Accent of Women - Victory for the Anganbadi Workers

On the show this week, we bring you a remarkable story of the victory of the Anganbadi workers in India, who after weeks of struggle, won their dispute with the government. Anganbadi is a government sponsored child-care and mother-care program which relies solely on the work of the Anganbadi workers most of which are women. The urban poor in Delhi rely heavily on these services from pre-natal care to accessing information about immunization.  Apart from looking after malnutritioned children, as well as poor and expecting mothers, the Anganbadi workers make birth and death registrations and recently they also have been assigned election duties for which they receive no additional remuneration.  These workers are paid a mere 5000 Rupees ($100AUS) per month for supposedly being volunteer workers. After some two weeks of hunger strike and much police brutality, these workers won all of their demands, when their struggle ended in victory on Thursday the 30th of July.To tell that story, one of the organisers of the dispute, Shivani Kaul from Bigul Mazdoor Dasta, joins Accent of Women