People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No. 29
July 21, 2013
|
Vol. XXXVII
No. 29 July 21, 2013 |
In
Defence of the ICDS Six
Lakh Anganwadi Employees Observe Black Day A R
Sindhu ON July
10, 2013, nearly six lakh anganwadi workers and helpers
observed ‘Black Day’ at
the call of the All India Federation of Anganwadi Workers
and Helpers (AIFAWH).
More than two lakh anganwadi workers and helpers came out
on the streets
wearing black dress, carrying black flags, banners etc,
against the move to
privatise the services of ICDS in the ‘ICDS Mission’,
demanding the
implementation of the recommendations of the 45th Indian
Labour Conference for
recognition as workers, minimum wage and pension and
freedom of association.
They held rallies, demonstrations and dharna at district
headquarters. In many
states, in spite of the heavy downpour, they came with
black umbrellas with the
demands written on them.
Many had
blackened the face and burned the effigy of the minister
for women and child
development, Krishna Tirath for her double-talk and
anti-worker policies. AGAINST
PRIVATISATION OF ICDS The
alarming levels of child malnutrition in India have been
in the headlines for
quite a long
time, but much more
recently, with so many studies coming out, some with
‘alternative strategies’
to address it, many have a very different purpose.
Releasing one such study,
less than a year ago, the prime minister himself has said
that the alarming
levels of child malnutrition in India, which is home to
half of the
malnourished children in the world, is “a national shame”
and so “we must think
beyond ICDS” to address it. The
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme is the
biggest of its kind
in the world and is unique in providing various services
for the overall
development of children under six years. It covers 7.5
crore children and 1.7
core pregnant and lactating mothers providing
supplementary nutrition,
pre-school education, healthcare and referral services.
The NDA and UPA
governments were trying to privatise this scheme as per
World Bank directives,
trying to introduce ready-to-eat food, handing over to
NGOs etc., but could not
be successful due to the resistance by the unions and the
people. Now in
a revised attempt, the UPA-2 government, with the active
involvement of the
World Bank (which is running a ‘ICDS Project IV’ since
2007, and has recently
provided a loan to the government of DETRIMENTAL
PROPOSALS
Why a Change
in focus: In the ICDS
Mission, the focus will be shifted
from the supplementary nutrition to ‘Information,
Education and Communication
(IEC). Inadequate
allocation for infrastructure:
The recent CAG report on ICDS
had shown the poor infrastructure of the ICDS, many
anganwadi centres without
building, drinking water facilities etc. In the In the
name of community participation, workers are asked to
collect materials from
the community for the anganwadi centre. This is reported
from Himachal Pradesh
and Mandatory
privatisation: In the ‘ Role of
the Corporate NGOs: Many NGOs
like ISKCON and Naandi
Foundation, who started supply for ICDS and Mid Day Meal
Scheme a few years
back, have made assets worth hundreds of crores by now.
The corporate houses,
in the name of corporate social responsibility, are bound
to spend two percent
of their profit for social causes. They float their own
NGOs, get government
fund for running schemes such as ICDS, simultaneously show
their money also
going into the NGO’s account, complete the responsibility,
also get tax
concessions and other benefits in the name of ‘social
cause’, get foreign fund
as well for feeding ‘India’s hungry children’! Thus the
UPA government helps
the corporates to implement ‘apna paisa, apne haath’!(
your money in your
hands)! Many of these corporate NGOs have the bureaucrats,
politicians or wives
of bureaucrats and politicians on their director boards.
The recent scam in Apart
from this, it is helping the corporates to gain public
sympathy and support,
which may help to reduce protests they have to face in
their moves to
appropriate public and natural resources. The Vedanta
company is running
anganwadi centres in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, in the
mining areas, and
according to some media stories, the adivasis in the
‘Niyamgiri’ feels that
such a good company which feeds our children cannot do
anything bad! Thus, this
can help to minimise the protest from the local tribal
population in acquiring
forest land for mining. Nutrition
business: The move to
introduce ready-to-eat food in the
centres in place of the freshly cooked locally available
food, had started at
the time of UPA-1, at the initiative of the global NGO,
GAIN, which has the directors
of food giants like Cargil on its board of directors. But
it could not be
successful due to the resistance by the trade unions and
nutritional experts.
