BusinessWire India
New Delhi [India], October 29: Today at the Annual Childcare Champion Awards championed by FORCES (Forum for Creches and Childcare Services) Actress, Richa Chadha joined hands to celebrate the International Day of Care & Support and facilitated 14 exceptional childcare champions, celebrating their frontline dedication to early childhood development. These care workers come from different States of India and have dedicated their life to providing care to young children.
The award ceremony served as a powerful platform to spotlight the invaluable yet historically undervalued contributions of India’s care workforce. Alongside the felicitations, key policymakers, economists, and civil society leaders examined the critical gaps in India’s care skilling landscape and debated strategic pathways to dramatically scale up and professionalize quality childcare infrastructure across the country.
Speaking at the felicitation ceremony Actress Richa Chadha said, “This International Day of Care and Support, I want to celebrate the women who make care possible every day: our Anganwadi workers, ASHA workers and childcare workers. Care is skilled work. It deserves recognition, dignity and fair compensation.”
Other dignitaries who joined the ceremony were:
Dr. M Srinivas, Member, Niti Ayog, who joined the evening, said, “Niti Ayog is promoting a program that Promotes Entrepreneurship ("CAREpreneurs") Supporting innovative workforce models that blend care competencies with business and management training to foster women-led micro-enterprises and community-based care delivery. This is a model that can help form more care circles and build women entrepreneurship.”
Justice Gita Mittal (retd) said, “Before we promise return on skilling, we need to link qualifications to decent work by paying care workers skilled labour wages as a baseline, not a bonus.”
Shoko Ishikawa, Country Representative of The United Nations Women in India, said, “Care work across childcare, eldercare and disability care is skilled and essential work. India's commitment to training 1.5 lakh multi-skilled caregivers presents an important opportunity to strengthen the care workforce. Building on NITI Aayog's recommendations, we need to connect standardised qualifications, practical training and certification with decent employment, social protection and career progression across childcare, eldercare and disability care.”
The Urgent Need to Scale Childcare in India
As highlighted in recent economic evaluations, India’s expanding care needs present both a massive national investment opportunity and an urgent workforce challenge. With approximately 350 million children below the age of 14 and rapidly evolving urban family structures, India is estimated to require 31 to 38 million formal care workers by 2050, including 15 to 22 million dedicated strictly to childcare.
As India looks toward 2050, investing in professionalized childcare skilling is not merely an educational or social welfare intervention, it is foundational economic infrastructure capable of unlocking millions of decent jobs for women and securing the future capabilities of the nation's children.
*(source Paper from Economic Advisory Council to the PM)
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