After branding the ongoing ASHA workers’ strike in Kerala, now in its third week, as ‘unnecessary’, the CPM, the leading constituent of the ruling LDF, is now proceeding to stage 2 of strike-denigrating, deploying its master-strike-denigrator — the ex-Minister and CITU leader Elamaram Kareem. This man is notorious for his anti-people stance in many earlier workers’ struggles, notably the epic struggle to end the terrible pollution of the Chaliyar river by Birla’s factory there. The full misogyny that defines the present-day CPM leadership in Kerala, as well as its reeking elitism, may be found in the ugly article that he wrote in the CPM’s organ, Deshabhimani a couple of days back. Despite the CPM’s claims about ‘women’s empowerment’, if one takes Kareem seriously, it now firmly believes that the public care work that the ASHAs do are only ‘service’ and that they are ‘not workers’.

His ire towards the Pombali Otrumai, the women tea-garden workers who struck work against the sheer misery they lived in, launched a struggle which exposed the rot in the trade union culture of Kerala, is understandable — for it stripped the CITU naked to reveal its ugly misogyny. Apparently, the CPM now believes that women who demand a better wage can only be ‘politically motivated’ — which is a code for stupid women mislead by nefarious elements. It has shed the burden of its own history, one may think — for the legacy of Susheela Gopalan who refurbished A K Gopalan’s own legacy of mobilising the poor from a women’s perspective seems either forgotten or deliberately buried. The CPM that denies its past can only represent what Orwell once called ‘the post-socialist oligarchy’.

There have been other occasions which I have written about on which this government and the CPM leadership behaved like a post-socialist oligarchy — and this is just the latest. No wonder then that the strike-denigration champion Kareem called the SUCI, which has been mobilising the ASHAs ‘anarchists’ and something that translates as ‘bucket-collection-dependent minions’. Well, just some four decades ago, many of us have stood by the roadside collecting funds for SFI agitations — now they collect funds only from ‘investors’, I suppose. That might need some very public strikebreaking, quite likely.

Two kinds of flunkey-talk have been brought in to bolster the official misogyny. The first is the classic one: making women members of the pro-CPM ASHA federation to support this misogyny. Videos of the leaders of this organisation saying that their work is ‘service’ and that they get paid Rs 13200 regularly every month have been circulating. Now, they may be indeed speaking the truth, for there has never been a government in Kerala so fixed on reserving a liveable life exclusively for people ready to fall on their knees before the CPM leadership. These women must be indeed receiving all the incentives and probably do not face any of the bureaucratic hurdles that the clearly less-privileged striking workers face. They are also probably okay with delays — probably do not need to receive their (meagre) pay before the fifth of each month, unlike the striking workers, many of who struggle badly to make ends meet and have to borrow at high interest if their pay is not received in time.

Both their talk and their body language reminded me of the pro-Hindutva women in the ‘Ready-to-wait’ campaign organised against the SC judgement which permitted women of menstruating ages into the forest-shrine of Sabarimala. Claiming that they were rooted in their ‘faith’, ‘tradition’, and ‘customary rituals’ (aachaaram), these women were only too ready to justify and support their second-rate status within the Hindu fold. They were only too ready to go public on this: publicly devalue their own membership in the Hindu fold, their humanity and citizenship. Likewise, in the strikebreaker videos, the scabs proclaim that they do ‘service’ primarily, that they receive enough pay, and that that they are ‘ready to wait’ till the state government deems fit to raise it or the union government revises rates.

The second kind of flunkey-talk originates from someone whose political career once soared on the wings of his talk about women’s empowerment — T M Thomas Isaac. This person has been making squeaky noises about how the women should be holding the strike in front of union government agencies and not the Kerala government, because the honorarium can be raised only by the union government.

Yes, sir, we know. But I suppose it is all different when the Kerala government is in the hands of the opposition? I remember clearly how it was back then, in 2011. When there was a possibility that the newly-formed NRLM funds might go to not just Kudumbashree but to the other SHG networks, some of us (along with the present Chief Secretary, Sarada Muraleedharan IAS who was an admirable femocrat in those days) put pressure on the union government and received an open assurance from Jairam Ramesh that the funds will flow only to Kudumbashree. Yet you went ahead and held a big Kudumbashree protest right where the ASHA workers are striking now! Of course, M K Muneer, the Minister for Local Self-Government at that times, conceded their demands immediately — it was a settled case by then, everyone knew!!

