Women Labour in the Tea Gardens of West Bengal: Changing Orientation and Emerging Challenges

  Sayantani Roy

India is one of the major tea producer and exporter in the world. This tea production in India was started in the 18th century by the Colonial Government to meet the supply of growing demand for tea in the world market. To work in the tea gardens, labors were indentured from various places. But the laborers were subjected to inhuman conditions of living and the women labors faced gender discrimination as far as wages were concerned. They received less pay than their male counterparts. In the contemporary pan- Indian context, it is observed that the tea gardens are facing the problem of sickness and abandonment which created a socio economic hazard in the life of the tea garden workers. The immediate upshot of sickness and closure of tea gardens fell directly on the workers, their family members and particularly children belonging to socially and economically marginalized tribal and nontribal communities. Most of the tea gardens workers suffer from the rampant hunger, poverty and unemployment, problems like illiteracy, drop-out, malnutrition, and various incurable diseases and combined with the effect of vulnerabilities of trafficking of children and women in particular. West Bengal is comprised of a huge tea belt and experiences more and less this kind of traumatic experiences from the past few years. It has been noticed that some of the northern districts of West Bengal like Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling became relatively backward in economic prosperity because of the closure of tea gardens which initiate some social ills among which Gender- based violence which constitutes the domestic violence, trafficking etc became dominant. An attempt has been made in this study to analyze the nature and types of gender violence and its implications on the society through focus group discussion.

Keywords- Tea Garden, Women Labor, Gender Violence, West Bengal

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1704140
Page Number(s) - 862-868
Pubished in - Volume 5 | Issue 4 | November 2017
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Sayantani Roy,   "Women Labour in the Tea Gardens of West Bengal: Changing Orientation and Emerging Challenges", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.5, Issue 4, pp.862-868, November 2017, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1704140.pdf