The ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala is entering its third week. We are appalled by the CPI(M)-led government’s apathy and the disgusting ignorance of the CPI(M)’s own history of trade unionism displayed by their spokespersons in the media. Maybe the forgetfulness of history is deliberate, because the CPI(M) can no longer continue to nurture even minimally the ‘party of the poor’ image that it built in the middle decades of the twentieth century. While the ASHA workers were on strike in front of the State Secretariat and an ASHA workers’ mass meet called by the striking association drew a very large number of such workers to the capital city, the government was busy holding an investors’ meet. Such a government cannot be expected to be attentive to the needs and rights of the workers, perhaps.
However, one can hardly forget that the effort to pitch Kerala as the ideal investor’s destination to global capital continues to rest on the region’s image as a place where social development has arrived permanently — where there is a healthy, educated, plentiful workforce accustomed to the rhythms of capitalist work and docile too. Now, a large part of this story is possible only and only because underpaid and unrecognized social development workers — including the ASHAs — have toiled at the grass roots day and night. Indeed, the second Pinarayi Vijayan government was actually facilitated not just by the effective PR they did about Covid management — indeed, that very PR was made possible by the incessant labours of women ‘volunteers’ and ‘community activists’ at the bottom, of which the ASHA workers are a prominent group.
Yet the government continues to dismiss their struggle as ‘unnecessary’ and ‘politically motivated’. Both revolve around the demand for higher remuneration, commensurate with the enormous hike in the ASHA workers’ workloads over the years. The judgment of it being ‘unnecessary’ did not come after any investigation into the demands of the workers. Actually, a closer look at the demands would reveal that the workers are trying to highlight, also, the extent to which the support system that they are to rely on lies in tatters now. The policy documents pertaining to the ASHA in 2005-7 lays considerable emphasis on this system; the need for timely payment of honoraria and incentives is also reiterated in them. The ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala tries desperately to tell the government that both these are seriously compromised. While workloads have skyrocketed, the panchayat member, the JPHN, the palliative care nurse, the Kudumbashree health volunteers and others –expected to be nodes in the ASHA’s support system — either behave like punitive authorities, or are effectively absent. The ASHA’s are expected to report pregnant women before the end of their first trimesters, but as many of the striking workers pointed out, women are often reluctant to report till later (“How are we to go asking the bride as soon as she arrives if she is pregnant?” One of them asked indignantly. “We do tell them to let us know, but often many don’t!”); the ASHA has to suffer a cut in her remuneration for this. As for the Kudumbashree SHG health volunteers, they exist only on paper, very often.
Instead of probing these complaints to correct the malaise infecting the system, the government chose to blame the workers for making ‘unreasonable’ demands. The unkindest cut of all, as many of them remarked, was the claim that they were making ‘unnecessary fuss’ under pressure from ‘vested interests’. These women all partake in the state-promoted image of Kerala as the land of social development; they consider themselves beneficiaries of the state-centred ‘women’s empowerment’ discourse in Kerala of the 1990s. These are the educated women of the 1980s and 90s (many of them are degree-holders) whose individuated selves sought to escape narrow domestic and caste/community spaces by entering the governmental community — in a context in which women’s unemployment remained persistently high over many decades. It is these women who chose to engage in poorly-paid/unpaid community work when faced with the prospect of staying at home after education — women who chose to stay true to the call of the larger social world — who are being insulted as mere puppets of such organizations as the SUCI by the authorities here.
Indeed, even if this were true, is not the government pathetically using a fallacious argument? Even if the strike is inspired by an external force, how does that render the observations and demands of the workers invalid? The workers have publicly rejected the news that the Congress has ‘taken over’ their strike; they have also told visiting BJP leaders, quite respectfully, that true commitment is revealed when authorities put their money where their mouth is.
The ASHA workers claim that their monthly honorarium is Rs 7000 or less. This is lower than the monthly wage of urban female domestic workers, according to some recent research in two cities in Kerala. Anyway, they have not been paid in three months. It is less than the MNREGS wages and those obtained by the female waste-collectors of the Haritha Karma Sena groups (some of who have reportedly started receiving the minimum of Rs 10,000 a month). The ASHA workers also reportedly suffer social stigma in some parts of Kerala, even as their service is considered invaluable by all.
The government response to these has been two-fold: the first, a blatant lie, that the ASHA’s average income is Rs 13,200, which all the workers deny vociferously. Even if it were true, they point out, rarely are they paid before the fifth of the month (beyond that date, they are forced to borrow to pay for even essentials, and loaded with paying interest on the loans). The second response is to point to other states — that Kerala pays higher than other parts. This facile comparison is not entirely true; in any case, it does not work, because, as the workers point out, the cost of essentials is very high in Kerala compared with other states. Familial aspirations and social development expectations in Malayali society are extraordinarily high. Also, as researchers and feminist activists point out, the work burdens of the Malayali ASHA is much higher than anywhere else in the country. ASHAs who quit are hardly replaced, the workers say, and the burdens are merely transferred to other ASHAs without any increase in the honorarium. The Kerala government’s ever-growing PR effort to refurbish the state’s image as the national leader in public health initiatives apparently rests on the backs of these severely-overworked, underpaid — and undervalued — women workers.
The ASHA workers’ struggle in Kerala is of historical importance. Initiatives that imposed gendered burdens of community work for social development have been known here since the mid-twentieth century. It was the political Left that mobilised these women to claim worker-status and the dignity and justice that follows it. In the 1980s, ICDS workers were mobilised by such leaders of the CPI(M) as Susheela Gopalan — the fruits of which they enjoy to this date. Yet the emergent social development narrative of the Kerala Model paid scant attention to the contributions of public social development women workers even as it highlighted the role of enlightened housewives. And the coming of neoliberal governance was to reinforce volunteerism and ‘activist work’ among women, and soon this was to become commonsense: such women were not to be thought of as workers. Ironically enough, at a time where the high-pitched calls for ‘women’s empowerment’ nearly left us all politically deaf, women’s social development work was being reduced to unpaid or underpaid volunteerism. For educated women who sought exit from stifling domestic confines, even this bad deal looked like a good one.
Yet the law of diminishing returns does work here, especially as the prospect of a decent life becomes more and more difficult in the context of rising costs of education, health care, and even basic necessities. A good share of the ASHAs are dalit-bahujan; many are single mothers, widows; most of them hail from the lower middle-class; many of them lack housing and own few other assets. So a breaking-point was inevitable. The strike seems to show that it has arrived.
The ASHA workers’ strike can win, we feel, only if it receives support from all over the country, from women’s and workers’ groups and individuals.
Therefore we call upon individuals, workers’ organisations, and women’s groups and organisations, and also Malayalis from around the world who recognize the significance of their work in making Kerala liveable in times of pandemics, epidemics, and climate change, to make open appeals to the government of Kerala to take the ASHA workers’ strike sympathetically and seriously. Your appeals can be in any form, but an open, friendly letter to the Kerala Chief Minister which requests him to uphold Kerala’s reputation as a the champion of women’s rights and workers’ well-being. We will post it in Kafila and also other places. It will help us keep the campaign going, with the letter and its Malayalam translation circulated. Mass petitions are too readily thrown into the dustbin; but a series of appeals help us to keep the issue alive for a longer time. Please help!
Kindly send us a copy of this appeal to [email protected] so that we can translate and circulate it soonest.
This appeal was first published on Kafila.