'Backstabbed': Stalin says TVK arrested the nurses it once promised to protect

The nurses who kept Tamil Nadu's primary health centres running on contract wages were called in for talks. According to their lawyer, five elected leaders who went to the Secretariat came back detained. That single detail has turned a pay dispute into a test of the TVK government's word.

DMK president M.K. Stalin condemned the arrests on Tuesday, saying the government had backstabbed nurses it had supported before coming to power. He asked how a government that cannot hold talks with nurses could bring itself to arrest them, pointing to the allegation that the leaders were picked up after being invited in for discussions. The protest had been staged near Chennai's Rajarathinam Stadium, where mid-level health providers pressed demands for permanent employment, job security and equal pay for equal work.

The workers at the centre of the row are contract staff who say they earn roughly Rs 21,000 a month and have waited through unpaid increments and an unmet redesignation promise. Their union speaks of about 4,848 such workers across the state and a demand for Rs 45,000 with pending incentives. After late-night discussions with the Health Secretary, the hunger strike was called off temporarily, on an assurance that steps would be taken. Temporarily is the operative word: the union has warned that agitation will resume statewide if the demands are not settled by November 3.

The government has not explained why a negotiation needed police custody in the middle. A health system that runs on contract labour, then answers its frontline workers with detention, is making a choice about whose dignity counts. The nurses have gone back to work for now. The promise that was made to them before the election is still outstanding, and so is an answer.