Page 258 - EducationWorld November 2020

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Disgraceful POLITICS OF PRECARITY: is that the nursing
community itself deploys
ingratitude GENDERED SUBJECTS AND THE strategies to “exclude
HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY IN
CONTEMPORARY KOLKATA social groups based on
Panchali Ray existing inequalities such
HE COVID-19 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS as caste and gender,”
pandemic is here writes Ray. Thus nursing
Tto stay and we Rs.1,250; Pages 260 labour is split between the
have to learn to live medical and the manual
with it. In addition to with the latter often
the many things the workers, the following Stigmatised as stigmatised for “breaching
pandemic has exposed — strata were identified: menial, sexual caste norms that cause a
neglect of public health, registered nurses, private and servile labour, lot of anxiety and conflict,”
disastrous implications of sisters, and attendants. nursing continues says the author, who
privatisation of healthcare, The historical continu- to be perceived as argues that “not just the
the lack of public health ity from colonial times an occupation over- Dalit but even the upper-
infrastructure and is striking. Dr. Hilda represented by lower caste but impoverished
ignorance of the social Lazarus, the first Indian caste women woman compelled to work
roots of ill-health and female in the Women’s in a ‘dirty occupation’ is
disease — there’s the utter Medical Service in 1917 considered contaminated,
inadequacy of nursing and spoke about the need for the same time, there has impure and the despicable
frontline staff. Overworked “good quality nurses, with- been phenomenal growth other”.
and underpaid, ASHA out whom healing is not of nursing schools that The issues here —
(Accredited Social Health possible… it was an art… churn out unregistered of caste and gender
Activist) workers in that called for cultivated nurses for private sector discrimination — are not
Karnataka, for instance, and cultured women from hospitals, nursing homes unique to nursing. Payal
have been forced to call a good families”. Nursing and clinics, burgeoning in Tadvis’ suicide (2019)
strike. Even worse, these cannot be carried out by neo-liberal India. tells us how pervasive this
‘warriors’ are expected to working class or lower Young women from is among doctors. In an
work long shifts without caste women, like dais. As desperately poor and impressive chapter, Ray
rest or proper protective the author writes: “This predominantly lower caste traces it to the patriarchal,
equipment. was the heart of the ‘nurse families enter as unreg- hetero-normative families
It’s in this context that problem’: devalued and istered nurses, working in which women are
Panchali Ray’s ethno- stigmatised as menial, up to 14 hours per day, at trained to be docile,
graphic work assumes sexual, and servile labour, appalling pay rates — less accepting arranged
great significance. This is a nursing was perceived than the minimum wage marriages as their only
truly fascinating and well- as an occupation over- for manual labour. Unsur- option. To exercise this
written book that traverses represented by women prisingly, none of them option Dalit women have
disciplines and texts, and from lower-caste and/or wants her children to enter to be submissive and
is marked by empathy working-class communi- this profession. Indeed unquestioning of social
towards her respondents. ties”. many would themselves norms. To transgress
It’s multidisciplinary, ex- At one time, it was like to leave it, if they had would invite punishment,
ploring the lives of nurses believed that the profes- other options. perhaps violent.
in contemporary Kolkata. sionalisation of nursing A rung below the According to Ray,
It is based on studies education would change unregistered nurses are “stigma plays an
of three sites in Kolkata, things. But public health the ‘private sisters’ and important role in the
a government hospital, a has been neglected in In- attendants, who earn devaluation of nursing
private nursing home and dia, and a consequence has even less under more labour; stigma is not
private hospital. These are been nursing education. exploitative working an effect of devaluation
sites where it is difficult The lack of jobs for trained conditions. A private sister but plays a constitutive
to gather data. The author nurses in India is matched earns around Rs.3,300 role,” she writes. Thus,
has spent time with 100 by the plethora of jobs per month if she works 30 work involving attention
healthcare workers, be- abroad, as nurses’ migra- days, while an attendant to physical bodies and
sides interviewing manag- tion to the rich countries averages Rs.2,200-2,400. its effluents is despised
ers. Among the healthcare assumes significance. At An important revelation as caste-based labour.

258 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2020