The sick tea gardens: Workers seek alternative livelihoods
There are 150 tea estates in the Dooars in West Bengal spread across the Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar districts. The tea garden workers are mostly Adivasis from the Chhotanagpur plateau of Jharkhand. They, and many other families from Chhotanagpur, were taken—often by force or deception—to the estates during the British colonial rule through the infamous ‘coolie trade’.
In most cases, one member of each family is a permanent labour in the tea estate and one or two other members work as seasonal labour when there is more demand for work. The permanent workers receive a wage of INR 232 a day and, by and large, get to work for 275–290 days a year. Seasonal workers may get a maximum of 200 days of work as per the requirements of the garden. In a majority of cases, the income of a household doesn’t exceed INR 6,000.