ASHA workers honoured by WHO, but how much do they actually earn?

Congratulating the ASHA workers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said they were at the forefront of healthcare system in the country. “Their dedication and determination is admirable," he wrote on Twitter.

But despite being a reckoning workforce, ASHA workers across the country do not have a single payment system and receive different honorariums by the state government and incentives under the National Health Mission.

The government had started deploying ASHA workers under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005. The mission document of the programme had defined ASHA workers as ‘honorary volunteers’, receiving performance-based compensation for their contribution in promoting immunisation, construction of household toilets, and other healthcare delivery programmes.

As ASHA workers are categorised as volunteers, neither the state government nor the Centre has a legal obligation to pay them a minimum wage. As such, ASHAs earn money through incentives by delivering 60 tasks set under the National Health Mission. The states set the incentives for ASHAs. Incentives can range from Rs 1 for distributing ORS packets, condoms or sanitary napkins to Rs 5,000 for helping a drug-resistant TB patient with treatment.

The Union government in 2018 doubled the incentives to ASHA workers for some tasks from Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000.

In some states, ASHA workers receive a fixed monthly amount over and above the performance-based incentives. As the amount of incentives differs from one state to another, ASHA workers’ monthly earnings also differ widely.

For instance, in West Bengal, ASHA workers get a salary of Rs 4,500, while they get incentive from the Centre up to Rs 1,500. Some ASHA workers in the state held protests in February this year, demanding a minimum salary of Rs 21,000.

ASHA workers in Rajasthan received Rs 2,970 honorarium in 2021. The state hiked salaries by 20 percent in the budget this year.

In Maharashtra, ASHA workers earned around Rs 10,000 per month till 2020. The state government hiked the salary by Rs 1,500 per month from July 31, 2021 after nearly 70,000 volunteers went on strike for a week in June that year.

Meanwhile, in Telangana, ASHA workers have been seeking a salary revision from the existing Rs 7,500 (based on incentives) to a fixed salary of Rs 10,000.