NRPPD Discussion Paper 11 EMPLOYMENT STATUS AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT OF TEA PLANTATION WORKERS IN WEST BENGAL

The tea plantation sector has been considered to be a major source of livelihood and employment for the population of the regional economies. Structural changes in this sector have led to the emergence of labour categories such as permanent estate workers, casual estate workers and self employed small tea growers. Several studies have attempted to understand the human development status of the plantation workers, without much regard to these existent categories. The paper has tried to understand the human development status, in terms of education, health and basic amenities, of the plantation workers classified as permanent, casual and self employed workers. The study uses a combination of secondary evidence on the employment pattern of the workers engaged in the estates, complemented by micro level data collected from the tea plantations of the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. The findings suggest that the casual workers who had lower employment status had lower asset ownership position and hence lower standard of living indicating their lower human development. However, contrary to the notion of permanent workers in an organised industry being better off in terms of employment status, asset position and hence better standard of living; it was observed that despite their employment status being relatively better than the casual workers and small growers, their asset ownership position and hence living standard was relatively poorer than the small growers. Thus, the wage workers in the estate irrespective of their permanent or casual work status were found to be worst off in comparison to the small growers.