The Limits of a ‘Social Contract’ Revealed? The ASHA Workers’ Strike in Kerala

This commentary piece casts a historical eye upon the ongoing struggle of women workers at the rock bottom of the health system in Kerala, which is now nearly five months old. It notes that unlike the earlier waves of women workers' strikes in Kerala in the new century, the ASHA workers' strike led by a non-majority union, the Kerala ASHA Health Workers' Association (KAHWA), has exposed the limits of the late-twentieth century 'social contract' between the state and lower middle-class housewives in Kerala mediated by the dominant Left. In the 1990s, a host of global and local developments led to the state promising this section of women recognition and 'empowerment' and in return, women were to offer labour in local governance and act as agents of self-help aided by the state. However, women workers especially in the informal sector, were excluded from 'women'. The past decade and a half in Kerala have seen a number of public protests by women workers. The ASHA workers' strike is the latest, and the most revealing wave, as they are central to Kerala's social development achievements, even if marginal to the state's imagination of both 'woman' and 'worker'.