Tea Pickers' Daughters Reap Gains in Indian State

For decades, the Indian state of Kerala has been approving pro-women measures. Last year 10 percent of the state's budget went to programs for girls and women. A tea picker says her daughter benefits.

MUNNAR, India (WOMENSENEWS)--Kalaiselvi has spent more than three decades working on a tea plantation in Munnar, a verdant, river-ringed town in a mountainous region called the Western Ghats.

Each morning after dawn breaks, she and a group of other female tea pickers don headscarves and protective vests and troop single file from their simple, one-story homes to the hillside tea fields. They pluck oblong tea leaves with lightning-quick fingers, filling their baskets and bags while chatting and laughing as the sun rises.

"We harvest tea as a group of 40 to 60 women, and that's what makes it enjoyable," said Kalaiselvi, who spoke to Women's eNews through an interpreter. "Still, I'm glad my daughter is in school and not in the fields with me. Because she was able to get a better education, she is attending nursing school while I only finished ninth grade. She has more choices and will likely have a better life."

In recent decades, Kalaiselvi's native state, Kerala, has instituted measures to improve female education, health and economic security.

The state reintroduced delivery services in hospitals that no longer offered them; doubled the size of state government pensions for widows; and eliminated a ban on widows receiving pensions if they had male offspring over the age of 20. The changes have inspired similar measures elsewhere in India.

After India's Parliament passed the Women Against Domestic Violence Act in 2005, Kerala was one of the first states to implement the law, creating counseling centers and hiring "women protection officers" to aid survivors of violence.

But rights advocates still noticed that many programs for women that made it into the state budget were not implemented. To rectify that, they pushed through the creation of the Kerala Gender Board in January 2009, which ensures that 10 percent of state-funded programs benefit girls and women directly.
Board Spurs Female-Friendly Initiatives

The Gender Board has helped to spur the opening and expansion of maternity care centers, job training programs and anti-violence initiatives in the past year. Board members also make sure that women play a vital role in creating and running the programs that are designed to benefit them.

Headed by Kerala's Health and Social Welfare Minister and headquartered in the state capital of Trivandrum, the board has 18 members. Two are female legislators and one is a member of the Kerala State Women's Commission. The board meets monthly to keep tabs on women's initiatives that are starting--or already established--in the state.

The creation of Kerala's Gender Board was a landmark move in India. Even though the national economy is rapidly developing, many women do not receive an education or the chance at paid work that affords a comfortable standard of living.

Only 54 percent of Indian woman are able to read, compared to 75 percent of Indian men, according to the New Delhi-based National Literacy Mission. Women are just 10 percent of India's Parliament, which means India ranks 99th among 187 countries in this measure, lagging behind neighboring Pakistan and Afghanistan, reports the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union.

India's Equal Remuneration Act of 1936 promises equal wages for equal work, but men employed by Indian companies earn an average $3,698 annually while their female counterparts earn less than one third of that, or $1,185, according to the Geneva-based World Economic Forum.

Women's advocates say things are comparatively better in Kerala, which is 55 percent Hindu, 25 percent Muslim and 20 percent Christian. The state has a long tradition of women participating in education, commerce, politics and the arts.

STATE BOASTS BEST RATES
Kerala says it boasts India's top-ranked literacy rate for women (88 percent); its highest sex ratio (1,058 women to every 1,000 men); and its longest average female lifespan (76 years, versus 65 years in the rest of the country).

The maternal mortality rate in the country is 301 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Indian government, though the World Health Organization's estimate is 450. Government statistics put Kerala's maternal mortality rate at 262 per 100,000 live births--significantly lower than the national average.

Tea pickers in Munnar earn $734 per year, which Selin Mary, a spokesperson for Kalaiselvi's employer, says is high for agricultural workers and on par with what male workers earn.

"Part of the reason these women's pay is so good," she said, "is that the firm running this plantation--the Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Company--employs many women, is 70 percent employee-owned and has a woman heading its workers' collective. Also important is the fact that our tea pickers live and work in Kerala."

T.N. Seema, a member of the Gender Board and president of the All India Democratic Women's Association, a New Delhi-based organization that promotes women's rights, still sees plenty of room for improvement though.

