Veena George, the Kerala Health  Minister, and her supporters keep demanding incontrovertible proof for the claim that the Sikkim government is paying the ASHAs higher sums. In the spirit of extraordinary cruelty towards the poor and the powerless that has been characteristic of the present government in Kerala, the CPM minions online demand that the striking workers find the proof.

The very nature of proof is such that it can be demanded again and again, almost infinitely, by changing the criteria of what counts as proof arbitrarily.  So when the workers held up answers to Lok Sabha questions, statements by Sikkim ASHA workers’ association etc. , that was dismissed. Bring us the government order, they commanded, as though they were some evil character in a fairy tale, making harder and harder demands on powerless characters. Now that the government order has been made available, they will now demand something else as proof: bank records of the Sikkim ASHAs, maybe!

Or they will change the question altogether. Some CPM women appearing on TV debates are doing that. Oh, what is the use of a higher honorarium, they ask, when the workers have not been regularised? It isn’t just that they want to generate confusion in the public through this. It is also because these fine ladies have never known much struggle in life or they have forgotten it.

Despicably, the governments at the state and union levels use the workers’ issues to score points against each other.  They are trading charges about the non-release of funds and non-submission of utilisation certificates, which are issues between them. How and why the striking workers should be implicated in any of this is baffling. Whatever be the answer to these questions, they do not render the demands of the workers invalid.  To think so  betrays a severe lack of empathy and normalised elitism.

Caption: The Kerala Health Minister had clearly not done her homework when she spoke about the Sikkim government’s payments to ASHA workers.

The ASHA workers’ strike crossed a month yesterday. Tomorrow is the pongala festival at the famous Attukal temple in which women devotees cook offerings for the Devi in open hearths lining the city roads. The striking workers have decided not to go home for the pongala. They are making their offerings at the protest site by the main road.

Indeed, the whole story resembles not a narrative of workers bargaining for better, fair remuneration in a democracy, but a fairy tale in which the powerless are oppressed and silenced by feudal power. In fairy tales, it is magic and non- human presences that turn the tables against the latter. In this real-life fairy tale, there is no magic. There are no fairy godmothers who may be trusted completely.

But the KAHWA has rejected the fairy tale scenario. They have insisted that they are workers and citizens, and so have refused the one-sided demand for proof, explanations etc. They have also refused to be cowed down by threats. To a question whether ground -level care workers can be easily replaced, a senior woman worker told me: “Care is central to our work, but it is not just that. We have received a number of trainings. We are very experienced in working at the grassroots, and we know our areas like the back of our hands!” In other words, the workers resist the implication of low skills and powerlessness which often comes along with the description of the care worker.

Maybe I am wrong when I say that there is no magic in this tale. What can be more magical than the determination of the powerless to fight, and their refusal to buckle under pressure?