Back in the early days of the NRLM, the same political party, the INC, led the government at the state and the union levels, but today, the union government is led by a blatantly-right wing power that has no qualms about dealing with welfare in chillingly realist terms. If the women protest to it and the BJP does indeed respond actively and sympathetically (for it actually suits them to do so), how would that affect people’s political preferences? Unless we concede that the CPM is no longer are in the business of keeping the BJP at bay, its stubbornness in this matter is incomprehensible.

Besides, the CPM, being the largest secular political force in Kerala which forcefully claims a monopoly on the legacies of both democratic struggle for welfare and welfare through governance in Kerala, is expected to take a lead on mobilising workers in the struggle for fair wages with the union government. It is both ridiculous and inhuman to demand that the workers should do it on their own! The protest the CPM -led ASHAs plan on 28 February is a response to the present strike, not the other way round.

Speak up, Mr Isaac, at least against the atrocious PIL in the Kerala High Court that accuses the ASHA workers to be in contempt of court for allegedly ‘blocking traffic’ — remember, if I remember right, T N Seema and others were only too ready to turn the Kudumbasree workers’ strike into a celebration with song and dance in the middle of the road back then in 2011? No one thought that was blocking traffic? Or against the state NRHM’s threat to the striking workers, that they will be replaced unless they return to work.

But why should the workers protest to the union government, even? That question was raised yesterday by the eminent economist Prof K P Kannan, at a rally of public intellectuals in support of the striking ASHA workers (a massive event that the pro-CPM mass media seems to have blacked out completely). While the union government’s neglect of the state’s need is indeed an issue, Kannan points out that the real issue is the government’s lack of will to collect taxes. The total expenses incurred by the state if it paid an additional 11,000 rupees to each of the nearly-30,000 ASHA workers in Kerala would be around 400 crores a year — that would be just 4.4 per cent of the total amount of 9000 crores that the government failed to collect as taxes. He pointed to the Kerala government’s recent increase of salaries and benefits to the members of the Kerala Public Service Commission — each of the twenty members is to receive a minimum raise of Rs I, 02000 per month. That would add up for twenty members for a whole year to Rs 224.8 lakhs a year. That money itself would suffice to pay 2225 ASHA workers an additional 11,000 rupees a month. Which group should be prioritized, he asks? Is the choice that the government made ethical, or a perversion of it?

It has been long evident that even though finances are tight, the government has splurged to build its image, for example, through the Keraleeyam festival in 2023, in the middle of severe financial crisis. The reasons given were about the need to ‘showcase’ Kerala’s achievements and potentials (to who? Investors, left-leaning intellectuals happy to receive cushy invitations to air their views etc etc). What it shows is that the state can find the necessary resources if it had the will to do so. Funnily enough, the achievements that were ‘showcased’ included the results of the backbreaking work of the ASHA workers as well — the relatively better health of the Malayali population.

Though the pro-CPM media — including The Hindu — seems to be seriously biased in their reporting, civil society support for the ASHA workers i growing. Even intellectuals known to be beholden to the CPM for the most, like the poet Satchidanandan, have openly called upon the government to abandon its apathy. What is truly shocking is the silence of the women’s organisations in Kerala — including the tepid response of the women-led trade unions. But at the strike-site, workers hardly know about them. The mood is one of determination but also great shock at the government’s refusal to countenance their demands. As one of them said, “Just some days back, the government said that we were heroines. Now we are terrorists, anarchists to them! Why can’t the ministers tell us if the state has no money? We are as committed to Kerala as they are? Why can’t they just say that they see what we are trying to tell them, but can’t help us right now? Clearly, these ministers and the strike-denigrators like Elamaram Kareem have struck at the roots of trust that bound these workers to the state. That does not bode well for the future of Kerala.