Tea Garden Labourers Research Articles

Space and Place precarity in the Global South: The Case of Tea Garden Workers in Assam

<p>Tea plantations in South Asia were notorious for the slavery-like working conditions during the colonial period. Although the factors such as the colonial state and closed economy among others that enabled the slavery-like work conditions have changed, the ‘un-free’ conditions of work still determine the social production of the tea garden labourers. The unfree conditions of tea garden labour have been the subject of many research projects. However, attempts to examine tea garden and its labouring people through the lens of precarity is limited. Drawing from in-depth interviews with tea garden workers this paper uses the concept of precarity of place and space to examine the experience of precarity of tea garden workers in Assam.</p>

Plateaus to Foothills: The Historical Migration of Tea Garden Labourers from Chotanagpur to North-Eastern Tea Plantation Zones of India during the British Period

Abstract Introduced by British imperialists in the early nineteenth century, tea plantation in India initially suffered from labourer shortages. Far from these tea gardens, the Chotanagpur Plateau region was marked as the major catchment area for recruiting labourers in the period 1840–1940. Thousands of socio-economically weak and marginalised people from the Chotanagpur Plateau were recruited for the newly established tea gardens of North-East India. They were subjected to various forms of exploitation through coercive service conditions. They were confined to these tea plantations for generations, as they had little prospect of moving out of the chain of bondage. That colonial legacy of servitude is still perceptible through the penurious situations of present-day tea garden labourers. This article seeks to analyse the historical context of the major push and pull factors for such large-scale migration of labourers, as well as the forces that rendered them confined to the tea estates through the generations.

Prevalence and Determinants Of Intergenerational Métiers Mobility of the Labourers of Assam Tea Gardens

The study aims to explore the intergenerational métiers mobility pattern of Assam tea garden labourers. Simultaneously, the current study unfolds the various factors responsible for this phenomenon. This predominantly empirical study utilises the Transition matrices and Multinomial Logistic Regression on 251 household-level primary data to explore the objectives. The empirical results disclose that horizontal motility is more prominent than vertical motility among the tea garden labourers of Assam. Various social-economic-demographic factors, like years of education, annual household expenditures, sex, and the number of dependents influence the vertical motility among the labourers of Assam tea gardens. The study also offer suitable policy prescriptions.

REPRESENTATION OF THE LIFE OF TEA TRIBE IN THE ASSAMESE NOVEL

It is due to the realistic view point and wide experience on the part of the novelist, the background of Assam tea estate manages a place in the Assamese novel. The tea tribe of Assam, consisting of twenty percent of total Assamese population, also has a distinct and unique culture of their own. They assimilated to Assamese culture and turned part and parcel of it. Dawor Aru Nai, Seuji Pator Kahini, and Ejak Manuh Aru Ekhon Aranya are the three novels on the tea gardens written in the post independence era. The plots of the novels set on the life of the tea garden labourers of Assam. The novelists have presented the collective life of the labourers by their vision and unique skill of narration. The objective of the study is to have a study of the presentation of the life of the tea tribe in the mentioned novels.

Financial Literacy among the Tea Garden Labourers in Darjeeling District: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Financial Literacy among the Tea Garden Labourers in Darjeeling District: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Health and Sanitation Behaviour of the Tea Garden Labourers: Crises and Deprivation

In recent years progress in the areas of health and sanitation coverage in Bangladesh has received national and international attention. But not all are getting equal coverage; specially some marginal groups of people remained excluded despite having constitutional provisions. Among others, tea garden labourers are one of the segregated communities in Bangladesh has been facing sever discrimination and deprivation. Economic crises, absence of facilities, lower rate of education and ignorance led them to depend on traditional unscientific and unhygienic practices. This paper is based on a qualitative study on a particular tea garden, named Tarapur Tea Garden in Sylhet city, Bangladesh, which focuses on their health and sanitation practices, facilities, problems and coping strategies. Findings revealed that they are far from the modern health and sanitation facilities and thus maintaining miserable life. Use of unsafe toilet, inappropriate garbage and drainage facilities, unhygienic living arrangement, absence of preventive measures regarding basic health safety, etc. are very common among the tea labourers. Even they fail to get legal facilities as the garden authorities show less interest. The paper attempts to describe their miserable life style, crises and survival ways. In-depth Interview and Focus Group Discussion were the tools for data collection.

