One of the dirty secrets of Indian education is that early childhood care and education (ECCE) has received scant attention despite the feeble effort made by the Central government’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme introduced in 1975. Forty two years after the ICDS programme was initiated, only 84 million of the country’s 164 million children in the 0-5 age group are accommodated in the country’s 1.34 million anganwadi centres (AWCs). And the dirty secret of AWCs is not only that the Centre’s per-child provision (Rs.1,814 per year) is pathetic, but that AWC employees are paid below minimum wages. Since ICDS is a Central government scheme, state governments contribute 40 percent of the cost of running AWCs countrywide. 

On March 20, an estimated 10,000 AWC workers and helpers — the majority of them women — employed in Karnataka’s 64,558 AWCs staged a four-day round-the-clock sit-down strike near the Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah’s sprawling official residence. Their demand was a modest increase in monthly salaries to place them on a par with AWC workers and helpers in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Goa where they are paid Rs.10-14,000 per month. Against this, AWC workers and helpers in Karnataka receive Rs.7,000 and Rs.3,500 respectively.

On the first day of the strike, chief minister Siddaramaiah who is also finance minister, expressed his inability to accede to their request stating that in the Union Budget 2016-17, the Central government had slashed its ICDS annual outlay and imposed an unreasonable burden on state governments. However, this argument is rejected by representatives of the Karnataka Rajya Anganwadi Naukarara Sangha (KRANS, estb. 1994), the AWC workers’ union, who (correctly) point out that the Centre’s ICDS outlay was restored in 2017-18 (Rs.20,755 crore) cf. Rs.16,580 crore in 2016-17. 

Despite this, in the state government’s 2017-18 Budget presented on March 15, Siddaramaiah provided only a token increase of Rs.1,000 for AWC workers and Rs.500 for helpers taking their monthly remuneration to Rs.7,000 and Rs.3,500 respectively. “Most of us have been working in AWCs for over 20 years, attending to the nutrition and daily care requirements of lactating mothers and youngest children, while also providing early childhood education and mid-day meals. In addition, we are also compelled to work on various government schemes. Each AWC has only one worker and helper and Karnataka’s 125,000 anganwadi workers and helpers have to care for 5.5 million children across the state. Our demand for Rs.10,000 per month for AWC workers and Rs.7,500 for helpers is not unreasonable,” says S. Varalakshmi, who has served with AWCs across Karnataka since 1994 and is president of KRANS since 2015. 

Informed monitors of Karnataka’s education scene are wholly sympathetic to the demands of KRANS and AWC workers and helpers. Most liberals express shock and dismay that the remuneration of AWC personnel who slave the whole day is less than the officialy notified minimum wage of the state, and suffers in comparison with the wages of household workers in Bangalore. Therefore your editors requested Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (estb. 1974) and an economist by training, to suggest ways and means to squeeze the Karnataka state budget 2017-18 to mobilise the additional Rs.585 crore required to fulfil the modest demand of KRANS. 

According to Seetharamu, the state government’s total revenue expenditure of Rs.1.44 lakh crore comprises allocations under the heads of general and fiscal and admin services (Rs.38,000 crore); social services (Rs.55,000 crore — including Rs.20,000 crore for education); economic services (Rs.43,000 crore) and grants-in-aid (Rs.7,000 crore). By minimal tightening and cutting wasteful expenditure it is possible to easily save Rs.282 crore under general services, Rs.270 crore under social services and Rs.20 crore under economic services. “I have carefully studied the Karnataka state budget and in my opinion the small sum of Rs.585 crore — a mere 0.36 percent of the total budget — can easily be provided for AWC workers and helpers,” says Seetharamu. 

On March 23 after staging a round-the-clock sit-down protest in Bangalore, the 10,000 AWC workers and helpers called off their agitation upon receiving an assurance that their demand for wage parity with their counterparts in neighbouring states will be reconsidered by the chief minister before April 10. With the hitherto mild AWC employees having got the bit between their teeth, the chief minister who has the unenviable job of leading the Congress into a legislative election next year, had better come up with a positive reply before D-day.

Odeal D’Souza (Bangalore)