Page 5 of 20
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Index Department of Women and Child Welfare (DWCW) 114 dependency, concept of 85 deregulation of labour market practice 80 devaluation of women work 7, 9, 16, 49, 70, 104, 110, 158, 200, 245–8, 259–61 Directly Observed Treatment System (DOTS) for Tuberculosis 210 District Disability Rehabilitation Centre 206n2 District Social Welfare Officer 115 division of labour 28, 32–3 within family 29 on gender basis 32 in manufacture and society, difference between 29 product of capitalist society 33 subdivides humans 33 subdivides society 33 domestic labour 25, 40 changing nature of women 26–7 Early Childhood Education Programme (ECCE) 111 economic independence of women 35 economy, modern features of 41 Edgell, Stephen 4, 24–5, 247 education sector, women status in 98 employee, definition of 216 employment 20, 94, 129, 131, 216 of female for child care 61 non-agricultural 83 organized sector 79–80 paid 3–4, 53, 56, 65 regular 23–4, 247 in rural areas, decline 95 secondary sector, decrease in 5 service 60 unpaid 3 Engels, Frederick 25, 28–30, 36, 39, 42, 78, 247 equality of women in India 98–106 Equal Remuneration Act 1976 100, 104, 106, 209, 215, 218–19 Factories Act 1948 215, 218 factory, definition of 217 factory-made products 36 family(ies) 4, 50 change into unit of consumption 34 changing role of women as breadwinner 53 class status 38 deserve welfare support 65 entry of market into 35 and organization, relationship between 40 two-child norm policy 197n12 wage 65, 65n7 female home industries 35 Page 6 of 20
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Index (p.284) feminist/feminist perspective 16, 35 critique of anganwadi 12 of work 21 means of subsistence 23 politics 25–42 of work 26 of welfare state 10 feminization of labour 5, 82–9, 95–6 Field NGOs 187 five year plans in India 100–3 eighth 234n11 eleventh 174n4 fifth 113, 121 third 111, 121 twelfth 153, 192 flexibilization of labour work 96 Folbre, Nancy 4, 48–9, 52–3, 56–7, 65, 68, 249 Food for Work scheme 92–3 forced labour 231–2 formal sector 2, 75, 77, 80, 99 work participation, decline in 81 Forum for Creches and Childcare Services (FORCES) NGO 125n8, 162, 234, 234n11 Fraser, Nancy 4 gender discrimination 31 division of labour 25–42 and labour, relationship between 78 politics in anganwadis 193–200 gendered labour markets, interventions of state in regulation of 39 Gender Gap Report 89–90 Gender Resource Centre (GRC), Delhi 187 Gilligan, Carol 51–2 Global Gender Gap Index 90, 90n7 globalization 5, 81, 106–9, 247 Indian state favours to private sector after 250 Indian women workers, impact on 251 neo-liberal policies under 238 paid work by women, impact on 88 political process of 88 goods and services, concept of 21–2 Grievance Redressal Machinery for AWWs 235 guest teachers 212 harijan anganwadis 182–4 Hartmann, Heidi 35 Health Hubs initiative, Delhi 190–1 higher education increase of women share in 98 middle-class and elite women, advantages for 100 Page 7 of 20
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Index status of women in 98 women participation in 81 Hind Mazdoor Sabha (HMS) 204 homemade 260–1 honorary work 8, 70–1, 127, 201, 260 honorary workers, anganwadi as 1–2, 18, 110, 129, 152, 201–2, 236, 246 anganwadi as 6, 9 honorarium paid to 6, 162–3, 262 poor women workers as 260 status of 218 workers of ICDS 118 household labour attitudes towards 48 unpaid 34, 68 household work 21, 35, 45, 53, 86 (p.285) housekeepers 30–1, 49, 248 housewife/housewives 36, 45 domestic 49 domestic production of 47 unproductive 49 housewifization 48, 249 housework of women definition of 20 of housewife 38 human capital 52 human development index (HDI) 90, 203 Human Development Report (HDR) 89–90, 93 human labour 32, 34 income, concept of 85 India Country Report 2013 92, 92n11 Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW) 111, 133–4 Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) 109 industrial capitalism 4, 25 regular paid employment 24 separated work into private and public spaces 3 industrial capitalist production 41 industrial development 21 Industrial Disputes Act 232 industrialization process 3, 21, 35, 61, 73–4 in India, and its impact 78 political economy changes 81 industrial organization 32 industrial work 61, 73, 81 industrial workmen 217 infant mortality rate (IMR) 93–4 inflation 88 informal economy 83–4, 86 informalization of labour 82–9 informal sector 7–8, 80, 84, 244, 258 Page 8 of 20
