From & To Sathish #6 - Page 171

Workers, not volunteers, says Gujarat

High Court about anganwadi workers

By Namita Bhandare, Hindustan Times, November 17, 2024

In a ruling that will have an impact across the country, the Gujarat high court has said anganwadi workers and helpers in the state are entitled to be absorbed as permanent employees with all the benefits of government employees.

Justice Nikhil S Kareil has asked the Gujarat government to prepare plans to induct these women as permanent government employees.

An estimated 2.4 million all-women anganwadi workers and helpers in India, 100,000 in Gujarat, are officially classified as ‘volunteers’ who get an ‘honorarium’ and none of the benefits of maternity leave, pension and other benefits of government employees.

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They perform a vital function in meeting and maintaining India’s nutritional and health status for pregnant and lactating women as well as children under six. For this, the court observed: “They are paid a meagre amount per month under the guise of honorarium.” He has asked the state government to treat them as permanent civil employees.

An integral part of the Integrated Child Development Scheme, anganwadi workers and helpers provide nutritional support, health education and early childhood education at anganwadi (literally, courtyard) centers. Their remuneration varies from state to state, but on average, an anganwadi worker earns about Rs 10,000 and a helper around Rs 5,500.

Full workload

“Nobody really aspires to be an anganwadi worker because the work is so much and the pay so little,” says Poonam who uses just one name and began working in an anganwadi in Delhi in 2013. “We do it because of unemployment and a lack of jobs. There are no opportunities so we take what we can.”

In Delhi, an anganwadi worker makes Rs 12,720 a month, which is less than the minimum wage mandated for unskilled workers in the capital city. Poonam’s helper who has a master’s degree, washes utensils and sweeps the floor for Rs 6,810.

Over time, with new laws such as the Right to Education in 2009 and the Food Security in 2013, workload has expanded and anganwadi workers must provide supplementary nutrition to children by cooking and serving them healthy meals and also to pregnant and lactating mothers. They ensure their immunisation is up-to-date. They must maintain records and growth and height charts. Are the women aware of various government schemes? In states like Gujarat they conduct pre-primary activities for children under six.

“We have to organise godh bharai ceremonies (baby showers) for which we gift the mother-to-be bangles, bindis and the like. We have to go to the market to buy them,” Poonam tells me while trying to explain the real workload. It is her job, she says, to educate women under her charge about immunisation and disease. During Covid, they were tasked with distributing dry rations from house to house.

In 2022, Poonam joined the Delhi State Anganwadi and Helper union who called for a strike unless their demand for better wages and recognition was met. The government invoked the Essential Services and Maintenance Act (ESMA) and Poonam was only of the 884 women whose services were terminated. The women went to court and that case is still pending.

The demand for regularisation and better wages cuts across India. In Guwahati, anganwadi workers held demonstrations in November. In Tamil Nadu, workers and helpers asked for increased salaries and also criticised the central government’s budget cuts to anganwadi allocations. In Punjab, the women held protests in October. And in Maharashtra, 20,000 women organised a prolonged sit-in at Azad Maidan in December 2023.

Miles to go

The anganwadi workers have had other court wins. In May 2022 in Gujarat itself, five Adivasi workers who had retired after 21 to 31 years of service went to court demanding gratuity. They won. The government then went into appeal. Then the women won in the Supreme Court.

The two-judge bench said all anganwadi workers and helpers are entitled to gratuity. Justices Ajay Rastogi and Abhay S Oka said the women perform “all pervasive duties” for which they are paid “very meagre renumeration and paltry benefits”.

The government says if the women are regularised and become full-time employees, it will end up with a huge wage bill.

Left unsaid is the assumption that women’s work is worth very little, even for the government. Many anganwadi workers come from marginalised backgrounds and they do this work because every small amount makes a difference to the household budget.

The Gujarat high court decision is welcome, Priyambada Sharma, a Delhi-based activist associated with the anganwadi workers’ fight for recognition, told me. But, she warned, there’s a long road ahead before the government grants the women the status of government employee. “This is a long pending demand and the court decision is a good one, but we fear the government will not implement it.”

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*AN EYE OPENER NOT JUST FOR DOCTORS BUT FOR EVERYONE*

Before 1979 no expiry date was mentioned on medicines, this practice started in USA in 1979. An article shared by Dr Mohsin Jaffer of Florida, USA_

*DO MEDICINES REALLY EXPIRE OR ARE WE TAKEN FOR A ROYAL RIDE BY PHARMA INDUSTRY.*

By Richard Altschuler

If a bottle of Tylenol, (Paracetamol) for example, mentions "Do not use after June 1998," and it is August 2002, should you take that Tylenol? Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it simply have lost its potency and do you no good?

In other words, are Drug manufacturers being honest with us when they put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of dating is just another *Drug Industry Scam*, to get us to buy new medications when the old ones that purportedly have *expired* but are still perfectly good?

These☝ are the pressing points I wanted to investigate.

I immediately scoured the medical databases & general literature for the answer to my question about drug expiration labelling.

And voila I had my answer.

*Here are the simple facts:*👇🏻

FIRST, the *Expiration date, required by law in the United States, beginning only in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of the drug -- it does not mean how long the drug is actually "good" or safe to use.*

SECOND, *medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs past their expiration date -- no matter how "expired" the drugs purportedly are*

*Studies show that expired drugs may lose only some of their potency over time*

*Even 10 years after the "expiration date," most drugs do have a good deal of their original potency*.

*One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above points about "expired drug" was done by the US Military nearly 18 years ago, according to a feature story in The Wall Street Journal (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen*

"The Military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and facing the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every 2 to 3 years. So it began a testing programme to see if it could extend the life of its inventory.

*The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ultimately covered more than 100 drugs*, both prescription drug’s and over-the-counter drug’s."

*The results showed, about 90% of the Drug’s were safe and effective “even 15 years past their expiration date...”*

In the light of these results, a former *Director of the Testing Programme, Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable for longer period.*

*The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful*.

*"Manufacturers put expiration dates for marketing, rather than scientific reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA until his retirement in 1999*

"It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover." They created this ingenious way to ‘create’ a market for them.

The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence from the programme, which is weighed towards drugs used during combat, to conclude most drugs in consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date.

However, *Joel Davis, a former FDA Expiration-Date Compliance Chief, said that* with a handful of exceptions -- notably nitroglycerin, insulin and some liquid antibiotics -- *most drugs are probably as durable as those the agency has tested for the military*.

"Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "In all likelihood, you can take a product you have at home for many years."

*When Bayer had tested 4-year-old Aspirin, it remained 100% effective*,

Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said.

But Jens Carstensen has.

*Dr. Carstensen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin's (US) Pharmacy School*, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug stability, *said, "I did a study of different Aspirins, and after 5 years, Bayer’s Aspirin was still excellent.” Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.*

Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I'm feeling from calculating *how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry milks out of unknowing consumers every year* who discard perfectly good drugs and buy new ones *ONLY* because they trust the industry.

Share with all you know....

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