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Bagrakote tea garden, located in Dooars region of West Bengal, is currently closed and has a high percentage of household with out-migrants. This study seeks to find the factors causing out-migration and economic implication of these rural-urban migrations.

Bagrakote tea garden, located in Dooars region of West Bengal, is currently closed and has a high percentage of household with out-migrants. This study seeks to find the factors causing out-migration and economic implication of these rural-urban migrations.

The rural tea estates regions of West Bengal do not offer many alternative employment opportunities and dependence on tea industry is heavy. As such migrating to some urban destination has become one important ways of earning livelihood for the population here. Besides a low wage rate and poor management of tea estates multiple other factors such as education, search for better and higher paying jobs, social construct etc. has induced this out migration.

Bagrakote tea garden, located in Dooars region of West Bengal, is currently closed and has a high percentage of household with out-migrants. This study seeks to find the factors causing out-migration and economic implication of these rural-urban migrations.

Case Study: Bagrakote Tea Estate

Bagrakote tea estate, which was established in 1876, is located in the Dooars region of Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal. The garden owned by GP Goenka owned company Duncans’ Industries Ltd. employs around 1500 permanent workers and over 700 casual workers. The garden has remained unofficially closed (not functional though not abandoned) since April, 2015 till the period of this survey. Trade unions had designed a temporary setup to employ permanent workers, but not all workers found employment under it. Plucking at the rate of Rs. 5 per kilogram the workers were making meagre incomes when the surveys were conducted.

Just when the wage increment (by 37.50 from Rs.95) was to agreement was to be implemented in April, 2015 (with retrospective effect from April, 2014) management stopped paying wages. Besides the wages the workers in Bagrakote garden (like in other Duncans’ owned tea gardens) were not provided rations, infringe benefits, arrears, gratuities and puja bonuses since then. Along with this Duncans Goenka Group has also defaulted on depositing workers provident fund. The crunch in working capital in tea sector being faced by the Duncans’ Industries Ltd. was primarily because of siphoning of funds from tea industry to crisis-ridden fertiliser plant (Majumdar, 2016). The loss of principal livelihood means only increased the problems of tea garden families. The situation came onto limelight when reports of starvation deaths in Bagrakote tea garden surfaced in the media. On October 13, Chief Minister of state visited the place and it was only then that the workers started getting relief packages from the government.

However the main problem of lack of income sources remained. Alternative employment opportunities are scarce in the region. MGNREGS work is available just for 14 to 21 days in a year. Quarrying is one source of petty income. People of different ages, from children to elderly, go the river bed and crush stones to sell away the pebbles. Some are moving to other tea gardens in the vicinity to work as casual labour. Though out-migration has been an existent feature in Bagrakote TG since long, dilapidation of garden management has intensified it. This is verified by the fact that over 33% of migrants considered moving out after closure of garden in April, 2015. Unofficial figures state number of out-migrants ranging from 379 to 725 persons. Out-migration has turned out to be one major means of livelihood in Bagrakote TG.

For this case study of Bagrakote Tea Garden a sample of five different labour lines (paras) were randomly selected from where six random households were selected creating a random sample of 30 households. Questionnaire based household surveys were conducted in the sample households to collect the primary data. Few interviews were also conducted with the village elders, labour union leaders, and local social workers. Secondary sources like various articles in journals and books and daily newspapers have also been utilised in constructing of this paper. The analysis of migrant data has been based on parameters like age, sex, and educational qualifications to see the implications of these parameters on the volume and distance of migration. Destinations and type of job that migrants engage in destination area has also been kept under focus. Most importantly it has been attempted to show how important migration and incomes derived from it is for the tea garden households.

Migration Patterns

The principal urban destinations of people from the tea regions of Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars are Delhi, Kerala, Maharastra, Gujarat, Bihar, Sikkim, Bangalore and Siliguri. Many workers and their children, especially from Dooars have moved to Kerala, attracted by the higher wages. They work in tea and coffee plantations and as construction workers and assistants in shops or small eating places (Bhowmik, 2015). Once some migrants reach to cities the doorway expands for their kinfolks and friends. This enables more to migrate to the cities, which otherwise would be a risky task.

Short term migration is found to be the most preferred strategy. Temporary migration may allow households to relieve underemployment and meet debt and other obligations without having to sell assets (Sharma, 2014). Moreover the belief that migration will improve economic conditions is strong. This again can have a psychological effect in the society giving rise to further out-migration. Migrants are mostly engaged in labouring jobs in different construction and other manufacturing companies and in casual works in various other factories. Studies have also found that the migrants are generally engaged as security guards, house maids, drivers, rickshaw pullers and watchmen. Many are also found working in beauty parlours, hotels and restaurants (UNIFEM, 2006).

The need to migrate has unfortunately also paved way for trafficking of women and children. As per the claims of NGOs hundreds of women, young girls and children have either been trafficked or are missing from the tea plantations. Poverty is one important factor inducing unsafe migration and many young girls and women get trapped into the luring of traffickers who pose as agents promising high paid jobs in cities (ibid). “When women have no marketable skills or education, and are exposed to health risks, their capacity to secure sustainable livelihoods is limited and they are more at risk to be exploited. In the case of migration, women face multiple vulnerabilities to exploitation and to human trafficking” (Mclean, 2011). Besides, lack of education also makes women more vulnerable to trafficking. Illiterate and unskilled women are the most vulnerable group.