Health: Cognition and Threshold among the Oraon Tea Garden Labourers of Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal

There is scarcity of health information in many subpopulations in India, which needs to be explored for formulating effective public health policy. Studies on the tea garden population revealed that poor socioeconomic conditions, ignorance due to illiteracy, culture and food habit, overcrowding, and unhygienic living conditions make the population vulnerable to various communicable and noncommunicable diseases and malnutrition. Data were collected from the labourers of Birpara and Dalgaon tea gardens of Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal. The objective was to identify the primary health care available vis-à-vis the health problems. The results were based on mortality data, subjective well-being, frequency of ailment symptoms, perceived health status, and selected health practices as well as some observations, which indicate their cognition and threshold regarding health problems, presented as case studies. Mortality rates were high in the population; comparative mortality data shows no considerable change in mortality rate over time and space. A very high frequency of anaemia was prevalent among females along with sore throat and abdominal pain. Perceived health status of most of the people was good, although that was not always true, because the perception of the people often depends on their threshold and cognition about health and disease.

Invisible chains? Crisis in the tea industry and the ‘unfreedom’ of labour in Assam's tea plantations

During the post-liberalization period the Indian tea industry has been facing a severe crisis. This study looks at the question of inter-generational occupational mobility among tea garden labour in Assam, against the backdrop of, on the one hand, a fall in tea auction prices, decline in exports, and closure and abandonment of tea gardens; and on the other hand, increasing labour unrest, at times leading to violent protests and confrontations, declining living standards and worsening human security in the tea gardens. On the basis of data collected through first-hand primary research in three tea gardens of upper Assam, the paper analyses limitations on the inter-generational occupational mobility of tea garden labourers. We also probe into the reasons behind the relative mobility or immobility of tea garden labourers within and outside the tea gardens.

Effect of skill on work productivity and physical body dimensions of the Oraon tea garden labourers of the Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, India

Skill is one of the factors influencing labour productivity of manual labour. The present study aims to find out the possible relationship between skill and productivity and between skill and physical body dimension among the tea garden labourers of Northern West Bengal, India. Skill was measured by indigenously devised test protocols developed only for this purpose. Productivity or labour output was measured in terms of amount of tea leaves (in weight) plucked in a day by an individual. Physical body dimension was recorded in terms of a list of anthropometric traits. The results show an inconsistent relationship between skill and productive output and a non-significant relationship between skill and physical body dimensions. However, there are some trends that skill is high in younger individuals and low skill in females is associated with relatively high fat accumulation in the body.

Blood Groups Among the Munda and Oraon Tea Garden Labourers of Assam, India

Blood Groups Among the Munda and Oraon Tea Garden Labourers of Assam, India

Adult Sexual Dimorphism Among the Tea Garden Labourers of Dibrugarh, Assam

Adult Sexual Dimorphism Among the Tea Garden Labourers of Dibrugarh, Assam

Smoking status and its effect on cardiorespiratory system, body dimension and plucking performance of Oraon tea garden labourers

Oraon tea leaf pluckers were examined in terms of their cardiorespiratory functions which include blood pressure measurements and a number of lung function tests. Anthropometric measurements and information on smoking history were obtained. It is known from earlier studies that the individuals studied belong to more or less similar economic and nutritional background. The results suggest that smoking has an effect on cardiorespiratory functions, and may have an indirect effect an anthropometric traits, but no effect of smoking on work performance could be established from the present study.

Effects of Family Planning Practice and Income on Fertility and Mortality Among the Two Tea-garden Labourers in the Duars Area of Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal

Effects of Family Planning Practice and Income on Fertility and Mortality Among the Two Tea-garden Labourers in the Duars Area of Jalpaiguri District, West Bengal