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Index evolution and perpetuation of 87–8 expansion of 99 implications of 87 structural factors contribution 87–8 women workers in 88, 251 categories of 87 Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in India 11, 89, 91, 99, 109–10, 113–23, 156, 159 administrative set-up of 123–4 adolescent girl participation in 169–71 aim of 252 ANMs role to integrate 126 borrowed from the Department of Women and Child Development 13 CAG report on performance of 99 CARE-assisted 140 challenges to implement 240–3 collaboration with World Bank 6 complex programme to implement 114 corporate partnership or engagement with 239–40 in Delhi and NCR 159 difference between state governments 12 external assistance to 139–41 formal involvement 116 funding of 137–9, 265 grants provision for 118 issues in implementation of 240–3 launched in 1975 6, 113 (p.286) MHFW to issue letters and orders 115 mini-anganwadis 117 in mission mode 152–5, 198, 258 NCR, study in 13–14 NIPCCD survey of 241 objectives of 113 phase IV project 117n5, 135–7 planning towards 118 reviews and appraisals of 146–9 separate projects for rural and tribal areas 116 services offered by 113 state-wise funds released and expenditure under 266–8 structure and programme of 116 Supreme Court of India Orders on expansion and universalization of 224–5 training of functionaries 133–5 universalization of 1–2, 150–2, 192, 258 USAID aid to 144–6 voluntary organizations involvement with 119 as woman-worker-centered 252–3 women workers condition of 245 difficulties within workspace 202 Page 9 of 20
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Index unfair treatment to 203 workers as honorary workers 118 World Bank assistance to 141–4 Integrated Child Welfare Services 111 Integrated Nutrition and Health Project (INHP) 140 Inter Ministerial Group (IMG) 153 International Development Association (IDA) 135 International Labour Organization (ILO) 82–3, 105, 107 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 87 International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) 237 Janani Suraksha Yojana 109 JK cements 210 job(s) 6, 20 in large- and small-scale industries 81 loss of women, reasons 35–6 market expansion 80 responsibilities of AWWs 204, 205n2, 206n2 JP Cements 210 Kalamanch NGO 189 Karat, Brinda 222 Karnataka Administrative Tribunal Order (1996) 222–4 Karnataka High Court Order 2008 228–9 Karnataka State Administrative Tribunal 225 kinship 36 Kishori/Sabla programme 160, 170–1, 175 Kishori Shakti Yojana (KSY) 109, 178, 206n2 Kollontai, Alexandra 29–32 labour force participation rate (LFPR) 95 labour/labourer 20 class-based division 47 consume, material factors 28 gender division of labour 25–42 market, state intervention in regulation of 39 movement 37, 65n7, 81 (p.287) production of 22 products of 21 subsistence and reproduction of 23 time necessary for production 22 working time 33–4 labour market 96 deregulation practice 80 phase of jobless economic growth 99 labour power definition of 22 production of 22 reproduction of 40 value of 22 of working class 33 Lavarch Report of 1991 56n5 Page 10 of 20
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Index leave paid work 73 Lenin 30 less paid labour 5, 9n2, 259–60 less skilled labour 5 less social work 4 liberalization of economy 81, 98 liberal welfare state 37 liberation of women 50 Life Insurance Corporation of India 133 living wage 65 Lok Sabha 220–2 Maharashtra Recognition of Trade Unions 232 Mahila Mandals (MMs) 7, 102–3, 105, 119 (see also Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in India) branches of 120 communication between organizations 122 role in ICDS 122, 255 village-level 121 Maheswari, Sarala 220 Mahila Samajams 121 maintenance of labourer 22–3, 25 main workers 86 Majumdar, Indrani 95–6 male-dominated workers trade unions 3 male domination 45 male supremacy 32 malnutrition 82, 89–91, 113, 145, 150, 154, 203, 242 concentrated pockets 143 in developing countries 93 IDA assistance to causes of 135 risk of child deaths 93 mamathas 209 Management Information System (MIS) 145 manual labour 93n13 manufacturing division of labour 32 marginal workers 86 marketization of care and emotions 26 of social-service sector work 59–60, 63 marriage 4, 26, 36, 50–1, 177, 248 child 199, 233 heterosexual 251 monogamous 28 patriarchal institutions of 45 Marxism 35, 47 separation of social from subsistence production 48 Marx, Karl 22–3, 25, 28, 35, 42, 78 concerned with women and children in labour industry 29 material, concept of 40 Page 11 of 20
