Over the last year, Bachpan Manao has been working on CARRIED: Everyday Care as the First Architecture of Childhood.
The report begins with a truth we often overlook: women in India perform nearly seven times more unpaid care work than men. If counted, this invisible labour would equal 9.2% of GDP, more than the entire manufacturing sector. Yet in policy, care is still seen as maternity leave, minimum standards, or compliance checkboxes.
CARRIED challenges this framing. Through stories from factory floors, bastis, matrilineal villages, and tuition rooms doubling as safe spaces, it reveals how childhood is already scaffolded by care, informal, undervalued, and often invisible.
The report invites all of us, policymakers, funders, practitioners, and communities, to shift perspective:
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See caregivers not as incidental, but as infrastructure.
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Treat care as atmosphere, not task, the climate in which children grow.
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Invest in resilience already held by families, neighbours, and networks.
Care is not a private burden. It is a public good. Reimagining childhood begins here.
This work is part of Voices of Care, a Bachpan Manao CollabAction seeded by EkStep Foundation in 2024. It is an ongoing inquiry into the caregiving systems that shape childhood in India. By understanding what enables care to thrive, we uncover what allows children to flourish. This work is anchored at mudito.
Read more below.
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