Conditions of Employment and Livelihood Security of Informal Workers: A Study of Four Villages in Jalpaiguri District,West Bengal

Abstract

The article analyses the conditions of employment of informal workers in four different villages with varying livelihood opportunities. Based on the secondary database, it argues that the labor market is characterized by widespread unemployment, and there has been an increase in the share of marginal workers over the years in the study villages, as well as in rural Jalpaiguri. The analysis of primary data reveals that tea cultivation and agriculture were main sources of employment of informal workers; however, these did not provide livelihood security. The wage rate was lower than the legally prescribed minimum wage in West Bengal. Also, the workers, most of whom were either Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes, did not receive year-round employment in the study villages. In the absence of remittances from the migrant workers, a substantial number of households were poor. The research shows that informal wage work in the study area was insufficient for a decent level of living. The article argues that agrarian changes in the study area did not lead to desirable outcomes for substantial sections of the population.

Keywords

Agrarian change conditions of employment informal employment labor relations land use livelihood security

Introduction

The current phase of globalization is characterized by adverse impacts on petty production and the proliferation of informal sector activities. Patnaik (2011) argued that the policy of sound finance, restricting the fiscal deficit of the government to a specified proportion of the GDP, has resulted in a decline in subsidies on crucial inputs of agriculture, such as fertilizers, seeds, and electricity, and reduction in government expenditure on rural development, including irrigation. These have resulted in the increase of the cost of cultivation in agriculture that has adversely affected petty producers. Increasing unviability in petty production in agriculture leads to diversification into non-agricultural activities, primarily in informal wage work. Moreover, Patnaik (2011) and Sanyal and Bhattacharya (2009) argued that the process of outsourcing activities by the formal sector firms in the developing economies, as part of the cost-cutting exercise, in the face of increased competition, has resulted in exacerbating the process of informalization of the workforce. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) reports, in India, the total number of jobs created in the organized sector increased from 27.4 million in 1993–1994 to 29.7 million in 2011–2012; during this period, the number of informal workers had increased from 376.2 million to 460.4 million. These show that employment generation in the informal sector outweighed the formal sector by a wide margin following the implementation of economic reforms in India.

West Bengal is one of the few states in India in which land reform was successfully implemented. The state had achieved an impressive growth rate in agriculture in the 1980s, and the main beneficiaries of the growth process were petty producers, primarily small and marginal peasants.

Many studies have noted the positive impact of land reform on the rural economy in West Bengal, particularly in the 1980s (e.g., Banerjee, Gertler, & Ghatak, 2002; Rawal, 2001; Rawal & Swaminathan, 1998; Saha & Swaminathan, 1994). Bhattacharyya and Bhattacharyya (2007) argued that the gains of land reforms were reversed in the 1990s with the initiation of economic reforms. As agriculture became increasingly unprofitable, there were changes in occupational patterns in the rural areas in West Bengal. There was diversification into non-agricultural occupations, in which there were sharp increases in employment for women workers in the manufacturing sector and for men workers in the construction sector, between 1987–1988 and 2011–2012. However, these changes in occupational patterns were not due to dynamism in the non-agricultural sector in the rural areas, since it was associated with the growth of activities in the informal sector with no social security benefits. According to the NSSO (2014) report on the Informal Sector and Conditions of Employment in India, about 83.2 percent of rural men employed in non-agricultural occupations were in the informal sector. Across industries, almost the entire workforce (97.7%) was employed in manufacturing, while the biggest source of female employment in rural West Bengal in 2011–2012 was in the informal sector.

Abysmal working conditions and meagre wage rates, combined with the absence of social security benefits, increase the vulnerability of informal wage workers. Moreover, gender discrimination makes living worse for women workers. Against this backdrop, it is worthwhile to study the condition of informal workers. The core of this study is based on a primary survey that was done in four villages in Jalpaiguri district, in 2013–2014.

This article analyses: (a) changing employment opportunities and conditions of informal employment in Jalpaiguri district, (b) forms of discrimination that exist against women workers in the rural labor market, and (c) the role of informal wage work in providing livelihood security to the workers, most of them belong to the disadvantaged sections of the society, Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs).

The article is organized as follows: the second section discusses fieldwork methodology and basic features of the study villages. The third section analyses changing employment opportunities in Jalpaiguri district with the help of secondary data, and occupational structure in the study villages using primary data. The fourth section analyses the conditions of wage employment in rural labor market in the study villages and forms of discrimination against women workers. The fifth section analyses the impact of economic changes on the livelihood security of informal workers, with special focus on SCs and STs. The sixth section concludes the article.

Methodology of Data Collection and Basic Features of Study Villages

The study used primary data collected from Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal. Jalpaiguri was the largest district among the northern districts of West Bengal (recently divided into two parts). The district shares international borders with Bangladesh in the south and Bhutan in the north. The district is primarily rural. According to the Census of India 2011, 73 percent of the population lives in the rural areas. Two-thirds of the total rural population in Jalpaiguri was either SCs or STs.

A multistage sampling method was used to select households for the survey. Villages in Jalpaiguri district can be subdivided into three groups, namely tea gardens, forest villages, and revenue villages. Moreover, as the district shares international borders with Bangladesh and Bhutan, inhabitants of border villages face different kinds of challenges in terms of employment opportunities, livelihood maintenance, and access to basic amenities. In this study, a village each from the tea garden, forest villages, and revenue villages located along the India–Bangladesh border was selected purposively based on the highest female worker population ratio, since one of the objectives of the study was to analyse gender discrimination in the labor market. Second, revenue village was selected based on the highest Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) enrolment ratio. Third, households having at least one child below two years of age were selected for the survey. These areas have, historically, a high concentration of SCs and STs in the total population. According to the Census of India, 2011 database, almost 80 percent of the total population in these villages was either SCs or STs. A total of 251 households were surveyed in 2014.

