By B. Sivaraman
They provide food for
thousands of children every day in the schools. For this they receive a wage
ofRs.1250 per month; or, Rs.42 per day. Unbelievable! In this day and age! But
this is the reality of Nitish Kumar’s Bihar.
Pointing to 42% of the
country’s children affected by malnutrition, the former Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh called malnutrition in India a national shame in 2012. He did touch a raw
nerve in the nation’s conscience. But not many were aware that the same year
the share of children in Bihar suffering due to malnutrition was 80%. That was
a world record as it was higher than the undr-5 child malnutrition prevalent in
any country of the world.
Long before Manmohan’s
comment, this vexed issue had probably stirred the judiciary’s conscience as
well. After admitting a right to food PIL filed by the PUCL in April 2001, in a
landmark order on 28 November 2001, the Supreme Court directed the Centre and
all State governments to provide cooked mid-day meal to all children in the
government and government-aided schools. Though it had the limitation of not
covering the private schools, the court order clearly stated that the
“conversion cost (i.e., of converting foodgrains into cooked food) would have
to be borne by the government and not by the students or school managements”.
The court order stipulated provision of food of 300 calorific value including
12 gms of protein per day for at least a minimum of 200 days in a year.
Anticipating leakage, the court even proposed regular monitoring of food safety
and food quality. But it never occurred to the powers that be that the mid-day
meal workers—90% of the cooks are women and many of them are the main
bread-winners for their families—also have children and they too have a right
to food and it is impossible for a family to survive on Rs.42 with three meals
a day.
Normally, one would have
expected the court to take suo moto cognisance of the matter and order living
wage to these workers also as they were only carrying out its orders. But there
is a catch. The apex court has consistently denied minimum wage and statutory
benefits like ESI and PF for all ‘scheme workers’ including mid-day meal cooks
citing a bizarre logic that they were not recruited as workers but as
volunteers. One might ask whether “volunteers” are not human beings entitled
for a living income or whether right to livelihood and a living wage is
inferior to right to food. But this is the sad reality and hence there can be
no hope from the judiciary.
The injustice would be all the
more glaring considering some other realities. The same Bihar government, on 26
September2018, fixed minimum wages for 69 occupations—the notified scheduled
employments—at Rs.267 per day for unskilled workers, R.268 for semi-skilled
workers and Rs.325 for skilled workers. By all considerations, the mid-day meal
cooks would qualify as skilled workers only. They should be getting Rs.325. But
as they have been given the label of ‘volunteer’, they are getting only Rs.42.
The irony is that a sweeper in the same school would be getting Rs.257 per day
while the cook would get only Rs.42! But a cook preparing food for Nitish would
get Rs.325. Equal pay for equal work may be a lofty principle of the Indian
constitution but in practice it is observed more in breach.
In other States like Tamil
Nadu or Kerala, workers would have simply abandoned this work and nobody would
report for duty to work for Rs.42. but in Bihar these workers numbering
2,48,000,preparing food in 70,000 schools in 38 districts, continue with their
commitment to the children but have taken to the path of struggle to get decent
wages. They started an indefinite strike on 7 January 2019 demanding Rs.18,000
as minimum wage, the amount fixed by the Seventh Pay Commission to the
government employees in the lowest pay band. Their other demands sound quite
reasonable and justified. They are demanding salary for 12 months a year
instead of for 10 months as at present. They also demand payment in time every
month as usually the salary is delayed for 6 to 7 months in the case of many
workers. Other demands are more modest. They are demanding the status of
government employees with statutory benefits like ESI, PF and maternity
benefits, fixed work and fixed working hours, two sets of dress per year,
causal leave, Rs.3000 pension and an appointment letter!Above all, they are
pleading for a place to sit and toilet facilities.
On 17 January 2019, while
Nitish Kumar was addressing a public meeting, some striking mid-day meal
workers went there and from the audience started waving rotis saying, “We serve
them food but we don’t get it ourselves!”
The angry Nitish Kumar
retorted: “This is not the way to protest, disturbing a Chief Minister’s
programme. If it is entirely within my command, I would have disbanded this
whole scheme and would have gone for direct transfer of money to
students’accounts. They can eat at home and come. But what to do? This is a
central scheme!” Such was the callous and arrogant response from a Chief
Minister who otherwise goes scrounging for money from the Centre. He said, “The
Centre is giving only Rs.1000 and I am already giving Rs.250. Not a single
rupee more!”
Not long ago the national
media lionised Nitish as a ‘great moderniser’ of Bihar. But you just scratch
him and he sounds like a lord getting the work done through chattel slaves! The
wage economics that if the wages go up the consumption would also rise and that
would be good for the local economy of Bihar is beyond his grasp.
Bihar however is not alone in
doling out such miserly sweatshop allowances. Chhattisgarh pays Rs.1200 to its
mid-day meal workers, West Bengal Rs.1500, Odisha Rs.1000, Uttar Pradesh
Rs.1000, Telangana Rs.1200, Tamil Nadu Rs.6000–7500 (for helper and cook),
Karnataka Rs.2600, Pondicherry Rs.9000, Punjab Rs.1700, Haryana Rs.2500, and
Kerala Rs.6000.
This is a bigger national
shame! (IPA Service)
The post Starvation Wages For Mid-Day Meal Workers appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
