Thiruvananthapuram Kerala’s ASHA employees, who have been protesting against the state government for several months, applauded the Center’s rumored plan to raise their fixed monthly incentive on Saturday. They are demanding a raise and post-retirement benefits.
In Kerala, ASHA workers have welcomed the recently announced increase of their monthly incentives by the Central Government, after having been in protests for over five months. However, the ASHA workers on protest declared that their agitation would continue until their long-standing demands were met by the state Government of Kerala.
“We welcome the union government’s decision to increase the fixed monthly incentive. The incentive had been the same so far since the scheme was launched 18 years ago. We have been demanding the Centre to increase this,” she told reporters here.
On March 4, 2025, the Centre approved the hike of fixed monthly incentive for ASHA workers from ₹2,000 to ₹3,500 and an increase of the one-time retirement benefit from ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 for workers who worked for a minimum of 10 years. This was later reiterated by the Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Prataprao Jadhav, in Parliament.
In addition to the fixed monthly amount, ASHA workers also get incentive payments for activities under central schemes, such as ₹1,000 under Ayushman Arogya Mandir, which could bring their total further up to the amount of ₹4,500. ASHA workers also receive other perks in the form of mobile phones, uniforms, drug kits, bicycles, and insurance under Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) and Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY).
Despite these developments at the central level, ASHA workers are still on the streets in Kerala. The protest led by the Kerala ASHA Health Workers Association and union leader S. Mini is demanding a state government response to match the Centre’s incentive hike with an additional substantial retirement package. Currently, Kerala provides around ₹7,000 as an honorarium to ASHAs, but protesters argue this is insufficient considering the essential services they perform.
In their demands, they have also included a retirement package of ₹5 lakh (over and above the Centre’s recent provision) and have asked that their work be recognized in a way that grants them employment status rather than categorizing them as “volunteers.”
The protest, which resumed in Thiruvananthapuram on February 10 (with two earlier demonstrations in Delhi), enjoys the support of several political parties and civil society groups. So far, the Kerala government has not made any formal response to the latest developments.
The struggle of ASHA workers is said to appear as a challenge for the community health workers’ valuing systems in India. While the Centre’s offering did show some relief, the coming times are highly contingent on whether the state government will accept the vital role of these women in India’s rural health infrastructure and respond with real-time actions.
