[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.