"Kerala's women are better off than many, but they are still concentrated in low-wage-earning sectors like tea picking," Seema said. "Women should have better job training and should be equipped to work in professions other than those traditionally earmarked for females."

During a break from her work in the fields of Munnar, Kalaiselvi said she agrees.

"Our daughters and granddaughters can get an education, medical treatment and government benefits that older generations never enjoyed," she said. "Even so, we hope they will also have the opportunity to have professional careers, whether they choose to leave the green hills of Munnar or whether they choose to stay."

Molly M. Ginty (http://mollymaureenginty.wordpress.com) is a freelance writer based in New York City.
For more information:

Kerala State's Women's Commission:
http://keralawomenscommission.gov.in/vanithaweb/index.php

All India Democratic Women's Association:
http://aidwaonline.com/

Source: womensenews.org

Fairtrade tea leaves foretell a better future

Change is brewing on an Indian tea plantation where, for the first time, women have power, writes Kate Hodal.

A white velvet mist is curling over South India’s Nilgiri Mountains when Selvam Natraj’s morning begins. Shuffling to work in her grey and blue argyle socks, brown loafers, burlap skirt, gold nose ring and turquoise cardigan, she cuts a strikingly bright figure among the rolling emerald hills of dense forest and tea plantations, her breath floating before her in the morning air.

Like most of her 1,000 tea-picking colleagues, Selvam, 53, starts work early. Standing just 5ft tall, she is considered the perfect height for “tea plucking”, backbreaking work that requires suspending a large wicker basket from the crown of her head and picking tea, come rain or shine, for eight hours a day, six days a week.

Having done the same job nearly every day for the past 31 years, she has a set routine: slipping a rubber finger glove onto her right thumb and forefinger, with a decisive snap of the wrist she twists the waxy green leaves off the Camellia sinensis plant (a 4ft tea shrub that can live well over 100 years). She tosses handful after handful into the basket behind her, until her daily quota of 17kg of tea can be set aside, and she can go home.

Although Selvam’s work may be exhausting, tea plucking has recently given her opportunities she had never thought possible. For it is here, among the waterfalls and villages of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, at Chamraj Tea Estate, that some of India’s Fairtrade tea is produced.

Since 1994, when the plantation was certified, annual bonuses for the workers have doubled, wages have risen and the Fairtrade premium – a monthly stipend that goes towards community development – has provided a hospital, school, orphanage, pension and retirement scheme.

While much has been made of the economic opportunities that Fairtrade helps to create across the world, too little is said of the social transformations that such economic change can create. But here in the Nilgiris, social change is happening fast.

EMPOWERMENT

Tea is big business in these mountains, where terraces of green are dotted with tea-picking women in bright magenta, yellow, purple and chartreuse.

Chamraj boasts 850 hectares of tea across a 20km radius, and a whopping two-thirds of its 1,000-strong workforce are women. Just 10 per cent of its annual 1,200 tonnes of output is Fairtrade (and is sold to British clients such as Twinings, Jacksons of Piccadilly, and Clipper, and to the US, Europe and Asia), but the difference those sales have made is notable.

Tea plantations tend to recruit illiterate married couples and casual labourers as their workers, with the majority from India’s lower social castes. But it is the wives and women of these groups who are fully discovering the positive effects of Fairtrade , through increased financial independence, educational opportunities for their children, and advances in gender equality.

“Most of the women workforce belong to the lowest caste, which means that they are normally shunned by society and not consulted over anything for any matter,” says Chamraj’s director, Titus Gerard Pinto.

Now, however, almost as many women as men sit on Chamraj’s joint committee, elected tea pickers and officers who decide how the Fairtrade premium should be spent, Selvam included.

“I’m very happy taking charge now, either in the committee or at home, whereas before I was more shy,” she says. “Making decisions about things like the pension scheme has been good for me.”

“I’m not looked down upon any more,” adds Madina Rajapapa, 39, a picker who is also on the committee. “I’m respected more at home and in my community, and, even though I am uneducated, being on the committee has empowered me.”

Despite her 20 years picking tea, this is Madina’s first position of authority at the plantation, and she is proud to be one of the four women and five men to sit on the committee for the next three years.

