ASHA workers, crucial to India's vaccination drive, threaten to walk out

Besides being poorly paid, most of them are working without gloves, masks or sanitizers two years into the pandemic.

Dressed in pink, the women have gone door to door for months, persuading people to get Covid-19 vaccines in some of India’s remotest corners, hinterlands and crowded urban slums, often risking their own personal safety.

For their trouble, they make about $40 a month, a wage barely enough to make ends meet. More than a million of these frontline healthcare workers across the country -- pivotal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of inoculating the nation’s entire population and reviving the $2.6 trillion economy -- are soon about to snap.

Nine Asha workers Bloomberg News interviewed across India said authorities