The honorarium for working six to eight hours as cooks-cum-helpers in the midday meal programme has remained unchanged at Rs 1,000 per month since it was fixed in 2009. Adjusted for inflation, the value of Rs 1,000 now is just over Rs 540 per month 15 years ago, as reported by The Times of India.

The actual money they get depends on how much the state government is willing to enhance this. While Kerala pays Rs 12,000, in many states like Delhi, Goa and several northeastern states it remains just Rs 1,000.

The National Floor Minimum Wage, below which no state can fix its minimum wage, is Rs 5,340 per month, or about Rs 178 per day. However, since cook-cum-helpers (CCH) are not recognised as workers, the government is not bound to pay minimum wages. The honorarium of Rs 1,000 works out to be just Rs 33 per day.

With regard to the pay for workers, the government's stand has always been the same in answers to questions in the Parliament. "CCHs are honorary workers who have come forward for rendering social services," it said, reported The Times of India.

Centre-state sharing

The honorarium expenditure of Rs 1,000 is shared between the Centre and states and Union Territories (UTs) as per an approved sharing pattern of 90:10 in Northeastern states, Himalayan states (Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh) and Jammu & Kashmir, 100 per cent in UTs without legislature, and 60:40 for other states as well as Delhi and Puducherry. In effect, for most states, the Centre pays just Rs 600 towards the honorarium of each CCH.

Jantar Mantar

"With the price of everything rising, how can you possibly survive on Rs 1,600 per month? Just a kilo of daal costs Rs 150 and a kilo of onion costs Rs 80. They don't even pay it regularly. They pay after four to six months," said Kiari Dev, who has been working as a CCH for over 12 years in Sapthiahi village in Saharsa district, Bihar, reported The Times of India.

Hundreds of them from several states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Karnataka, and Himachal Pradesh, gathered at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday under the banner of the Mid-Day Meal Workers Federation of India with these demands:

- Increase in wages

- Regularisation of their work

- Social security benefits

- Extension of the scheme to all children up to Class XII

- To protest the privatisation of the scheme

To put the 15-year freeze in perspective, consider this: the salary of members of Parliament went up thrice in 12 years, from Rs 16,000 in 2006 to Rs 1 lakh plus in 2018, and that of bureaucrats went up twice. The entry-level pay for government employees went up from 2,550 to Rs 7,000 by the sixth pay commission in 2008 and then to Rs 18,000 by the seventh pay commission in 2015, as stated in a report by The Times of India.

Though the government treats CCH's work as part-time, they work almost eight hours or more.

CCH workers react

Sharing thoughts, Naseema Bano, who has been working as a CCH for over 20 years in Bihar's Supaul district, said, "Headmasters or teachers ask us to make tea for them, wash utensils, do sweeping and mopping, along with cooking for 150-200 students, and so we end up being in the school all day. If we refuse, they threaten to sack us as we are not regular employees and have no job security."

An estimated 25 lakh work as CCHs across India. "Labourers get paid Rs 300 per day, while we are not paid even Rs 100," said Jewatram Bhagora, a midday meal cook from Dungarpur in Rajasthan.

The policy to serve hot-cooked meals to school children started with a Supreme Court order in 2001. The scheme, hailed as the world's largest school feeding programme, is estimated to cover almost 12 crore children in over 11 lakh schools, stated the report by The Times of India.