“But these women wouldn’t even normally be allowed into other people’s homes because of India’s caste system,” says Pinto. “So for Selvam and Madina to be elected and sit as equals among not just each other but men, too – with whom, in India’s male-led society, they traditionally haven’t had much of a voice – is in itself a great symbol of respect.”

Fairtrade has also allowed women a greater financial independence from their families. The Fairtrade premium pays a lump sum every year into each worker’s bank account towards a pension and housing retirement scheme, allowing them to buy themselves some land and a house on retirement.

“Old age is a curse in India,” explains Chamraj’s Fairtrade officer, Greaves Henriksen. “Once workers stop earning, they are no longer considered 'valuable’ to their family or society and can become a financial burden instead.”

Samati, a widow who retired after working as a tea picker for 36 years, once worried about the effect her retirement would have on her family, but is now relieved that her pension has made her self-sufficient.

“For six years now, I receive my monthly pension and use it for my daily expenses,” she says. “I’m not dependent on my son or his children to provide for me, and I feel happy about that.”

As women in the Nilgiris continue to take on leadership roles, send their children to school and gain their own financial footings, they are empowering themselves in ways that Indian society – especially in the conservative south – has never before been forced to confront.

“Before Fairtrade, the women workers here had almost no power at home,” explains Pinto.

“The transformation since has been remarkable. Female feticide was unfortunately quite common in this region, but now girls are seen as has having a valuable economic role to play in society. Some women here feel so empowered that they’re choosing to leave their husbands. Now that they have the promise of their own money and a house of their own, they’re wondering what good the man is for.”

That women like Selvam and Madina even feel they have the right to consider such an option is not only a testament to their own quest for self-development, but a nod to the power of Fairtrade as well.

Original Story here

Stir over workers’ suspension

JALPAIGURI, Jan. 27: A section of the Dangapara Division of Madarihat Land Project of Duncans Tea Company workers today confined the assistant manager of the tea plantation, Mr Manprit Singh, after he suspended four workers today.

According to the West Bengal State Chaa Majdur Sangha (affiliated to Hind Majdur Sabha) secretary, Mr Anjan Chakraborty, an allegation of misappropriation of funds by manipulating the paybook of workers' payment was leveled against the plantation official.

He also said that the official had instructed the labourers to pluck at least 30 kg tea leaves per day despite knowing that they normally pluck 24 kg of leaves on an average.

The district PDS secretary, Mr Jainal Pramanik, said that the assistant manager today suspended four workers of the plantation following which, the workers gheraoed him for almost six hours.

The SDO Falakata, Mr Alias Vez, said that he sent police to the plantation after the trade Union leaders informed him of the matter.

The assistant manager Mr Manprit Singh, however, denied all the allegations. “We have not manipulated the paybook and the four were suspended since they had misinformed the media about the management of the plantation,” Mr Singh said. The agitators withdrew after the plantation manager, Mr Sanjay Gurtu, assured them that their grievances would be heard at a meeting with the authorities tonight.

Women on Tea garden vigil

Women workers in the Bhagatpur tea estate have formed a vigilante team to prevent theft from the garden and its factory as the strike called by the Citu-affiliated Cha Bagan Majdoor Union (CBMU) entered the fourth day today.

“Workers of closed gardens are often blamed by the management for pilfering metal scrap and tea leaves, but we are determined not to be included in the same bracket. We will protect the garden and at the same time carry on with our movement against the management to recover our dues,” said Sushila Ekka, the assistant secretary of the CBMU’s garden unit.

Sushila said in closed gardens criminals often steal saplings, fell shade trees for profit and loot made-tea from the factories. “We have formed a team of 150 women and they are keeping a 24-hour vigil in small groups,” Sushila said. The garden was the source of daily bread for the workers and none of them want it to be ruined by criminals, she added.

Ashu Sarkar, the central committee member of the CBMU and member of the Jalpaiguri Zilla Parishad, today said if the management did not sit for talks, the movement would be intensified soon. “We will not withdraw the strike and not allow the management to enter the garden as well,” Sarkar said.

The secretary of the Dooars Branch of the Indian Tea Association, Prabir Bhattacharya, said he was yet to hear from the garden management. “It will be better if the strike is withdrawn and talks between the management and the union start.”

Source: The Telegraph