Public health debates have generated many polemics across the world and in India. While enough has been written on public health policy implementations and on community health workers (CHW), there is still much to be explored when it comes to their everyday work experience through the lens of care-work. Such workers not only act as A Bridge between the community and the state health services but are often overshadowed in the binary of community vis-à-vis the state health apparatus.
Care as an analytical tool brings in a new dimension to understanding work among the frontline health workers, as it brings to focus their subjectivity, their conceptualization of self and how their livelihoods are tied to the broader material as well cultural environment. Care work is understood in the context of care relationships, i.e., it includes an investment of emotion and altruistically driven motives such as notions of moral duty and responsibility. Both these aspects provide a foundation to understand the nature of work that an ASHA engages in. By adopting to various informal social network and everyday knowledge, ASHA workers reach out to the rural and poor sections of the society through care work and implement various important health schemes. During COVID 19, the role of ASHA workers was very crucial as they convinced people to go for vaccination despite various challenges. In this context the paper highlights the role and everyday life of these women workers and looks at the concept of care work and emotional labour in the implementation of some of the important health schemes of government of India.