There was no inherent class or caste bias in the sample. Therefore, the database can be used for analysing the labor market of the area and employment conditions of informal workers without any bias.

Kurti Tea Garden

Around 82.3 percent of the surveyed households in 2014 were Hindus; 10.4 percent were Christians; 5.2 percent were Buddhists; and only 2.1 percent were Muslims. In terms of social groups, 81.3 percent of surveyed households were STs. Literacy rate was extremely poor among females, with 45 percent of surveyed women of six years of age and above being literate; the corresponding figure among men was 73.7 percent.

Daikhata

The total number of persons surveyed in Daikhata was 271. Only 44.7 percent of surveyed women of six years of age and above were literate. Those who went to school did not complete their education, thereby implying that dropout rates were high. The absence of a high school within five kilometers of the village, and transportation problems, were contributory factors for a high dropout rate. Most of the households owned and operated on small plots of land, which is a characteristic feature of the agrarian economy in West Bengal.

Holapara Forest

There were 19 households surveyed in Holapara Forest. Around 63 percent of the selected households were STs and 16 percent were each of SC and other households. The male literacy rate was higher than that of females in Holapara Forest across social groups. The majority of the literate population did not complete their education because they could not afford to stay out of the village. A feature in the village was that resident households, barring one, did not own land, but used land owned by the forest department for cultivation.

Bengkandi

Around 85 households were surveyed in Bengkandi in 2014, of which 70 percent were SCs and 16.5 percent were STs. Almost 99 percent of the households surveyed were Hindus. Of all the study villages, Bengkandi had the highest literacy rate for males and females.

Distribution of ownership and operational holdings across study villages showed that most of the households were either landless or had access to small plots of land, which were not more than two acres.

Changing Employment Patterns in Jalpaiguri District and Occupational Structure in the Study Villages

Changing Employment Patterns in Jalpaiguri District and Study Villages

Access to land is important because land is the fundamental means of production in an agrarian economy. Implementation of land reform in West Bengal, in which the major beneficiaries were SCs and STs, had dealt a blow to oppression by the socially dominant groups in the rural areas. However, De Roy (2016) argued that with decline in the agricultural growth rate in West Bengal, there was a decline in the proportion of households engaged in cultivation of agricultural crops. He argued that sections of the poor peasantry, which cultivated on small plots of land, were most adversely affected. This implies that land had ceased to be a source of livelihood security for substantial sections of the rural population in the state. The proportion of households that did not cultivate land in rural Jalpaiguri had more than doubled across all social groups between 1987–1988 and 2011–2012, the biggest losers being the STs (from 39 percent in 1987–1988 to 83.8 percent in 2011–2012) (see De Roy, 2016). These changes in the economy, however, did not lead to accentuation of social discrimination against SCs and STs, the main reason being loss of access to the fundamental means of production—land—across ‘all’ social groups. Thus, loss of access to land through implementation of land reform in the 1980s and a subsequent decline in agricultural growth rate in the 1990s resulting in further loss of land had significantly reduced social power of erstwhile dominant groups. In the study area, they were forced to participate either in wage work in agriculture and outside of it, or in self-employment activities, other than agriculture.

Table 1 shows a declining share of male cultivators in the total male population in 1991–2011, and increases in the share of agricultural workers (male and female) in the total population. Also, during this period, there was an increase in the share of households engaged in non-agricultural wage work and self-employment in non-agriculture. Thus, the rural areas of Jalpaiguri have been simultaneously experiencing de-peasantization and swelling of the ranks of rural proletariat either in agriculture or outside of it.

Table 1.

Proportion of the Total Male and Female Population in the Study Villages and Jalpaiguri District (rural) who were Employed in Different Occupations (in %)

Occupations	Kurti Tea Garden						Daikhata						Holapara Forest						Bengkandi						Jalpaiguri (Rural)
	Male			Female			Male			Female			Male			Female			Male			Female			Male			Female
	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11	91	01	11
Main workers	39.8	41	37	32.7	40	37	45.6	58	57	15.6	8	7	62	62	41	4.1	2.4	4	74	64	60	11	8	9	60	55	50	10.9	16	15
Marginal workers	0	7.9	7.7	0	14	7.4	0	20	13	0	66	38	2.7	0	32	0	0	65	0	1.4	6.8	0	7.3	4	1.5	7.5	12	5.2	15	14
Cultivators (main + marginal)	0	0.9	2.3	0	1.1	2.3	33.3	50	31	8.9	44	3.5	46	1.4	32	4.2	0	6	36	23	12	0.4	3.2	1	24	17	14	2.5	6	3
Agricultural laborers (main + marginal)	0	0	0.7	0	0	0.5	10.8	21	29	19.7	22.8	35	8.1	61	34	0	2.4	60	32	19	42	9.2	7	11	12	11	17	3.4	9	10
Household industry (main + marginal)	0	0.4	0.7	0	0	0.2	0	0.4	0.2	0	0.5	0.1	1.4	0	0.7	0	0	0	0	2.5	0	0	1.7	0	0.7	1	1	0.5	1	1
Other workers (main + marginal)	39.8	48	41	32.7	53	41	1.5	6.5	9.1	0	6	6.2	8.8	0	7	0	0	3	6.3	21	12	1.1	3.1	2	26	34	30	11.2	16	15

Source: Census of India (various issues).

Note: In estimating the WPR, people above 6 years were considered.

