[This is my translation of the statement issued by Kerala’s People’s science /development movement, the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat, about the ASHA workers’ strike, which is now in its forty-fourth day.]

The ASHA workers of Kerala have been on strike since forty-two day now, engaged in seeking an increase in honoraria and other benefits. The issue continues to remain unresolved. The ASHA workers comprise a sector in which 26,000 workers currently work. They are all women, attached to a Central scheme, and receive merely Rs 7000 per month as honorarium. For this reason, it is the duty of both Central and State governments to consider their demands in a democratic fashion and respond with sympathy. The very many struggles unfolding among Accredited Social Health Activists now must be developed into a people’s struggle against globalized economic policies, and the issue of their wage must be settled with Central and State governments working together. What we see in the ASHA workers’ struggle in Kerala is the crisis and tension emerging from the one-sided and top-down imposition of globalizing tendencies upon a society that had grown and developed within the framework of a welfarist state.

Kerala’s public health sector was well-coordinated and accessible to all since a very long time. It is marked by a pro-poor orientation. A large network of health experts and professionals, from doctors to public health nurses, work in it. They are all appointed officially and formally, and are regarded as workers and employees. Therefore, their remuneration and conditions of work are well-defined according to existing rules and laws.

The ASHA workers are a very large group which works within the above-mentioned institution without being formalised. This is a result of the global push to turn formal, official institutions into an arrangement based on informal, voluntary work.

We see here a move on the part of the government to abandon its responsibilities and to distribute services to the poor at the bottom-most layer of society through voluntary activism.

Quite naturally, this could be expected to whip up tumult in a society like ours. Perhaps it may not produce so intense an effect in north Indian societies. But in Kerala, where many work as high-salary-earning formal employees, when voluntary workers paid a pittance work alongside the former, the contrast becomes strongly visible.

In these three and a half decades after the inauguration of globalisation policy in India, the contents of protests and struggles have also changed. One of these changes is the manner in which anti-globalisation struggles have waned while battles against its deleterious impacts have intensified. This manner of protesting against reflections, instead of root causes, is not helpful to resolve the problem.

The main obstacle towards acknowledging all those who work in the public health system as workers is rooted in the globalisation policies which stems from the earlier governments of Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, and which has become only all the more entrenched under the Modi government. The practice of placing all the financial burdens of work initiated by the Central government on the shoulders of the state government does not befit the federal principles of the country.

Therefore the struggle should be not merely for an increase in remuneration, but also against central policies. To enable such a democratic struggle at the national level, all organisations active in these issues must form a common front. If this happens, people’s protests against several programmes that lead to informalising labour in such sectors as education, health, and social welfare may become possible.

Till this becomes possible, all parties involved in the protest and the state government should settle the strike through negotiations and enable conditions for joint struggles by workers.

Increasing the remuneration of ASHA workers is a short-term work. Therefore the state and central governments should hold joint talks to find a resolution.

The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishath asks the state government to take the initiative to this end.

Signed

 T K Meerabhai, State President, KSSP

P V Divakaran, General Secretary.