The move is so strong even now that many such NGOs are
still ‘working hard to
solve Privatise
pre-school education: In the name
of strengthening the pre-school
component and Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE),
the ICDS Mission has
provisions to allocate the ICDS funds to the existing
private pre-primary
schools! It is directed that the financial allocations be
made to the existing
private nursery schools with of course ‘flexibility’ in
norms of spending. In a
policy regime where education has become a profit making
industry, where
corporate houses own most of the new generation
educational institutions
including the nursery schools, this is a direct move to
siphon off public money
to the corporate accounts. This must be fought tooth and
nail. Poor
working conditions of the employees:
Although the Mission has
increased the working hours and the stipulated work of the
anganwadi workers
and helpers, -the timing of the anganwadi centres is
increased to six hours and
more, five percent centres to be converted into
anganwadi-cum crèches. But
there is no increase in the remuneration of the workers
and helpers. Now
provision is made for all the workers and helpers above 65
years to be retired.
But there is no mention of any retirement benefits for
them. Apart
from this, in the ‘ The
AIFAWH is determined to fight the government’s move to
dismantle the ICDS,
fight the efforts for converting it from a service to the
poor to a profit making
industry, as it has done with the health and education
sectors, but through the
back door. RECOMMENDATIONS
OF THE
45th ILC Adding
insult to the injury, in the recently held 45th Indian
Labour Conference, where
the working conditions of the workers working in various
government schemes,
including the anganwadi workers and helpers were
discussed, the ministry of
women and child development opposed the proposals of the
ILC for their
recognition as workers, not volunteers, for paying them
minimum wages and
social security including pension. Krishna Tirath, WCD
minister who recently
appeared in news headlines for declaring a proposal for
“recognising the
women’s housework by paying salary to housewives”, when it
came to the turn of
recognising the women’s unpaid labour in these government
schemes, in a most
shameful manner opposed the ILC recommendations of
recognising the valuable
services of its own employees, who subsidise the
government by nearly 27,000
crore rupees per year. Despite
the repeated demand by
the federations of anganwadi workers of the central trade
unions, the
government is neither ready to discuss with the unions the
changes it is
proposing to make in the scheme; nor has it taken into
account the opinions of
the organisations of beneficiaries like that of women,
peasants and
agricultural workers. Instead, in the name of discussion
with the ‘stake
holders’, the government is holding discussion with NGOs
and agencies like CARE
and USAID. WIDE CAMPAIGN
The
AIFAWH working committee in its meeting held
in March 2013, thoroughly discussed the ICDS Mission
documents and the
experiences in the implementation in various states and
decided to take up
nationwide campaign and struggles against the moves to
dismantle the ICDS and
observe July 10 anganwadi demands day, as ‘Black day’. It
has been decided to
reach each and every anganwadi worker and helper and
educate them on the ICDS
Mission, in the first phase. With a membership above five
lakh, ten lakh
leaflets on the ICDS Mission were distributed all over the
country in
vernacular languages among the anganwadi workers and
helpers. A booklet on the
details of the ICDS Mission was prepared and is being
circulated among the
activists at the grass root level. Fifty thousand booklets
in Hindi are already
distributed in the Hindi speaking states. TREMENDOUS
RESPONSE Efforts are made by the government to
disrupt the struggle
in many ways. The WCD minister, on July 4, 2013, repeated
the announcement of
the increase which was meant for only anganwadi workers of
mini anganwadi
centres and was already announced as early in November
2012. This appeared as
an increase to all workers and was meant to confuse the
workers and the public.
This is also against the demand of the mini anganwadi
workers who will now get
rupees 750 less than the regular worker, that too with
effect from April 1,
2013, in place of April 1, 2011. In many
parts of the country, the administration and the police
tried to sabotage the
programme by issuing memos to anganwadi workers and
helpers, denying permission
etc. But,
the campaign and the struggle got tremendous response from
the anganwadi
workers and helpers. The ‘Black Day’ was observed in
Andhra Pradesh, Assam,
Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal
Pradesh, Jharkhand,
Jammu&Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Punjab, Rajasthan,
Tamilnadu, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. The programme could
not be held in
Uttarakhand due to the relief work, in In many
places, there was police lathicharge. In Andhra Pradesh,
nearly five thousand
were arrested in different districts. In Karnataka, in
three places there was
lathi charge and arrest. In Tapan
Sen, general secretary, CITU inaugurated the dharna held
at ITO, AIFAWH
decided to intensify the struggle to save ICDS along with
the mass
organisations of the beneficiaries like AIDWA, AIAWU and
AIKS.
