Abstract:
The recognition of the changes within the Indian tea industry,
one of the oldest industries in India is an important challenge while
addressing the concerns of labour. It becomes all the more important to
understand women’s agency of labour in the changing plantation
landscape, when women constitute more than half of the workforce.
Among others, the change that the paper highlights is the decline of
work participation rate of women in the tea plantation sector. However,
their labour as examined in three different spheres; that of as an estate
worker, as a worker in a small tea garden and as a tea grower reflects that
they are significant contributors to the industry as well as to their
household. Situating this dynamics of women losing out in employment
on the one hand and their increasing role in the industry and household
on the other, this paper provides an account of their negotiations at
multiple spheres of work and life. The paper through case studies
establishes across various contexts that women have negotiated and
emerged from the contours of power and authority and their own spaces
at work and the household. The paper also attempts to understand the
small tea grower sector in terms of their number, gender dynamics and
more specifically the socio economics of women small growers cum
workers, which have been a grey area hitherto. A significant proportion
of tea growers are also workers; marginal in terms of land holdings
coupled with inherent marginalities of caste, ethnicity and gender. This
answers the question why there should be the need to incentivise and
reorganise women’s labour for the industry. Measures beyond the rules
and legislative frameworks, should address their marginalisation as
visible through their inferior social indicators including literacy levels.
