Angels are turning red: Nurses' strikes in Kerala

Economic and Political Weekly

Volumn 48, Issue 52, 2013, Pages 25-28

  Biju, B L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD   (India)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84891544708     PISSN: 00129976     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. The Hindu, 9 June, 2012.
2. In India, privatisation of healthcare began with Sixth and Seventh Five-Year Plans (Duggal 2005: 32-33).
3. In the two business meets organised by the United Democratic Front (UDF) governments in 2003 and 2012, the healthcare attracted investment proposals worth Rs 350 crore and Rs 3,700 crore, respectively.
4. There are 1,75,000 nurses in private health sector according to Kerala Private Hospital Association (The Indian Express, 15 December 2011).
5. In many recent nurses' agitations in private hospitals, the status questions became so wedded with, and even relegated by, the class-wise demands related to distribution of surplus. The managements are more worrying about the nurses' demands for surplus-sharing than those for status-sharing. The group of workers who demand for sharing the surplus cannot be reduced to a status group. In fact, only status-enhancing solutions to nurses' issue is largely convenient to the interest of capital. However, the description of nurses as a class in hospital industry does not imply the negation of gender, caste and status components. Likewise, the latter cannot be assumed as entirely non-economic entities. Importantly, the male nurses in the profession bring different sort of gender questions, which have not been studied well by the concerned scholars.
6. TNAI's policy and position statement speaks voluminously about restrictions on trade unionisation and strikes. It also forbids the trade unionised government nurses to gain dominance in its membership. With a biannual membership fee of Rs 3,500 it represents Indian nurses as a status group rather than a working class (See http://tnaionline.org/policy.htm). According to Nair (2012) the nurses' strikes in Delhi since the 1980s have largely bypassed TNAI.
7. In Kerala, the lineage of "nursing as a noble service" originated from the missionary activ ities in the colonial period. The early nurses were nuns. The native women from the socioeconomically backward families recruited (after conversion) as helpers regarded healthcare as a divine duty. The main source of their finance was charity of the wealthy. In the popular discourse fortified by religion, nursing is treated as a humanitarian service or a vocation instead of a paid labour (Nair 2012: 40-47).
8. There are 6,120 seats for BSc nursing of which 5,805 are in private self-financing colleges. Apart from five government medical colleges, 104 private institutions and eight institutions under state universities offer the course in selffinancing mode. There are 218 nursing schools, 200 of them in the private sector, which offer Diploma in General Nursing and Midwifery (DNM). For DNM, there are 6,755 seats; 5,845 in private and 434 in government (Kerala Nursing Council 2012). In addition, thousands of nursing students from Kerala pass out from other states every year.
9. In Kerala, the Confederation of Private Hospitals brings together the Qualified Private Medical Practitioners and Hospitals' Association, Association of Advanced Specialty Healthcare Institutions, the Kerala Private Hospital Association, Kerala Voluntary Health Services, the Christian Medical Association and the Catholic Hospital Association.
10. The foreign jobs and the demand for old age care attracted males to this profession. Since 2008 the nursing institutes reserved 5% seats to male candidates. As part of saving the labour cost, private hospitals recruited male nurses in the departments/units where more physical power is required to help the patients. The profit-driven strategy of the managements backfired when the male nurses took the leadership of trade unions.
11. Traditionally, Kottayam district is home to largest number of nurses in Kerala. The adjacent districts - Thrissur and Ernakulam - have the highest hospital density, besides having significant population of nurses.
12. On 20 May 2013 the INA organised a march in front of the state secretariat for termination of trainee system, minimum wage for all the nurses irrespective of the hospital size and male reservation in jobs.
13. The young journalists of visual media who face similar workplace exploitation gave publicity to nurses' strikes to attract public sympathy.
14. Though the translation of "angel" in Malayalam - Maalaakha originally had a semitic religious connotation, later it became religiously neutral and most often used to denote females in the daily life conversations and popular culture. However, the exact gender identity of angels is a matter of dispute in different biblical readings.
15. Since the 1990s the CPI(M) moderated trade union struggles due to the declining economic productivity and growing unemployment in the state.
16. Dilip, TR (2010): "Utilization of Inpatient Care from Private Hospitals: Trends Emerging from Kerala", Health Policy and Planning, 25(5), pp 437-46.
17. Duggal, Ravi (2005): "Historical Review of Health Policy Making" in Leena V Gangolli, Ravi Duggal and Abhay Shukla (ed.), Review of Healthcare in India (Mumbai: CEHAT), pp 21-40.
18. Kutty, V Raman (2000): "Historical Analysis of the Development of Healthcare Facilities in Kerala State", Health Policy and Planning, 15(1), pp 103-09.
19. Percot, Marie and Irudaya Rajan (2007): "Female Emigration from India: Case Study of Nurses", Economic & Political Weekly, 42(9-10), pp 318-25.
20. Nair, Sreelekha and M Haeley (2009): "A Profession on the Margins: Status Issues in Indian Nursing", Occasional Paper No 45, Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi.
21. Nair, Sreelekha (2010): "Nurses' Strike in Delhi: A Status Question", Economic & Political Weekly, 45(14), pp 23-25.
22. Nair, Sreelekha (2012): Moving with the Times: Gender, Status and Migration of Nurses in India (New Delhi: Routledge).
23. State Planning Board (2010): Economic Review (Thiruvananthapuram: Government of Kerala).
24. Varatharajan, D, Rajiv Sadanandan, K R Thankappan, V Mohanan Nair (2002): "The Idle Capacity of Government Hospitals in Kerala: Size, Distribution and Determining Factors", Project Report, July, Achuta Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram.
25. Walton-Roberts, M and S Irudaya Rajan (2013): "Nurses Immigration from Kerala: Brain Circulation or Trap" in India Migration Report 2013: Social Cost of Migration (New Delhi: Routledge), pp 206-23.