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Index maternalists 50–4 maternal mortality rate (MMR) 93, 160, 175, 177 maternal practices 51 (p.288) Maternity Benefit Act 209 McIntosh, Mary 35, 37, 39 means of subsistence 22–3, 25, 33 Medical Officer of Primary Health Care Centre 115 Menon, Sindhu 233n10 Mid-Day Meal Scheme 92n12, 93, 109, 174, 202, 202n1, 237 Mid-Day-meal workers 212 middle level training centres (MLTCs) 142, 145 mini-anganwadis 117, 197 Minimum Needs Programme 234n11 Minimum Wages Act 1948 100, 104–6, 215–16, 218 Ministry of Agriculture 117 Ministry of Education and Culture 117 Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) 115, 117 Ministry of Housing 117 Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) 13, 104, 114–15, 117, 127 Ministry of Information and Broadcasting 117 Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation 84n5 Ministry of Minority Affairs 174n4 Ministry of Rural Development 117 Ministry of Social Welfare 14, 113, 117, 119, 121, 130, 152 Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) 11, 134, 138 missing female labour 95 Mission Convergence 2002 187 Mobile-In-Service Training (MIST) 145 monopoly capitalism 23 mortality rate 93, 99 Mother and Child Tracking System 109 mother/motherhood 16, 27, 50–4, 201, 205, 249, 252 of dependent children 62, 251 early 170 forced 249 gendered notions of 252 health education for 145 nursing 124, 132 or immunization to 160 pregnant and nursing, care of 113 sick 120 single 65 substitute 8 surrogate 43 welfare programmes focus on 251 working 105 young 170 care for 112 training to 102 Page 12 of 20
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Index Mother NGOs (MNGOs) 187 Mother’s Groups 178 Multi-sectoral Development Programme (MSDP) 174, 174n4 Nandi Foundation 210, 237 National Advisory Council (NAC) 151, 224–5 National Charter for Children (2003) 112 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS) 11, 105 National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) 114, 114n3 National Commission for Women (NCW) 114 National Commission of Self Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector 234 (p.289) National Commission on Labour 84–5 National Commission on Self-employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector 103, 103n20, 104 National Committee for the Welfare of Persons 222 National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) 147 National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges 153 National Creche Fund 104–5, 135 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 89–93 National Federation of Trade Unions (NFTU) 204 National Guidelines on Infant and Young Child Feeding 109 National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD) 11, 114, 114n3, 117n6, 119, 133–4 evaluation of ICDS 147–8 National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS) 93n14 National Perspective Plan for Women 103 National Planning Committee (NPC) 100 National Plan of Action for Children 1974 112n1 1992 109, 112 National Policy for Children 111–12 National Policy for the Empowerment of Women 108 National Policy of Education (1986) 112 National Programme for Childcare 234n11 National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education 92n12, 202n1, 237 National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) 126, 205n2, 237 National Rural Livelihood Mission 237 National Sample Survey (NSS) 79 National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 85 National Small Savings Scheme 237 Neetha, N. 152 neo-liberal economy 8, 245 neo-liberal state 245–6 New Economic Policy 212 New Industrial Policy 212 NGO-ization process 158, 168, 176, 214, 243 of AWCs in UP 174 of ICDS 184–92, 240, 256 Nival Samuday NGO 189 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 7 non-manual work 24 Page 13 of 20
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Index non-market labour 52 non-workers population 86 Nutrition and Health Education (NHED) 145 Nutrition Programme for Adolescent Girls (NPAG) 206n2 oppression of women 40 organized sector India’s labour force in 84 women workers participation in 79–80 other backward classes 129 Over the Counter (OTC) drugs 206n2 paid care workers in India 152 paid domestic work 49 (p.290) paid labour/work 20, 42–50, 88, 98 casualization or informalization of women 80 skilled processes of 4–5 status of women in India 98–106 women cutback in social welfare measures 106 marginalization of women 68 role in 31 paid regular employment 23 Palriwala, Rajni 152 panchayat leaders 196, 257 party politics 212 patriarchy(ies) 21, 36, 72 capitalist class, functions to benefit for 40 division of labour 42 family system impact on 28 gender roles on development of 26 material base of 45 public 68, 251 roots of 37 and state, relationship between 37 People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Rajasthan 224 People’s Union for Democratic Rights 230 Planning Commission 11, 14, 101, 111, 146 political economy 48, 83, 246 politics of capitalist production 44–5 of production 4 of women work 26 of work 26 poor Third World women 245 poverty 80, 82, 89, 97, 99, 107, 143, 165, 200, 203, 231, 242, 258 Pre-School Education (PSE) 111 PSE kits 149 Prevention of Unfair Labour Practices Act 1971 232 private capital 10, 17, 67, 77, 81, 106–9, 246–7, 251, 253, 260 private division of labour 25–42 Page 14 of 20
