State Without Honour: Women Workers in India's Anganwadis

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This book explores the political economy of women's work in India and its relationship to the Indian state. The author argues that the withdrawal of state support under globalization, coinciding with the demand for expansion of state welfare schemes, is progressively weakening the social-service sector in the country. More and more women, particularly from the lower social strata, are employed in new social welfare schemes where the form of work is defined as voluntary social service. Through a case study of honorary women workers in anganwadis of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, this book sheds light on the contemporary understanding of the status of women within these welfare policies.

State Without Honour discusses the history and politics of women's work and the use of women's less-paid labour in state- sponsored social welfare schemes in India. It contributes a deeper understanding around the process of the expansion of scheme-based social welfare projects in contemporary India as a symbol of further marginalization and exploitation of its women workers. It explains how the entry of more women workers into state social welfare projects also coincides with and contributes to further intrusion of private capital into the local economy with the direct support of state-sponsored social welfare schemes. It helps to see the Indian state shape itself into the role of a non- state actor through its own performance or lack of it.

Politics of work as a subject of consistent debate and change demands further investigation and thinking. Within each such inquiry, it is desirable to go back to its core debates with a rethinking of its basic definitions. These include some fundamental issues around what constitutes work, women's work, and its relationship with the political economy of the state. This book is an attempt towards a fresh understanding of the political economy of women's work in India and its relationship with the Indian state. In the process, the study critically analyses the concept of social welfare in the Indian context through a case study of women honorary workers and sees how women figure in the state's social welfare policies, establishing a link between the politics around women's work and social welfare policies. For this purpose, the study examines the case of anganwadi workers¹ (AWWs) of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in India.

The subject of the case study, the ICDS scheme in India, and the AWW have a history of more than three decades. In India, the AWWs constitute only women. An anganwadi woman worker gets an honorarium and is considered an honorary worker, which implies that her work is considered honorary or in some ways a partially voluntary work, as discussed in detail in the forthcoming chapters.