BehanVox: An ASHA Worker Tells Us What Care And Community Mean To Her
This week in BehanVox: a data-driven analysis of India's One Stop Centres, mapping Delhi through the lens Dalit-Bahujan queer individuals, and more
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Hello and welcome to BehanVox. This week we have an interview with an ASHA worker and union leader who looks back at what it meant to be a frontline health worker two decades ago and how far the cadre has travelled. And an insight into what data on gender violence from institutions can do to help improve response systems.
Story So Far
At BehanBox, we have been telling the ASHA story in multiple forms in an effort to memorialise the incredible work being done over two decades by India’s 1 million frontline health workers. We see it as a feminist historiography that weaves together interviews, articles, photographs, audio recording and data that help recreate for our readers the texture of their daily lives.
In the series ‘The ASHA Story‘, we bring you this week an interview with a veteran worker and union activist from Kolhapur, Netradipa. She recalls for us stories of how she has gone beyond the call of duty to help girls, women, single mothers, and families, the friendly face of a distant health system. Her journey started in 2009, and along the way, she has discovered the roots of community health initiatives and the gendered politics of caregiving.
She takes us back to a time when ASHA was more an idea than the vast and potent reality it is today. “They weren’t rigid with their selection criteria — the minimum requirement was anywhere between 7th – 10th grade; in tribal areas such as Gadchiroli even women who had cleared 5th grade were picked. The government was more concerned that the women should be rooted in the community and be able to talk to others, and accompany people to the hospital,” she remembers of her own casual entry into the workforce.
Today the ASHA’s work agenda has expanded multifold and it is a veteran like Netradipa who is fighting for their right to fair wages, status as regular government employees. And from an uncertain entrant who struggled to overcome her reticence to question complete strangers about their contraception habits, she has become the face of the fraternity on international platforms.
“I went from being a local ASHA to a global ASHA worker – this is the biggest milestone. What I do in a village, my thinking, and my work, has reached international platforms. I see so much change in myself. I used to be quiet and hesitant, thinking twice about going somewhere or speaking up, now I’m bindaas with what I say and how I say it. Haq se baat kar sakte hain logo se,” she says.
Still, it is riveting to go back to those early days of ASHA work when few knew exactly what they did, were suspicious of their intent and their confidence had to be won with dedicated and quiet work.
Read our interview with Netradipa here.
How can the data generated by One Stop Centres, set up by the government to deal with victim-survivors of gender based violence, be used to strengthen response services? There are two conventional sources for understanding this problem in India, the National Crime Records Bureau and the National Family Health Survey both of which are known to underreport numbers for multiple reasons.
Last year, Tanya Rana studied the work of two OSCs, one based in Delhi and catering mostly to cases from the police and one in Mumbai that takes on more cases from a neighbouring hospital. Using administrative data collected at these centres and through her observations of their working, she discusses what the numbers can tell us about women’s access to them, the types of cases they get and address and the quality of response.
Read the analysis here.
Talking Point
Voter Gender Gap: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) being undertaken by the Election Commission of India (EC) in Bihar that is due to have legislative assembly elections has raised fears of exclusion of millions of voters from the electoral list. The Supreme Court has now asked the ECI to consider Aadhaar card, Elector’s Photo Identity Card and ration card as proof for voter registration in the exercise. There is also a fear that the SIR is likely to hit the narrowing of the voter gender gap that India has been witnessing over the last few elections.
Obey Or Die: The so-called ‘honour’ crimes once perpetrated to punish youngsters for marrying outside their community has become a hydra-headed monster that includes other ‘provocations’ – what women post on social media, the work they do, what that implies for their families or the ambitions they strive for. A young, bright and successful national- level tennis player from Gurgaon, Radhika Yadav, 25, was shot dead allegedly by her father. According to reports, he was infuriated by the fact that she was running a popular school for tennis aspirants, posting about her work and bringing him taunts from the biradari about how was now feeding the family. That it seems was enough to inflame the fragile tinder called patriarchy. Everyday, we live and learn.
Viva La Roja: La Roja, Spain’s women’s hockey team, is blazing a triumphant trail at the ongoing Euro 2025. As was widely reported, the team has been struggling with misogyny and mistreatment as they fought to shine on the field. These concerns had become visible to the world in high definition when the team’s spectacular World Cup 2023 win was almost erased by an unwanted kiss on the lips of the player Jenni Hermoso from the country’s football chief, Luis Rubiales. The incident became a symbol of not just of the team’s vulnerability to sexism but that of women’s athletics across the world. Incidentally it was the same year women wrestlers in India mounted a huge campaign against sexual harassment.
BehanVox Recommends
Report on Genocide: This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.
Dreams and Gaza: This interactive feature in The Guardian maps Gaza City’s main high street, which has been destroyed, and Palestinian memories of life before the ongoing Israeli assault. As those in Gaza face bombing, starvation and miserable living conditions, communities attempt to hold both the past and the present in their minds.
Mapping Cities: For QueerBeat, Sudipta Das reviews ‘Across the Nala—A Queer Dalit Bahujan Zine of Stories from Delhi’ which remaps the city through the twin lenses of caste and queerness. It invites readers into the lives of ten Dalit-Bahujan queer individuals, who share deeply personal stories of the city.
Censoring History: In her newsletter ‘Politics Of Us’, Priya Ramani reflects on Panjab ’95, which tells the story of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra and Punjab. The film, withdrawn from film festivals, documents why Khalra’s story shows masses how even a single light could “challenge the darkness”.
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