The analysis across study villages shows that work participation rates, after increasing in the 1990s, had declined sharply in the first decade of the new millennium, for both male and female workers in the Kurti tea garden (Table 1). Also, there was a decline in the share of main and marginal male and female workers in total population, implying that there was a decline in the number of workers in absolute terms. Indeed, according to the Census of India database, the total number of male workers had declined from 839 to 815, while female workers had decreased from 954 to 869 in 2001–2011. Asopa (2007), while analysing the crisis of the Indian tea industry, had mentioned that until 2007, in the Dooars area in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal (the region where Kurti tea garden is situated), 14 tea gardens were shut down, 17,000 workers had lost their jobs, and there were reports of 571 deaths of workers. He mentioned that although some measures were initiated by the government, these were inadequate in terms of improving the livelihood security of workers.

Since the mid-1990s, the emergence of small tea growers (STGs) in and around Daikhata had opened a new source of employment for the local population. There was an increase in the share of male and female workers in the total population in other work between 1991 and 2011 in Daikhata. The Tea Board of India defines as STG a person who cultivates on not more than 25 acres of land. However, most growers own and operate on less than two acres of land. STGs account for almost 36 percent of the total tea production (2014) in India.¹

According to Rasaily (2013), the total area under tea cultivation in West Bengal was constant at 200,570 ha, between 2000–2001 and 2009–2010, when data were last available. However, she argued that during the same period, the area under estate sector declined by seven percent (from 177,038 ha in 2000–2001 to 164,571 ha in 2009–2010), while area under small growers increased substantially by 53 percent (from 23,532 ha in 2000–2001 to 35,999 ha in 2009–2010). She argued that this trend was seen in four districts in North Bengal—Koch Behar, North Dinajpur, Darjeeling, and Jalpaiguri—which produces the bulk of the tea in West Bengal.

Sarkar (2008) argued that the emergence of the small holder sector in tea cultivation was due to a combination of factors, including the following, among others. First, the land redistribution program transformed erstwhile landless farmers into owners of small plots of agricultural land. However, since the 1990s, as cultivation of agricultural crops had become extremely unremunerative, farmers favored changing land use from cultivation of agricultural crops to tea to get better returns from land. Tea, thus produced, was sold to the estates based on predetermined contracts that included assured wage-labor employment to the marginal landholders, on informal basis. Second, tea estate factories were also not averse to the emerging system of purchasing of tea leaves from the STGs, because of low processing costs due to higher productivity of green leaves obtained from the new small holder plots as compared to the old plantations. Also, they did not have to incur social costs on labor, since these small plots of land on which tea cultivation was done were outside the ambit of the Plantations Labor Act (1951). These, in turn, have implied reduced labor costs, increasing levels of casualization of labor, and increasing margins of profit for the tea estate factories that were involved in processing and marketing of tea. Due to these factors, the estate sector experienced an increase in productivity without a corresponding increase in wage employment, because the dependence of STG sector on hired labor was much lower than the plantations (see Thapa, 2016). Third, the advent of the Bought Leaf Factories (BLF), outside the estate sector, led to increased demand for tea leaves, which had given added impetus to changes in land use from cultivation of agricultural crops to tea.

Tea cultivation in Daikhata was done on small plots of land that were individually owned. Daikhata had extremely poor connection with the rest of the district. As a result, over the years, households had migrated out in other areas from Daikhata, even though ownership over land did not change. These absentee landowners had used hired labor for various operations in tea cultivation. This contrasts with Thapa’s (2016) observation regarding the reliance on family labor by the small growers of tea.

Occupational Structure in the Study Villages

In the study villages, almost 95 percent of the households surveyed either did not cultivate on land or cultivated on very small plots of land, which were not more than two acres. Lack of access to land and/or cultivation on small plots of land make cultivation of agricultural crops extremely unviable. As a result, most of them were forced to participate in wage work to supplement household incomes. Thus, days of employment and wage earnings received in a year were extremely crucial in terms of providing livelihood security to the workers.

There were six broad groups of occupations in the villages under study. These were wage work in the tea garden and STG farms, cultivation of agricultural crops, agricultural and non-agricultural wage work, business and self-employment (other than cultivation), and salaried work (Table 2). Thus, wage employment was of four types across villages. Of these, regular salaried jobs were by far the most secure and well-paid jobs located primarily in the urban labor market. By village standards, earnings in these occupations were always very high, and the drudgery of work was least. However, only 27 workers (out of 259) were involved in these occupations.

Table 2.

Occupational Structure in the Study Villages (2013–2014) (Number of People)

Occupations	All Villages			Kurti Tea Garden		Daikhata		Holapara Forest		Bengkandi
Occupations	Total	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female
Tea garden	249	109	140	79	106	30	34	Na	Na	Na	Na
Cultivation of agricultural crops	68	65	3	Na	Na	29	1	9	Na	27	2
Agricultural work	41	28	13	Na	Na	15	7	2	Na	11	6
Non-agricultural work	71	68	3	11	Na	6	1	16	1	39	1
Business and self-employment	30	27	3	6	1	2	Na	2	1	17	1
Salaried work	27	17	10	4	1	2	Na	3	2	8	7

Source: Primary data.

Note: Na is not applicable.

Within the rural labor market, wage and other work in the tea garden dominated. Formal work in the tea garden, the main source of formal work in the study region, specifically for the women workers, gave some relief to the workers in an otherwise dismal employment scenario. Of the total number of formally employed women workers who were surveyed (76), about 90 percent (66) had participated in wage work in the tea garden. However, the formal workers in the tea garden did not receive benefits of paid leave that were not in consonance with the provisions of the Plantations Labour Act (1951).²

There were broadly two types of formal jobs in the study area. These were formal jobs in the tea garden and other non-agricultural work. Table 3 shows that these jobs differ primarily in terms of social security benefits that were given to the workers. Table 3 shows that, for most of the workers, there was no written job contract or provision of social security benefits that resulted in reduction of job security of the workers (see Srivastava & Naik, 2017). According to the International Labour Organization (2013), informal employment was defined as precarious employment that considers job security, provision of paid leave, and social security benefits like provident fund (PF), maternity benefits for women workers, and pensions.

