By Karmrath News Desk
Chhattisgarh: For more than three weeks, thousands of midday meal cooks, nearly 95 per cent of them women and many from tribal communities, from government schools across Chhattisgarh have been protesting indefinitely at a ground in New Raipur. The protest began in late December 2025 with the core demand that their daily wages, fixed at Rs 66, be increased to at least Rs 340 per day to reflect the cost of living.
The protest site, known as Naya Dharana Stal at Tuta in Raipur, has been occupied by cooks who live in tents and rotate in groups. Organisers say each group stays about three days before others replace them, and on any given day about 6000-7000 cooks are present at the site, The Indian Express reported.
The cooks are organised under a body called the Chhattisgarh School Madhyanbhojan Rasoiya Sanyukta Sangh. Its secretary, Meghraj Baghel (45), a resident of Kondagaon district in the Bastar region, described the long history of their labour and their grievances. Baghel said, “I have been working as a midday meal cook for the last 30 years. It has become difficult to survive. I have taken loans worth Rs 90,000 to complete my children’s studies. When I started off back in 1995, we used to get Rs 15 per day, and now we are stuck at Rs 66 per day. This is an injustice.”
Baghel explained that after their first large protest in 2003–2004, wages were eventually raised to Rs 33 per day and later, with subsequent increases in 2019 and 2023, reached the current Rs 66 per day, equivalent to about Rs 2,000 per month at present rates. He said the cooks’ main demand is to “be paid Rs 11,400 per month or at least Rs 340 per day.”
Baghel also highlighted the precarious nature of their work, saying, “Another issue is if the number of children in a school go down, then they terminate our service… This should not happen.”
The protest has brought forward multiple personal accounts of hardship. Sukrita Chavan (40), from Rajnandgaon district, said, “I worked on the day my daughter died in 2024. We have many problems, but government is unable to listen.” Chavan said she has been working since 2003 and has gone without wages since October 2025. She described her daily tasks, “The government thinks we have to work for just two hours, but we start at 10 am by washing and cleaning the rice. After cooking dal, rice, sabzi, papad and achar, we also have to help in serving and then washing the utensils. The work ends by 3 pm. If there is a school function, then we work till 4 pm.”
Chavan also noted changes in student numbers over time, “In 2013, I used to cook alone for 170 children, and now I cook for 60 children.”
Another protester, Pankaj Pramanik from Kanker, said, “We are like bonded labourers. During any election, we are made to cook. We do not get paid for that.” He added, “After Covid, they stopped paying us for the last 15 days of June, saying they get money from the central government only for 10 months and these 15 days get adjusted as we get offs on school holidays.” He described daily hardship, “We avoid buying good clothes. We avoid eating tomatoes. We see, but we do not buy. Everything is becoming costly for us.”
Shakuntala Sen from Dhamtari spoke about the impact on her family, saying, “My two children, aged 19 and 20, have dropped out of college as I do not have the money to further educate them. My husband is a farmer.”
Shipra Tarafdar from Kanker said the cooks are “not treated with respect like anganwadi workers and Mitanians, who are honoured for their work.”
Separate reporting confirms that almost 95 per cent of the cooks at the protest are women, and many come from rural and tribal areas. They have emphasised the difficulty of surviving on the current rate of Rs 66 per day and spoken publicly about how inflation and living costs have made their situation harder.
According to organisers, about 87,000 cooks work across Chhattisgarh under the midday meal scheme, and the strike has disrupted meal services in many schools. They say their protest preparation includes staying outdoors in cold conditions and rotating shifts among different groups of cooks.
Requests for substantive comments from senior officials in the Chhattisgarh education and revenue departments were not answered at the time of reporting. A government source, however, told the Indian Express that there is a proposal to increase wages by Rs 1,000 per month, which would make total monthly wages around Rs 3,000, but no final decision had been taken.
As of mid-January 2026, the protest has continued for over three weeks with no agreement on wage revision, and cooks have stated they will continue the strike until their demands are addressed.