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“We realised that the struggles these women have gone through are no less than than the legend of Hirkani – the mother who climbed down Raigad Fort in the 1600s to reach her child whom she had left at home. These women have also gone through lots of hardships to ensure that the children under their care are vaccinated,that their mothers get nutritious food and that they sustain a reasonably high standard of living. But their stories never get told. Most of these women began their work as a way to get out of their houses and reach out to people from family backgrounds that was akin to their own,” says Pawar. The book is only about the urban angangawdi scenario in Pune,but Pawar states that “books also need to be written on rural and tribal anganwadis,as the stories they will have will be completely different.”

Sixty-year-old Ashalata Kamble has been running an anganwadi in Pune for the last 34 years. She feels that slums in the city have changed a lot in terms of living conditions,when compared to what she saw when she began. “Earlier,most slum settlements in Yerawada or Parvati – two places where I focused my work at – did not have bathrooms,water supply or good approach roads. Today,at least these families understand that lack of hygiene will lead to health problems and they’re ready to raise demands for these basic facilities from the state government,” she says. In 1978,Kamble had begun work with 22 other women near the Dandekar Pul slums. Today,there are more than two lakh anganwadi workers in the entire state. Anganwadi workers’ areas come under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) funded by the central and state government.

For Kamble,the biggest challenge was to get women to talk to them when they knocked on their doors for various surveys. “We knew they were inside the house,but they refused to open the doors. They did not want to talk about family planning,reproductive health or even immunisation programmes. They would rather go to a tantrik (witch doctor) than to a medical doctor. But today,many pregnant women and young mothers approach us with questions and problems on their own,” says Kamble.