Bharat Dogra asserts that the government does not walk the talk when it comes to empowering
poor women. He cites the relentless exploitation of mid-day meal cooks, most of whom are women
who are not only grossly underpaid, but also asked to do other menial work.
Government authorities frequently talk about the urgent need to empower women, especially those in India`s hinterland. However, they turn a Nelson` eye to the continual exploitation within the government system of over two million mid-day cooks. Most of these are women from poor households. Many are single; several widows with no option but to suffer these exploitative conditions.
The exploitation of the mid-meal cooks is not unknown to authorities as their problems have been highlighted in the national dailies many times. A report in the Tribune in 2019 had stated that about 44,000 mid-day meal cooks in Punjab had demanded an increment in their wages from Rs 1700 to Rs 3000 per month (even the increased amount would have been much below the minimum legal wage, but instead they got an order asking them to also clean the utensils in which children eat their meals. In December 2022, another report from Uttar Pradesh stated that nearly 377,000 mid-day meal cooks in the state had not received their wages for the over six months after their wages were raised from Rs 1500 to Rs 2000.
The Mid-Day Meal Scheme has been regarded as an important nutrition scheme of India. Despite the lip-sympathy by the government, its allocations have been declining in real terms, after accounting for inflationary impact, and the cooks are exploited.
Some time back, dozens of teachers, mid-day meal cooks and members of school management committees in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar spoke in one voice that mid-day meal cooks are denied fair wages, and even the highly inadequate wages are not paid in time.
At present the wage of a mid-day meal cook in vast areas of the country is way below the legal minimum wage for the area. There should be a campaign to raise the wages. An average MDM worker cooks for 50 to 100 children in a day. Apart from cooking and serving meals for children the big cooking vessels have to be washed and kitchen cleaned before she leaves for home. In the morning while cleaning kitchen sometimes, she has to lend a hand in other cleaning work also. So, it is more or less a full-time job of great responsibility, and a wage which is as low as about Rs 70 to Rs 100 per day is clearly unjust.
Another issue is in most states mid-day meal cooks are denied wages during summer vacations when schools are closed. This means they are paid for only 10 months of a year. Recently this aspect was highlighted by a union of mid-day meal workers in Himachal Pradesh which also alleged that under the pretext of declining number of students in some government schools, several mid-day meal cooks are being retrenched.
In many places safe and clean cooking conditions are not provided; as a result, there are chances of food contamination. Nearly 979 food poisoning cases were reported in mid-day meals in 2022 from across the country while 9646 such cases were reported in the last 13 years.
Keeping in view the cooks have almost a full working day job they should get the legal minimum wage. There should be adequate provision in the budget for this. As an immediate step, at least the existing wage should be doubled.