Crushing cycle of poverty, trafficking, domestic violence: Underbelly of Assam’s verdant tea gardens
Women and girls of the tea tribes bear the brunt of the exploitation rife in 200-year-old industry built on the labour of these Adivasi communities.
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The tiny courtyard of tea-garden worker Bilchand Bawri's house in Assam’s Koilamari tea estate turns into a makeshift school every day at 4 pm. Around 15 children, aged between five and 13, sit on plastic sheets on the ground as Bawri’s daughter, Rinku, teaches them.
Twenty-one-year-old Rinku is a graduate student at a college in North Lakhimpur town. She commutes 15 km each way by bus to attend college. When she is short on cash, she misses her classes as she can’t afford to pay her commute charges.
“Nor can I afford to stay in a hostel close to my college,” Rinku, who belongs to the Adivasi community, says. “My parents are tea-garden labourers earning Rs 250 each every day. It is not enough to run a household of seven, including my four siblings.”
Rinku’s struggle to get an education reflects the abject poverty of the Adivasi community, the backbone of Assam’s biggest revenue-generating industry.
A bitter brew
Assam’s tea tribe or Adivasi community is an umbrella term for people belonging to Munda, Santhal, Gonds, Oraon, Bhumij and other tribes. They comprise around 7 million of the 31.2 million people in the northeastern state.
According to the Assam government’s Industries and Commerce Department, the state produces nearly 700 million kg of tea annually, accounting for around half of...