Table 3.

Type of Contract in Formal and Informal Sector Jobs Across Study Villages

Type of Contract	Tea Industry (Formal Workers)	Tea Industry (Informal Workers)	Agricultural Wage Work (Informal)	Other Wage Workers (Formal)	Other Wage Workers (Informal)
Written	102	0	0	27	0
Not written	0	147	41	0	71
Social security benefits (without paid leaves and pensions)	102	0	0	0	0
Social security benefits (with paid leaves and pensions)	0	0	0	27	0

Source: Primary data.

Almost two-thirds of the workers were employed under informal contracts. Informal workers, men and women, on average received employment for four and a half months in a year. Whereas almost two-thirds of the workers received employment for less than six months in a year, only a fifth of the workers had received employment for more than eight months in a year (Table 4). Thus, unemployment was very high in the study area. There are several studies on rural employment in India that had indicated very low levels of employment for men and women workers (see, for instance, Mehta, 2006; Rawal, 2006; Ramachandran, Rawal, & Swaminathan, 2010).

Table 4.

Distribution of Days of Employment in Informal Wage Work Across Gender Groups

Size Class of Days of Employment	Proportion of the Total (%)	Average Number of Days of Employment (Female Workers)	Proportion of the Total (%)	Average Number of Days of Employment (Male Workers)
1–30	26.51	21	16.22	21
31–60	16.87	46	20.95	46
61–90	8.43	78	11.49	80
91–120	3.61	109	11.49	106
121–150	2.41	136	4.73	133
151–180	4.82	171	4.05	168
181–210	3.61	199	4.05	203
211–240	16.87	233	6.08	235
241–270	1.20	260	2.03	265
271–300	–	–	4.05	295
301–330	15.66	312	10.81	312
331–365	–	–	4.05	362
Total	100	134	100	136

Source: Primary data.

Conditions of Employment and Forms of Discrimination Against Women Workers

Wage Work in Tea Cultivation

Here, we analyse the conditions of wage employment in the tea plantation and STG farms. The nature of work in the tea garden required wage workers for on-field and factory work. Major on-field operations were plucking, pruning, spraying, and irrigation. In Kurti, except for plucking, most of the operations were performed by men and wage rates varied across operations. Men who plucked leaf or pruned tea plant received ₹95 per day; workers who were engaged in spraying, irrigation, and serving of tea and water on the fields for other workers received ₹99 per day, like the workers who were employed in the factory. Both formal and informal wage workers had participated in these operations. However, informal workers were denied promotions, thus being unable to move upwards in the wage hierarchy. Also, formally employed women workers were denied promotions.

Wage workers receive piece-rated and time-rated wages in Kurti tea garden, depending on the type of operations. Dreze and Mukherjee (1990) and Ramachandran (1990) argued that piece-rate wage contracts affect speed and intensity of work, and hence employers prefer these contracts for tasks which must be completed in time.

Workers involved in on-field operations like plucking of tea leaves, spraying of pesticides and irrigation received piece-rated wage. Workers who plucked tea leaves were usually given a target of plucking 25 kg of tea leaves per day, although the assignment varied across seasons. It was also dependent on the productivity of fields within the garden.

Workers who participated in pruning and irrigation—on-field operations in the garden—and factory-related work were paid time-rated wage. They received ₹95 per day for pruning and irrigation and ₹99 per day for factory work. These workers received ₹23.75 for each extra hour when they worked overtime. Although the workers in Kurti tea garden—formal as well as informal—received monthly wage, extra incentives were paid on a weekly basis. These incentives were called ‘doubly’ (in colloquial language).

Informal and formal workers in Kurti also received wages in kind, four kilograms of rice and wheat per month as wages per worker; also, they received one pil wood (a 12 × 12-foot sheet) per month, one umbrella, one blanket, and a pair of slippers every year. However, during the off season, for three months when the tea garden remained closed between December and February, informal workers did not receive work in the tea garden, and hence were not entitled to receive these benefits.

Formal workers in the tea garden received benefits of PF. Around 12 percent of their monthly earnings was deducted and kept in their PF account, and the same amount was paid by the company. Women workers received maternity benefits. During this period, they received paid leave for three months.

In terms of wage rates, there was no difference between formal and informal workers in the tea garden. However, there were differences in the form of access to social security benefits, such as maternity leave for women workers, PF, getting access to food grains during off seasons when the garden was not yielding, and promotion to higher positions in garden management; these were exclusively preserved for the formal workers.

Benefits that the informal workers of Kurti tea garden received in terms of access to employment for around nine months in a year and rations for a major part of the year that was instrumental in terms of ensuring food security were not available to the wage workers in Daikhata. Thus, changes in the production organization in the tea industry with the emergence of STGs had resulted in the informalization of the workforce. In other words, the emergence of STGs in the production system did not enhance job security for the workers. In Daikhata, wage rate for plucking of tea leaves was ₹90 per day; women were employed for plucking of tea leaves, while men workers participated in other occupations with higher wage rates than plucking tea leaves.

Across major occupations in the study area, in wage work in tea industry that includes wage work in the tea garden and on small grower plots, men workers, on average, received employment for around five and a half months in a year; the corresponding figure for women workers was 140 days. In no other activity did men workers received employment for more than three and a half months in a year; women workers received gainful work for around two months in a year. Although wage workers in the tea industry received more employment in terms of number of days than other informal workers, wage earnings in the tea industry were the lowest among economic activities for men and women workers.