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Index privatization of ICDS 184–92 production process 42–50 productive work/labour 24, 42–50, 54 professionalization 109 professionalization of household work and childcare 35 Program Evaluation Organization (PEO) 146 proletarianization of women 48, 249 public distribution system (PDS) 204 public goods 52, 54, 249 Public Health Centre (PHC) 124, 204 public policy(ies) 62–3, 106 public–private partnership (PPP) 137, 145, 158, 203 in ICDS scheme 233–40, 256 public sexual division of labour 25–42 Pulse Polio Immunization (PPI) 206n2 Rajiv Gandhi National Crèche Scheme 237 Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls 109 Rajya Sabha 220–2 recruitment of women in the modern sector 74 Reliance 210 Report by the National Commission on Labour 112 reproduction process biological facts of 44 of human capacity for labour 48 (p.291) resident welfare association (RWA) 187 retrenchment 88 Right to Education Act 209 Right to Education Act 209 Rubin, Gayle 4, 35–6, 39 Ruddick, Sara 51 SAARC Development Goals (SDGs) 80n3, 92, 92n11 Sahayikas 209 Sahyoginis 180–1 Samajik Suvidha Sangam 187 Sarva Siksha Abhiyan 210 Sathin programme, Rajasthan 236 Sathins 180–1 scheduled castes 129 self-employed workers 80, 87 self-employment 43, 79, 84, 95 self-help groups (SHGs) 108, 178–9, 211, 257–8 self-reliance 108, 122 separation process 47 service of women 22 service sector–care work economy 10 service sector economy 4, 6, 17 women share in 97 sex blind 40 Page 15 of 20
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Index political economy of 36 segregation of jobs 40 sex/gender system 36 sexism 32, 45 sexual division of labour 4–5, 26, 32, 41–3, 47, 49, 248 advantages of 64 industrialization impact on politics of 61–2 reproduction based on 44–5 sexual harassment of AWC workers 199, 233 sexuality 36, 40, 244 SHAPE India NGO 189 shiksha mitra workers 212 Shramshakti Report (1988) 103, 103n20, 112, 234 silent revolution 98 social, concept of 34, 43, 58–63 social context, role between gender and women experiences 51 social division of labour 32, 34 division of society 33 enhancement of individual 33 as habitual among the humans 43 socialist feminists 3, 28–9, 63, 70, 247–9 contributions in studying women work 29 demand for direct interaction in family 50 history of 29 non-stigmatizing welfare programme 67 politics 25 welfare programmes 67 social life 34, 60 social problem 61 social protection, concept of 108 social reproduction 48 social security, concept of 108 Social Security for Unorganized Workers by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector report (2006–7) 105 social service sector, concept of 58–63 social solidarity 60 social wage 65 social welfare, concept of 1, 58, 63, 67, 137, 157, 258–9 feminist politics 69 policy(ies) 1–2, 8–9, 17, 158, 251–2 (p.292) of poor 70, 89–97 state-sponsored 2 social workers 54, 62, 152, 169, 197, 209 social work or service 2, 54, 152, 195, 197, 237, 243, 253, 257, 260 associated with community welfare 54 less paid 4 nature of 62 Societies Registration Act 1860 122 society, concept of 34 Page 16 of 20
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Index socialist vision of 53 Socio-Economic and Educational Development Society (SEEDS) 140n14 Special Economic Zones 245 state 41 changing role of 245 and patriarchy, relationship between 37 welfare policies 17, 70, 103–4 State Social Welfare Advisory Board 115 State Social Welfare Boards 101 Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) 77 subsistence work 25, 48, 247, 249 Supreme Court of India 217–18 and AWWs decision on posts 7 legal battle with union over minimum wages 7 directive on Right to Food 173, 173n3 Order, 2001, 2004, and 2006 on ICDS expansion and universalization 224–5 Order 2006 on regularization of AWWs as civil posts 225–7 Order 2008 on AWWs selection of workers 229–32 universalization of ICDS, order on 136, 138 surplus labour 34 capacity for 23 surrogacy 43 Sustainable Development Goals 89 tertiary sector 5–6, 77–8, 97, 105 Third World cities 72, 78 Total Literacy Programmes 210 tribal development block 116–17 two-child policy 197n12 UDISHA project 133, 141–3 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 112, 114n4 unemployment 99, 251 of male and its impact on married women 73 rate for women 94 urban 88 of women and male 94 unionization 69, 81, 199–200 AWWs’ struggles through 152 in ICDS, changing phase 233–40 women entry into politics and power 207 United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) 102, 117, 140 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) 11 United Progressive Alliance (UPA) 150, 221n8 unorganized sector 5–6 Unorganized Worker’s Social Security Act 2008 209n4 unpaid domestic work 10, 27 unpaid household work 4, 34 unpaid social work 4 (p.293) unpaid work 5, 20, 42–50, 55 Page 17 of 20
