The plight of women workers in Assam's tea gardens

Hers is the most visible face of the tea industry. A cane basket on her back, picking leaves in a lush tea garden, and smiling. Constituting half the work force, Assam's tea tribe women are a jovial lot, painting a pretty picture for cover shots. Behind their cheerful demeanour, however, is a story of ironies. The women, for instance, have a high probability of being victims of child marriage, or having been deserted by their husbands after bearing children. And, they are most likely to be anaemic and suffer from health problems. Economically, they earns as much as their male co-workers, about Rs90 per day. But that does not mean they have a say in the way they lead their lives.

Migrants from Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, the tea garden labourer community in Assam are mostly Adivasis, and are the backbone of the flourishing tea industry. But while the industry has progressed by leaps and bounds, the condition of the workers has remained almost the same for years, since the British brought their ancestors here to work in the plantations. The community suffers from illiteracy, poverty, poor health and lack of awareness, even as the disparity between them and the plantation executives is glaring. The prevalence of vector-borne diseases soon after monsoons, for instance, is a yearly affair. Tuberculosis, gastrointestinal diseases, diarrhoea are common, and despite the management's 'welfare activities', the well demarcated labour colonies breed diseases — lack of hygiene, water stagnation, poor drainage and overflowing sewers. An estate manager said that it's a "colonial mindset" that the top management does not want "too much development" for the community, or else they wouldn't work in the gardens and factories.

The World Bank has recently ordered a probe on a complaint by a group of NGOs on workers' rights violations in Assam's tea plantations that it jointly finances with the Tata Global Beverages. One of the points was that women workers were forced to continue regular, heavy work through eight months of their pregnancy and told no light work was available.

Health-wise, malnutrition is common in the community. Gongamoni, a tea garden worker, says that her husband and her own weekly earnings of about Rs850 aren't sufficient for the family of six, given the inflation. A study by UNICEF and the Assam Medical College found that of the 14 meals in a week, only two are nutritional in a tea tribe family. Children, therefore, suffer early on. Another UNICEF sample study found 95 per cent women in the tea gardens to be anaemic, which experts say is related to poor nutrition. Anaemia makes women particularly vulnerable during pregnancy and child birth. Assam has one of the country's highest maternal mortality ratio (328 per 100,000 live births), and an official of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in the Jorhat district said that the tea garden population was one of the main reasons for this. Child marriage, as an age-old tradition, is common, and remains a challenge despite interventions like Adolescent Girls Clubs by the Assam Branch Indian Tea Association (ABITA) and UNICEF to change mindsets.

Lack of awareness is also one of the reasons why teenagers elope, often resulting in early pregnancy and desertion of the young girl once her partner realises the additional responsibility. Alcoholism, mostly among men, is yet again a major problem, resulting in an economic drain, poor health, and even domestic violence. "He drinks to relax, but it becomes a drain on our little income...plus he misses work at times and suffers wage cut. But if I protest, he gets abusive," says Asha Rani, a worker, about her husband.

Interventions, such as Mothers' Clubs have been trying to spread awareness against alcoholism and child marriage, and promoting good health practices, with some success. But for the community to develop at the pace of the tea industry itself, a lot more needs to be done.

The author is a freelance journalist. This article is part of her media fellowship work supported by the National Foundation of India