An Ongoing Battle for Rights: The Case of Anganwadi Workers with Special Reference to Maharashtra

Suchita Krishnaprasad and Karan Peer
Additional contact information
Suchita Krishnaprasad: Mumbai University
Karan Peer: Student of MA in Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Chapter Chapter 14 in Globalization, Labour Market Institutions, Processes and Policies in India, 2019, pp 341-367 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Several reasons make the anganwadi workers’ movement rather unique. The most distinctive challenge of this ‘all-women’ workforce, spread across the country, is the need to be recognized as ‘workers’, to start with! As ‘volunteers’ they are offered an ‘honorarium’, which few would agree is a decent return for the functions they carry out. This chapter is an attempt to profile the precarities that characterize the anganwadi workers, narrate the process of organizing them, describe their ongoing struggle including strikes and legal battles to be considered as being ‘workers’ and achieve other entitlements and describe the varied challenges that confront them. The entire story is also reminiscent of the way the role of women is perceived: women must look after themselves and nurture others with a total sense of commitment but do so completely unconditionally! Can this workers’ movement that has dared to dream beyond the limited ‘bread-and-butter’ goal sustain itself through these challenges? Are there any lessons to learn for other practitioners in the workers’ movement from this experience? These are some of the questions addressed in this chapter.

Keywords: ICDS; Anganwadi; Worker; Volunteer; Sevika; Strike; Court cases; Bhaubeej; MESMA; PPP; CSR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-981-13-7111-0_14

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811371110

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-7111-0_14

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().