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Index unproductive work/labour 16, 21, 25, 41–50, 54, 249 unskilled work/labour 5, 93n13 urban unemployment 88 urban workforce 76 USAID 118, 140–1, 144–6, 148, 154 Vedanta 210, 238 Vidya volunteers 212 Village Rehabilitation Workers (VRWs) 131–2 voluntary agency(ies) 57–8, 66, 70, 102 voluntary sector 58, 67, 70 voluntary services/work 16, 54–8, 64, 108, 124 volunteers/volunteer worker 11, 54 associated with society improvement 55 definition of 57 wage(s) definition of 216 employment 35, 93 labour of women 38 reductions 88 workers 87 Walby, Sylvia 4, 35, 37, 39–40, 65n7 welfare, concept of 63–71, 247 welfare policy(ies) 5, 50, 66, 105, 251, 254, 257 in West 69 welfare programmes 9, 102–3, 105–6, 121, 187–8, 253, 256–7 family-wage system failure 67 feminist debates on 69 focus of 251 government 197n12 pooling of resources 69 for poor women 107 welfare schemes in India 98–106 welfare state, concept of 63–71, 247 Western capitalism 73 white-collared services 97 Women Development Programme (WDP) 180, 236 women welfare cutback in expenditure 106–7 workers 66 women work/workers /labour 25, 63–71 (see also Anganwadi workers (AWWs) in India) age group, decline in 96–7 in Asian countries 73 conditions of 5 decrease in formal and skilled work 6 domestication of 36 entry and exit in industries 73 flexible characteristics of 96 fluctuations in 78 history of 3, 21, 72 Page 18 of 20
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Index housework restrictions 30 increase in paid work due to capitalism 38 linguistic practices implications on 20 migrants 6 participation in contemporary India 77–82 reproduce labour 32 reproductive work 47 special protection of 30 subordination 38 in unorganized sector 6 value and wages for 22 work, concept 20 in agricultural land 75 capitalist patriarchal economy 38–9 class and gender dimensions, combinations of 24 (p.294) definition of 85 factors of 19 feminist critiques of 21 heterogeneity of work activities and beliefs 24 history of 3 ILO on 85–6 worker(s) definition of 216 population 86 workforce 27, 29, 39, 73 in I 37 in India urban 76 women participation 79 second-class marginal members 37 working class 53, 78, 100, 247 colonies or slums 182n10, 188, 254 exploitation of 260 families 44, 189 low-wage sectors of 60 political concessions to movements 68 reproduction 44 structure of 33 women labour 33, 44 burdened with childcare 68 demands of 69 working hours 14, 42, 73, 81, 107, 158, 160–1, 163–4, 172, 179, 194, 204, 224 working women 112 necessary evil 61 regarded themselves as a social problem 61 in the unorganized sector 234 welfare 104 workmen 217–18, 231–2 work or gainful activity, concept Page 19 of 20
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Index productive 41 products of 21 unproductive 41 work participation rate (WPR) between female and male 79, 94 of rural women 80 work-pattern changes in India 6 work profile of anganwadi worker in Delhi 160–1 work schedule of anganwadi worker in Delhi 161 World Bank (WB) 7, 87, 107–8, 136, 154 assistance to ICDS projects 141–4 World Economic Forum 90 World Food Programme (WFP) 117, 140, 148 World War I and II 64, 76 yashodas 209 Young, Kate 4, 47–8 Zaretsky, Eli 32 Zetkin, Klara 29–30
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About the Author
State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis M.S. Sreerekha
Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780199468164 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199468164.001.0001
(p.295) About the Author M.S. Sreerekha
M.S. Sreerekha is a faculty member at the Global Studies Program, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA. She has also been a faculty member at the Center for Women’s Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. Sreerekha has been involved in the struggles for the rights of women, workers, and slum dwellers. She has actively engaged with issues pertaining to caste, sexuality, displacement, and civil and democratic rights. She has written on gender, tribal land rights, and development debates in Kerala, with a focused critique on the current-day ‘development’ paradigm.
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