Today morning, the newspapers reported that the Kerala government has increased the dearness allowance of state government employees from twelve per cent to fifteen per cent. This group includes government employees, teachers, staff of aided schools, private colleges, polytechnic training colleges, full-time contingent employees and employees of local self-government. Dearness allowance increase is also applicable to service pensioners, family pensioners, ex gratia pensioners and ex gratia family pensioners…

I am told that people are jumping for joy in whatsapp groups of retired teachers etc.

Land purchase facilitation committees are going to be set up at the local-body level to identify land to build houses for families identified as ‘extremely poor’ (64,006 houses).

Yet another report in The Hindu, Thiruvananthapuram edition, claims that inflation rates are highest in Kerala and TN, and one of the chief reasons is the influx of migrant labour (who are clearly purchasing food and other essentials).

The ASHA workers on strike have been demanding their elected government’s attention to two things: their inability to survive on a daily wage of Rs 232 at a time of soaring inflation, and the disgusting feudal-colonial culture of the Kerala Health Department which treats them like female servants under the brahmanical order, the bhrtyas.

The government can quickly turn budget promises into government orders, it seems. It will feed the well-off and make alluring promises of welfare to the (reliably-docile) poorest. But it will not respond to workers demanding fair pay — only they must slave under feudal conditions.

———————

Yes, our government scores high on two indicators of brahmanical governance: ashritha vatsalyam and daanadharmam. Benevolence to the King’s dependents, and giving unto the indigent.

Maybe we should create an index of brahmanical governance too, and start our measuring exercises soon. Our government scored high, in 2017 (during the Hadiya case) and in 2021 (the Anupama Chandran case) on a third indicator of brahmanical governance, pratiloma naashaka, or the annihilating of hypogamy. The only indicator we fall behind is the mleccha naashaka, or the destruction of muslims/ historically underprivileged groups of christians. But given that our handling of ongoing ASHA workers’ struggle has increased our bhrtyaa-mardana rates, and as we have done middling-to-well in our twisting and mishandling of the WCC’s pleas, and so our kulina-damana rates are not so bad, we could be in the race for at least one of the top five slots in Indian brahmanical governance, unless some envious RSS fellows assign an impossible high weight to the mleccha-naashaka indicator!!

Nevertheless, it is tough. Other Indian states are ahead of us in most of these, what we can do is hang tight to aashritha vatsalya and daanadharma, and protect our progresss on bhrthyaa-mardana and kulina-damana. If we can convince the UN that the first two must be assigned a total of ninety per cent weight in the BGI, then it is YAY! Kerala Model Version 2!

---

In the protest-site, three women are on indefinite hunger strike.

One of the workers gathered there tell me: When I came here first, I was weeping all the time… afraid but not knowing what to do if the government refused us … now that it’s been over a month, my fear has vanished. We have nothing to lose. I prefer to die than live like this. Once you have nothing to lose, you too, won’t be afraid.

Another worker told me about her superior: I am an educated person. I have a college degree and I am trained in accounting software. Now, once when we had to do a survey in the local school with the JPHN, I remember, I suggested that we divide up the work, and that I will write down in the notebook all the data that we need… to which she said, no, you shouldn’t , as we have to give it to the superiors… hinting that I can’t write well…! It stung me, but I didn’t respond, but no more… I am not that meek person anymore.

A third worker recalled : It was a polio day, and I had gone to the booth straight from church that morning, and was wearing a plain white salwar suit. The JPHN looked at me and got all riled up. Why was I wearing a white suit, she wanted to know. That was the nurse’s uniform, she insisted — and that we shouldn’t wear it! There’s no such rule, for sure — it is this feeling in her that we are just ‘workers’, unworthy creatures! I swear, from now, I will not be silent …

From ASHA to Aparajitha, I thought. Just what we need to smash brahmanical patriarchal governance.

[Tearful apologies to Dr K N Raj and all the others who taught us to hold knowledge and empathy together in social research and Srinarayana Guru who showed us that arivu and anukamba can only go together and that in the absence of the other, the one gets irretrievably corrupted.]