
Two decades, 1 million women and a community built around care. There’s nothing like it in the world. Do people know their stories? The lives they lead, the wounds they heal, the dreams they nurture—the women who breathe life and hope into India’s formidable cadre of Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHAs. Will people remember their stories?
At BehanBox, we have consistently told their stories of contributions, achievements, struggles, resistance, joys and hopes. And now, we are committed to memorialising them through the first ever public archive.
The ASHA Story is a feminist historiography of the women healthworkers’ lives, weaving together photographs, audio recordings, data, digital interactions, snippets from their log books, and first-person reflections to create a texture of their daily lives. It is also a repository of their histories, decades of research, policy documents and everything that goes into making their story. The last two decades are testament to the bridges they have built. On these, they have walked with interventions that changed the course of women’s health, family planning, immunisation programs, disease management, and protest cultures in India’s history. Through this digital archive, we want to offer a new language to understand and value care work, and the women who make it possible.
Help us build this archive through research, reportage, or your personal interactions with ASHAs? Write to us at contact@behanbox.com. Until then, read why Sunita ji, a health worker from Haryana, thinks you should care about the 20 years of ASHAs.
For us, 2025 is the year of ASHAs. We invite our readers to be a part of this oral history.
One Million Women, One Health Revolution
Sunita, an ASHA worker from Haryana, writes a letter to the nation. Read here.
Stories
A BehanBox research study for Aziz Premji University
Stories
WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR DIGITAL ARCHIVE?
Write to us with suggestions ans comments to
#BRIDGESOFCARE
WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR DIGITAL ARCHIVE?
Write to us with suggestions and comments to
#BRIDGESOFCARE
WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO OUR DIGITAL ARCHIVE?
Write to us with suggestions and comments to
#BRIDGESOFCARE