Table 5 shows movements in the real wage rate of workers employed in the tea plantation in Kurti tea garden and the STG farms in Daikhata.³ Table 5 shows that the real wage rate had declined since 2006–2007. This shows that the purchasing power of the workers has been declining since 2006–2007. Bose (2017) argued that stagnation in domestic and export prices had resulted in declining profitability for the tea plantation owners.⁴ Thus, for maintaining the viability of plantations as well as the BLF, in a situation of stagnant prices and to reap a higher share of profit, the wage share was lowered. The decline in the real wage rate was a manifestation of this tendency.

Table 5.

Trends in Real Wage Rate of Wage Workers in the Tea Industry (Kurti Tea Garden and Daikhata) (in ₹)

Year	Kurti Tea Garden	Daikhata
2006–2007	13.32	14.4
2007–2008	13.18	13.45
2008–2009	12.86	13.3
2009–2010	12.18	11.7
2010–2011	11.88	10.64
2011–2012	13.91	12.27
2012–2013	13.37	11.14
2013–2014	12.65	11.98

Source: Computed using primary data and Economic Survey of India (2015).

Note: Computed at 1986–1987 prices. Only the wage rate for plucking in Kurti (₹95) and Daikhata (₹90) have been considered. Consumer Price Index for rural laborers was used for computing real wage rates.

It can be seen from Table 5 that the decline in real wage rate was sharper in Daikhata as compared to the Kurti tea garden. This shows that the existence of an informal and non-unionized workforce in Daikhata had failed to prevent the impact of declining profitability of tea processors and consequent shifting of burden on the workers in terms of lowering the wage share to much lesser extent as compared to the more formal and unionized workers in the Kurti tea plantation area. In 2014, almost 80 percent of the workers in Kurti tea plantations were unionized, and there was no discrimination against women workers in terms of obtaining trade union membership.

To sum up, the levels of living of the workers associated with tea production in the study area were extremely vulnerable, due to (a) the emergence of STGs that had led to informalization of the workforce in the tea industry and did not ensure any improvement in job security; (b) the erosion of purchasing power, since 2006–2007, with decline in the real wage rate that had contributed to increasing misery of the workers, including the formally employed; in a region where work in tea production was the main source of wage work, with very limited alternative employment opportunities, these developments were bound to have adverse impacts on levels of living of the workers; and (c) among the social groups, SCs and STs were most affected with these changes, since they were the major participants in wage work in the tea industry.

Agricultural and Non-agricultural Wage Work

Land in Holapara forest was owned by the government. Resident households stayed and engaged in the cultivation of land owned by the government. Government had taken back such land for its own activities, such as construction of tourist bungalows or preservation of forest land. For the local population of Holapara Forest, cultivation is dependent on the availability of land owned by the government; otherwise, they had to look for employment opportunities in neighboring villages as agricultural workers. When land was available from the government, they participated in cultivation of agricultural crops, and the share of workers in total population increased; otherwise, they participated as agricultural workers in neighboring villages.

Of all study villages, agriculture was an important economic activity in Daikhata and Bengkandi. Lands in Daikhata were used to cultivate paddy during monsoons. Thus, for the major part of the year, land remained unutilized. Moreover, resource-poor cultivators were not able to invest in land to augment productivity. The location of agricultural land, across the international border, in the ‘no-man’s land’, was an additional impediment for the cultivators, due to lack of supervision.⁵ Most of the peasant households reported that occasionally crops were harvested and stolen by the residents of Bangladesh. Animals too destroyed their crops, which they could not prevent since border gates were closed. Due to these factors, they did not obtain good returns from cultivation of agricultural crops. As a result, use of hired labor in different operations was extremely limited.

In contrast to Daikhata, which did not have proper access to roads, Bengkandi was situated along the National Highway 31. Lands in Bengkandi were used for cultivation of agricultural crops throughout the year. However, with the increasing unviability of cultivation of agricultural crops in Jalpaiguri and West Bengal, gainful employment opportunities in agriculture had become scarce. On average, male workers received wage work for two and a half months in a year in agriculture in Bengkandi, and for one and a half month in Daikhata; corresponding figures for women workers were two and one month. Scarcity of employment in agriculture was reflected in low wage rates. On average, men workers in Daikhata received ₹144 and women workers received ₹101 for agricultural wage work; corresponding figures in Bengkandi were ₹150 and ₹130. Except for weeding, which was done for half a day (four hours), the duration of work in other occupations, such as sowing, transplanting, and harvesting, was 8–9 hours, with a lunch break of thirty minutes.

Wage rates in non-agricultural work were higher as compared to agricultural work in the study region. However, UNDP (2004) had identified North Bengal as one of the least developed regions in West Bengal. Lack of industrial development in the region has resulted in few employment opportunities in non-agricultural work. Also, the loss in momentum of urbanization in and around the urban sector has meant that employment generation in non-agricultural work was adversely affected. Moreover, the crisis in the tea industry and loss of livelihood and purchasing power of workers associated with it had led to the shrinking of the market size in the region, which, in turn, had a negative impact on employment opportunities in the non-agricultural sector.

Among the public works programs, employment under the MGNREGA scheme was most prevalent, while construction work was the most common non-agricultural work offered by the private employers. Workers received ₹150 for participation in MGNREGA work; in construction work, wage rates varied between ₹150 and 500. The duration of work under the MGNREGA was eight hours, with a lunch break of thirty minutes. In construction work, the duration of work was 10–12 hours. In these occupations, daily wage contracts were prevalent. Distress of informal workers due to lack of employment opportunities could have been mitigated through proper implementation of state-sponsored employment programs, like the MGNREGA. However, only 45 days of employment were received across study villages, out of a total of 100 days.

