Anganwadi as a social reproduction site: Dalit feminist resistance to gender, caste and class

Drawing on ethnographic data about the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a welfare programme for children in Tamil Nadu, India, this article addresses the question: How do spaces providing social reproduction labour, embedded in social relations of gender, caste and class, become sites of Dalit feminist resistance? The article discusses how the Anganwadi became a site of Dalit feminist resistance where gendered and casteist norms were contested vis-à-vis the state, community or sometimes among workers themselves. It describes three axes along which workers contested their exploitation—labour, gender and caste. First, as a labour movement, Anganwadi workers highlighted how the state expanded the job responsibilities of workers without adequate compensation and engaged in gendered exploitation of their care work. Second, Dalit union leaders used their influence to challenge casteism among workers. Dalit women also approached the courts to implement a caste-based affirmative action policy in worker recruitment. Finally, we see how Anganwadi workers supported each other to resist gendered norms around widowhood in rural Tamil Nadu. Theoretically, the article brings social reproduction theory in conversation with Dalit feminist theory to examine the Anganwadi as a site where devaluation of care labour and caste bias coexists with workers’ resistance to such exploitation and discrimination.