Closure of Tea Gardens and Displaced Livelihoods: A Study of Women Plantation Labourers

Abstract

An enclave economy like Tea plantations is a small world, which could be similar to the labour to their home environment yet blended with the local culture and traditions. Therefore the clousure of such plantations not only have severe impact on livelihood also limits the exploration of diversification of livelihood in the locality and leads to forced migration, or starvation and death if unable to find an alternative means to survive other than plantations. In the last few years the pivotal role of tea plantations in providing stable and sustainable livelihood to tribal and other communities has tremendously dwindled. Tea industry in West Bengal mainly Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling district (North Bengal) has been facing turbulence since 2001. The tea industry in general had to go through crisis emanating out of high competition, price wars in the global markets. This led to the retrenchment and lay-off of workers, and closure of several tea gardens in this region due to their inability to compete. A total of 22 gardens closed down during the years 2001–04, severely hitting the workforce specially women and brought many more gardens at the verge of closure. Te present paper attempts to learn, document and identify empirical evidences and experience of the women workers in tea gardens who lost their livelihood due to closure of the gardens in the Jalpaiguri district of North Bengal, with a special focus on the ramifications of the closure on their living and life. A total of four gardens were selected for the study out of the closed gardens in the district. The major emphasis of the research was on identifying the hardships caused to the women workers due to loss of livelihood resulting out of closure. The study included the size of the gardens; the work force; history of the plantations; process of the closure, its impact on emerging life situations of women workers; role of trade unions and functioning of Joint Management Committees in the closed gardens as major aspects of the analysis.