Across villages, except for the Kurti tea garden, in which workers received employment for about eight months on average, in no other villages did workers receive employment for more than five months. Diversification into non-agricultural employment in the study region had taken place either through changes in land use patterns in Daikhata, where tea cultivation on small plots of land had replaced paddy cultivation, or in terms of participation in wage work in the construction and transport industry.

Comparison of wage rates received by workers across economic activities with the legal minimum wages in West Bengal shows that wage rates of the workers employed in tea garden and agricultural work—the most important sources of wage work in the study area—were lower than the legally prescribed minimum wage (Table 6). Table 6 shows that the wage rate of tea garden workers was less than half of the legal minimum wage in West Bengal, thereby implying that the formal workers in the tea garden, too, were receiving lesser than the legal minimum wage.

Table 6.

Wage Rates Across Economic Activities (in ₹)

Economic Activities	Wage Rates Received by Male Workers	Wage Rate of Female Workers	Legally Prescribed Minimum Wage Rate in West Bengal
Tea garden	95–103	95	218
Agricultural work	100–150	100–130	181
Non-agricultural work	150–500	Did not participate	220
MGNREGA	150	150	153

Source: Primary data and Department of Labour, Government of West Bengal (2016).

Notes: 1. Wage rate of unskilled workers have been considered.

2. Wage rate of bought tea leaf factory workers have been considered.

3. Legal minimum wage rates have been estimated at 2013–2014 prices using suitable price index.

4. Wage rates of operations that were done regularly like plucking, spraying, irrigation and factory were considered. In agricultural work, wage rates of harvesting, sowing and weeding were considered. In non-agricultural work, wage rate of construction work was considered. These are operations in which the maximum number of workers was employed.

Discrimination Against Women Workers

Ghosh (2004) argued that measuring women’s work is always very challenging in every country since unpaid domestic work, such as cooking, handicrafts, child caring, and so on, are not accounted. Thus, the first stage in discrimination against women workers arises in terms of measuring work. We found that, in the study villages, most of the household activities performed by women remained unremunerated and unacknowledged. Second, women were prohibited to go out for work by their household members. This was visible in Bengkandi, in which work participation of women was lower as compared to Jalpaiguri district. Social orthodoxy was responsible for low participation of women in economic activities in Bengkandi. Women’s responsibility in reproduction, child care, and household chores governs the degree and nature of their work participation. Men’s control over women’s reproductive activities, in a typical patriarchal society, restricts women’s mobility, thus compelling them to concentrate solely on the domestic front (Barrientos, Kabeer, & Hossain, 2004; Beneria, 1979). Thus, women get less opportunity to enhance their education and skills. In the tea garden, we found that women were not considered eligible to work in the factory since they did not possess necessary skills to operate machines. As a result, they end up in the job market with relatively poor skills and capability as compared to their male counterparts (Becker, 1981).

Third, even when women managed to participate in wage employment, different types of discrimination persisted. First, there was institutional discrimination against women who were formally or informally employed in the tea garden in Kurti. Women were mostly employed for plucking of tea leaves. It was argued that women were ‘good’ in that work. Wage rate for plucking of tea leaves was the lowest in the wage hierarchy in tea cultivation in Kurti and Daikhata. Moreover, women workers, including formal workers in the tea garden, were not promoted in positions with higher wages as compared to plucking of tea leaves that were exclusively preserved for men workers. Similarly, in agricultural work, women were largely involved in specific agricultural work, such as sowing and weeding, and received the lowest wages. As Cockburn (1983) argued, men decided on the occupations that were to be categorized as inferior. Banerjee (1999) argued that jobs allotted to women were treated as inferior and, therefore, were mostly low-paid jobs. In the context of the garment industry, Kantor (2002) argued that there is gender segregation by type of garments that were predominantly stitched by men who possessed higher skills as compared to women. Male-dominated jobs when passed on to women had been degraded as unskilled and therefore deserved lower pay. As argued by Banerjee (1999), ‘…they are segregated by occupations: their average earnings are well below those of men in most forms of employment’.

Impact of Wage Work on Livelihood Security

Given the importance of tea garden and agriculture as sources of employment, it can be argued that more than 80 percent of workers, most of them informally employed and either SCs or STs, were not experiencing decent levels of living. Lack of gainful employment opportunities and informalization have meant that the bargaining power of the workers has declined substantially.

Insofar as occupational choices of wage workers were concerned, there was a dearth of occupational choices in the villages under study. Hence, many workers, mostly men, were forced to migrate for ensuring livelihood security to their households. A significant number (66 out of 107) of men workers who migrated out had worked in cement kattas in Kerala.⁶

In this section, we compare the per capita monthly income of households with the poverty line for rural areas of West Bengal, at 2013–2014 prices. The official poverty line for rural West Bengal in 2013–2014 prices was ₹957 per capita per month or ₹11,484 per capita per year.⁷

In this analysis, landless households who did not either own or operate on agricultural land and who had incomes of ₹20,000 or below per year from salaried and self-employment occupations were considered. The objective was to analyse the adequacy of wage incomes of informal workers in ensuring a decent living. In all, 130 households were considered for this analysis.

