Opinion: Care is work, and work deserves permanence

Periyar taught Tamil Nadu to test authority with reason, not reverence. Apply that test to the Chennai nurses' protest and the government's position collapses quickly. Thousands of contract health workers keep primary care alive for about Rs 21,000 a month. They asked for Rs 45,000, equal pay for equal work, permanent employment, pending incentives, maternity protection and recognition for the work they already do. Which of those demands is unreasonable? A state that cannot answer that question honestly should not be surprised when workers stop whispering and start fasting in public.

Anna's politics began with dignity of labour. Dignity is not a garland on Nurses' Day. It is a payslip that respects skill, a contract that does not expire every eleven months, and the knowledge that pregnancy will not push a woman out of work. Kalaignar's welfare state understood that public services stand on public employees. You cannot praise health workers as frontline heroes during a crisis and then govern them as disposable labour when the cameras leave. Permanence is not a gift from a benevolent ruler. It is the minimum condition for a health system that plans beyond the next headline.

The alleged detention of leaders called for talks should alarm anyone who believes in negotiation. Even if the government disputes every word of the nurses' account, it must publish its own: who invited whom, who ordered the detentions, and why a hunger strike by health workers was handled as a law-and-order problem. Silence will be read as admission. The November 3 deadline is therefore more than a date in a union circular. It is a test of whether assurances given at midnight survive in daylight.

There is also a wider lesson for Tamil Nadu's new rulers. Spectacle is not administration. A government can trend every evening and still fail every morning if clinics lack staff, files lack signatures and promises lack dates. The DMK, now in opposition, has rightly condemned the detentions. It must also hold itself to the same standard it demands today when it next holds power: publish pay scales, clear incentive arrears on a schedule, and convert long-serving contract posts into permanent ones with pension and protection.

Care is work. It is skilled, exhausting and overwhelmingly done by women whose labour is praised precisely because it is expected to be cheap. The Justice stands with the nurses not because protest is fashionable, but because their demand is just: recognise the work, pay for the work, and secure the worker. Anything less is gratitude without justice, and gratitude has never paid a month's rent.