On the freezing night of December 10, nearly 2,000 ASHA workers, school cooks and helpers slept on the open streets of Tekdi Road, not out of choice, but out of sheer frustration. Nagpur was Vidarbha’s coldest city that night, yet the protesters refused to leave until the Maharashtra Government acknowledged what they described as two years of unkept promises. Throughout the day, the AITUC-led protesters marched and waited at their designated stopping point on Tekdi Road.

 

Many ministers did meet a delegation of the protesters earlier in the afternoon. But when their replies failed to assure a time-bound or concrete resolution, the workers, most of them widowed, separated or economically vulnerable women and men, chose a dramatic and painful path: they stayed on the road through the night. The protesters say, they have been waiting since December 2023, when an assurance was given in Nagpur Assembly premises that cooks and helpers under the PM Poshan Scheme would receive a Rs 1,000 monthly honorarium increase from April 2024. A Cabinet nod in July 2024 and departmental submissions only raised hopes further, yet no Government Resolution (GR) has been issued to date. Workers currently earn Rs 2,500 a month, a sum that AITUC calls “inhumanly low”, especially for women who have prepared mid-day meals since 2003.

 

Their charter of demands includes implementing the promised hike, ensuring minimum wages, granting 12 months’ pay instead of 10, providing uniforms, ID cards, social security, fuel and vegetable bill clearance, reinstating removed workers, and issuing appointment letters. As temperatures dropped, the women wrapped themselves in thin blankets and shawls and lay on the cold tar. Their message was stark: if ministers cannot deliver justice in the warmth of their offices, the workers will make their dissent visible in the harshest cold. The protesters have now vacated the Tekdi road after the delegation was promised that the Chief Minister will arrange a meeting in 15 days to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Until then, the protesters await the shiver for the next 15 days.