The analysis compares per capita household incomes of landless informal worker households, with the poverty line based on per capita consumption expenditures. Ramachandran et al. (2010) argued that the expenditure-based poverty line in India leads to underestimation of poor people, since expenditures are higher than incomes in the lower income groups. Also, the poverty line of ₹957 per capita per month in 2013–2014 implies ₹32 per capita per day, which is a very low absolute level of expenditure. Even with this low absolute level of expenditure, and considering the implicit underestimation in the method, almost two-thirds of households considered were poor when remittances from migrant workers were not considered, and another one-third of households were just above the poverty line (Table 7).⁸ The corresponding figure for the rural areas of West Bengal was 22.5 percent in 2011–2012.⁹ However, when remittances from the migrant workers were considered, the number and proportion of poor households declined substantially; only 3.9 percent of households were poor. Also, around 57 percent of households were in the size class of more than ₹4,000 per capita per month with remittances. Although migration and concomitant remittances had enhanced livelihood security in the study area, it had repercussions in village society in terms of weakened familial bonding. In the study villages, for the major portion of the year, household members could not stay together because of the absence of male workers who had to stay in other states for work.

Table 7.

Distribution of Landless Worker Households and Households Whose Income from Salaried Work and Self-employment Was Less Than ₹20,000 Annually, by Size Class of per Capita Monthly Household Income (2013–2014)

Size Class of Per Capita Monthly Household Incomes (₹)	Without Remittances by Migrant Workers		With Remittances by Migrant Workers
Size Class of Per Capita Monthly Household Incomes (₹)	Number of Households	Proportion of the Total (%)	Number of Households	Proportion of the Total (%)
Less than or equal to 957	82	63.1	5	3.9
957–2,000	43	33.1	11	8.5
2,000–3,000	4	3.1	23	17.7
3,000–4,000	1	0.8	17	13.1
Above 4,000	–	–	74	56.9
Total	130	100	130	100

Source: Primary data.

Across social groups, poverty was concentrated among the SCs and ST households across study villages (Table 8). Without remittances by migrant workers, 70 poor households (out of 82) were either SCs or STs. Clearly, diversification into non-agricultural work in the study area did not lead to desirable outcomes for these sections of the population. It can also be argued that wage earnings from employment opportunities that were locally available were insufficient in terms of providing upward economic mobility for these households.

Table 8.

Distribution of Poor Households by Social Groups (2013–2014)

Social Groups	Without Remittances by Migrant Workers	With Remittances by Migrant Workers
Social Groups	Number of Households	Number of Households
SC	28	3
ST	42	2
Others	12	0
Total	82	5

Source: Primary data.

Note: There was an Other Backward Class (OBC) household that was included in others.

Two broad features emerge from the preceding discussion, as follows: (a) STs and SCs who were the major participants of wage work in the study areas did not experience decent levels of living from employment opportunities that were locally available; and (b) lack of gainful employment opportunities and extremely low wages in all occupations had resulted in migration to Kerala by the male workers. The legal minimum wages in Kerala were higher as compared to West Bengal; also, the existence of strong trade unions in the former ensured that the workers received minimum wages as prescribed.¹⁰ ST and SC households benefited immensely by migrating out of the state and participating in wage work.

Conclusions

The study shows that the policies of globalization had resulted in the crisis of petty production in agriculture in West Bengal, the mainstay of living in the rural areas. West Bengal, since the 1990s, witnessed the increasing unviability of agriculture, which resulted in diversification into non-agricultural occupations including wage work in STG farms, construction, and transport industry. There were changes in land use from agricultural crop production to tea cultivation, as petty production in agriculture was in a state of crisis in the study region. However, paucity of gainful employment opportunities had forced male workers to migrate into other states in search of work, the most common destination being Kerala in informal wage work. Most of the households were either landless or cultivated on small plots of land; hence, wage earnings were very crucial in providing livelihood security to these households.

Analysis of primary data revealed that wage work in tea industry was the most important wage work in the study villages. However, changes in the production organization with the advent of STGs had led to informalization of the workforce. Crisis of petty production in agriculture and consequent changes in land use provided opportunities to the tea plantation factories to outsource production activities to the STGs. Thus, policies of globalization had impacted the local economy in two ways: (a) by precipitating the crisis in petty production in agriculture, leading to changes in land use; and (b) outsourcing production activities to the STGs, thereby leading to the informalization of the workforce.

The study shows that erosion of purchasing power, with decline in the real wage rate, had adversely affected the formal workers in the tea garden area. Moreover, North Bengal, being an underdeveloped region, did not have enough alternative employment opportunities in the non-agricultural sector. Agriculture, too, has been in a state of crisis. As a result, days of employment and wage earnings were inadequate in ensuring decent levels of living, and the SCs and STs were most adversely affected since they had participated majorly in wage work. The study showed that women faced various types of discrimination in the tea garden and outside of it.

The study showed that livelihood security was hugely enhanced with remittances by the migrant workers. While without remittances, almost two-thirds of households were poor and another one-third was just above the poverty line; the situation changes drastically with remittances. The biggest beneficiaries of employment opportunities in Kerala were the SC and ST, specifically the latter. In other words, livelihood security of the socially vulnerable sections was greatly enhanced with remittances of migrant workers. More than two-thirds of the population was either SCs or STs; thus, agrarian changes in the villages and Jalpaiguri district had impacted on more SCs and STs as compared to other social groups. This article discussed the level of living of these sections of the population, which depend primarily on wage work in an underdeveloped region in one of the major states in India, which will enable us to identify the problems in policies and make suitable revisions to these in the days to come.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors of this article are grateful to Professor Jayati Ghosh, Professor Vikas Rawal, Dr Jayan Jose Thomas, Dr Satyaki Roy, Dr Anamitra Roy Chowdhury, Dr Vinoj Abraham, Professor Rana P. Behal and three anonymous referees for comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

References

Asopa

V. N.

(2007). Tea industry of India: The cup that cheers has tears (Working Paper No. 2007-07-02). Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management.

