Introduction In India, in the year 2005, the concept of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA)—incentive based female volunteer was implemented under NRHM with an objective that these female volunteers in co-operation with already existing other healthcare functionaries will facilitate the proper implementation of MCH programmes having an impact in the reduction of infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate.

Methodology All the 135 female health volunteers of randomly selected primary health centres of Kanpur were studied by predesigned and pretested questionnaire.

Results Predominantly the selected female health volunteers belonged to age group of 30–35 years (45.2%), Hindu by religion (99.3%), OBC caste (54.1%), educated upto middle standard (57.8%) and from Social Class IV (68.9%). About 2/3rd these volunteers had received the required two rounds of training but anyhow the remaining were partially trained. All the female health volunteers performed 100% activities regarding antenatal, intranatal and postnatal care and to lesser extent on adolescent's education about RTIs/STIs as well as supplementary nutrition. For improving their performance, all the health volunteers suggested about making their jobs permanent with fixed salary. Nearly half to 3/4th of them were in favour of providing transport as well as well as adequate training and mobile phone facility.