Banerjee

(1999). Analysing women’s work under patriarchy. In Sanagari

& Chakravarti

(Eds.), From myths to markets: Essays on gender (pp. 321–337). New Delhi: Manohar Publications.

Banerjee

A. V.

, Gertler

P. J.

, & Ghatak

(2002). Empowerment and efficiency: Tenancy reform in West Bengal. Journal of Political Economy, 110(2), 239–280.

Barrientos

, Kabeer

, & Hossain

(2004). The gender dimensions of the globalization of production (Working Paper No. 17). Geneva: Policy Integration Department, World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, International Labour Office.

Becker

(1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Beneria

(1979). Reproduction, production and the sexual division of labour. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 3(3), 203–225.

Bhattacharyya

, & Bhattacharyya

(2007). Agrarian impasse in West Bengal in the liberalisation era. Economic & Political Weekly, 42(52), 65–71.

Bose

P. R.

(2017). Trouble’s brewing in India’s tea sector. Retrieved from http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/indias-tea-industry-crisis-needs-urgent-attention/article9654200.ece

Centre for Education and Communication (various years). Small tea growers. Retrieved from http://cec-india.org/small-tea-growers.php

10.

Cockburn

(1983). Brothers: Male dominance and technological change. London: Pluto Press.

11.

De Roy

(2016). Changes in the distribution of cultivated land and occupational pattern in rural West Bengal. Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 71(4), 439–449.

12.

Dreze

J. P.

, & Mukherjee

(1990). Labour contracts in rural India: theories and evidence. In Chakravorty

(Ed.), The balance between industry and agriculture in economic development: volume 3, Manpower and transfers (pp. 233–265). London: Macmillan Press.

13.

Economic Survey of India (2015). Statistical appendix. Retrieved from http://indiabudget.nic.in/budget2015-2016/survey.asp

14.

Ghosh

(2004). Globalization, export oriented employment for women and social policy: A case study of India. In Razavi

, Pearson

, & Danloy

(Eds.), Globalization, export-oriented employment and social policy (pp. 91–125). London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

15.

Government of West Bengal (2017). Synopsis of minimum rates of wages in scheduled employments in West Bengal. Retrieved from https://www.wblc.gov.in/synopsys/b3lsT2g0dEoxcjkzVGljNE5iWUJ6UT09

16.

International Labour Organisation (2013). Measuring informality: A statistical manual on the informal sector and informal employment. Geneva: Author.

17.

Kantor

(2002). A sectoral approach to the study of gender constraints on economic opportunities in the informal sector in India. Gender and Society, 16(3), 285–302.

18.

Mehta

(2006). Employment availability for hired workers: A comparative analysis of two villages. The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 49(3), 497–515.

19.

NSSO (2014). Informal sector and conditions of employment in India (Report No. 557). New Delhi: Government of India.

20.

Patnaik

(2011). Globalization and the limits of redistributivism. In Patnaik

(Ed.), Re-envisioning socialism (pp. 136–147). New Delhi: Tulika Books.

21.

Planning Commission of India (2014). Report of the expert group to review the methodology for measurement of poverty. Retrieved from http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/pov_rep0707.pdf

22.

Plantations Labour Act (1951). Retrieved from http://www.teaboard.gov.in/pdf/policy/Plantations%20Labour%20Act_amended.pdf

23.

Ramachandran

V. K.

(1990). Wage, labour and unfreedom in agriculture: An Indian case study. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

24.

Ramachandran

V. K.

, Swaminathan

, & Rawal

(2010). Socio-economic surveys of three villages in Andhra Pradesh: A study of Agrarian relations. New Delhi: Tulika Books.

25.

Rasaily

(2013). Changing land utilisation patterns in tea plantation sector in West Bengal: Some policy imperatives (Discussion Paper No. 22). Thiruvananthapuram: Centre for Development Studies.

26.

Rawal

(2001). Agrarian reform and land markets: A study of land transactions in two villages of West Bengal, 1977–1995. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 49(3), 611–629.

27.

Rawal

(2006). The labour process in rural Haryana (India): A field report from two villages. Journal of Agrarian Change, 6(4), 538–583.

28.

Rawal

, & Swaminathan

(1998). Changing trajectories: Agricultural growth in West Bengal, 1950–1996. Economic & Political Weekly, 33(40), 2595–2602.

29.

Registrar General of India (various years). Census of India. Retrieved from http://censusindia.gov.in/

30.

Saha

, & Swaminathan

(1994). Agricultural growth in West Bengal. Economic and Political Weekly, 29(31), 2039–2040.

31.

Sarkar

(2008). Globalisation, restructuring and labour flexibility in tea plantations in West Bengal. Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 51(4), 643–654.

32.

Sanyal

, & Bhattacharya

(2009). Beyond the factory production: Globalisation, informalisation of production and the new locations of labour. Economic & Political Weekly, 44(22), 35–44.

33.

Srivastava

, & Naik

A. K.

(2017). Growth and informality in the Indian economy. In Kannan

K. P.

, Mamgain

R. P.

, & Rustagi

(Eds.), Labour and development: Essays in honour of Prof. T.S. Papola (pp. 189–214). New Delhi: Academic Foundation.

34.

Thapa

(2016). Employment status and human development of tea plantation workers in West Bengal. In Joseph

K. J.

& Vishwanathan

P. K.

(Eds.), Globalisation, development and plantation labour in India (pp. 82–108). London and New York, NY: Routledge.

35.

UNDP (2004). West Bengal human development report 2004. Kolkata: Department of Development and Planning, Government of West Bengal.