Out-migration to Urban areas

Total population of sample households was found to be 178 persons (87 male and 91 female) of whom 38 are permanent tea workers while 9 are casual. Presence of 47 workers in 30 households signifies a huge dependence on tea garden.

Of the total households surveyed 80 per cent of households had at least one migrant. Not so surprisingly the remaining households too expressed the need of out-migration. The total number of migrants was found to be 39 persons among whom 28% was female and 72% male.

All together 82 per cent of migrations have been found to be of inter-state nature with Bangalore and Kerala being most popular destinations. Besides Delhi and Mumbai are also places of choice for the out-migrants. Rural-Urban movement is the most common type of migration with 97 per cent of migrants having moved to urban agglomerations.

Educational status of over half of the total migrants is up-to/below Upper Primary level. Education level is particularly depressing in case of female migrants. All female migrants are found to be either illiterate or educated up-to/below upper primary level. Lack of education can be a big impediment to the migrants, and more so in case of women.

Table 1: Educational Status of Migrants

Level	Illiterate	Primary	Upper Primary	Secondary	Higher Secondary	Graduate	Masters
Female	2	1	1	6	0	0	0
Male	1	0	4	6	11	3	1

Age wise distribution shows that a high percentage of migrants (over 69%) are in the age group 21-40 years. Respondents were asked the age of migrants at their first migration and the minimum age recoded was 4 years and maximum was 57 years. Some had first migrated at the young age of 16 and in one case at 10 years. It is interesting that the highest age of migrants is found to be 58 years. This suggests that the situation in the tea garden is quite unfavourable to the families and even at ages close to 60 years people are forced to look for income sources in urban regions and out of tea sector.

Table 2: Age distribution of migrants

Age of Migrant (Years)	01-10	11-20	21-30	31-40	41-50	51-60
No. of Migrants	1	3	15	12	5	2

Employment and Remittances

Most of the rural–urban migrants have been found to be engaged in informal sectors in the destinations. Over 43% of migrants (17 persons including 8 women and 9 men) were identified to be engaged in informal activities like contractual construction labours, cook/assistants in small eateries, house maid, baby sitters, security guards, and in beauty parlours. Many others are also most likely to be engaged in informal activities as they work as cooks and waiters in hotels. The nature of sector could not be established because the type of hotel could not be ascertained. It is not uncommon among people that all kinds of hotels, restaurants, road side eateries and dhabasare referred to as hotels. Women are mostly engaged in domestic services and jobs in beauty parlours signifying existence of gender specificity in availability of work.

The average monthly income of sample households was recorded to be ₹ 6000 approximately. Under the given circumstances of the tea estate, it can be stated that migration is the primary livelihood strategy of the households here since migrant remittances are the primary income source for most of the families. The share of remittances is exactly the half of total household income in the ‘all household’ category shown in panel ‘a’ of Fig. 1. Tea wages accounted for mere 19% of household income in this category. On considering only the ‘households with migrants’ (in panel ‘b’) the percentage of remittances in total income rises to 59% while that of tea wages falls to 18%. Thus it is very clear that under the abysmal condition of tea garden, workers and their families to a huge extent are dependent on the remittances sent by the migrant members.

What are also important to note in fig.1 is the decline in percentage contributions of non-tea daily wages and ‘other’ incomes (categorised as others) to total income. The category ‘others’ include incomes derived from self-employment, businesses, pensions etc. On moving from panel a’ to ‘b’ in fig.1, the share of daily wage in total income shows a decline of 3%. This implies that ‘all households’ together have more wage employment than ‘households with migrants’ only. But since only 20 per cent of total households are in non-migrant category, the indication is, on an average lesser non-tea wage incomes are earned by ‘households with migrants’. To put in figures 20 per cent of sample households (non-migrant category) have been found to earn 43% of all non-tea wage income while the remaining 57% non-tea wage income is earned by 80 per cent of sample households (households with migrants). Migration is taking place form the households which have little or no non-tea wage work at their disposal. Likewise the fall in percentage contribution (from 13% to 6%) of ‘other’ incomes to total incomes on moving from ‘all household’ category to ‘households with migrant’ category, resemble that the latter category have little access to ‘other’ incomes from (self-employment, businesses, pensions). Hence out-migrants belong to the households with little or no self-employment, businesses, pensions etc. while also not availing non-tea wage works.

Migration as alternative income strategy

Since a larger number of migrants are male, households with more male members are also seen to be more likely to migrate. The correlation coefficient between number of male number of migrants and members in the household is found to be +0.30 which is marginally higher than that between number of migrants and number of female household members which stand at +0.29. However the family size is definitely found to have an influence on out-migration. The coefficient correlation between household size and number of migrants is +0.41. Households with more members also tend to send out more migrants. Another factor that induces migration is found to be the number of dependent minors and dependent elders. There exists a positive correlation of 0.48 between number of dependent members and number of out-migrants. Larger number of dependent minors and dependent elders means comparatively fewer earning members. Further there are more mouths to feed, higher educational expenses, higher medical bills and other domestic expenditures. This positively necessitates larger income.

Besides, it has been noticed that over 38% of migrants were previously engaged in tea activity. This clearly points at the incapacity and indifference of tea industry to address the distress situation of the workers. However the tea worker families are seen to hold on to tea employment. The permanent workers generally enrol a family member as his/her badli(replacement) and migrate to join work outside tea sector usually in an urban area. This feature is more common in case of male workers who are seen to handover their permanent tea job to their wives. The decision however is usually not individual centric rather it is a household’s livelihood strategy where one or more (generally female) works in tea garden and another (generally male) migrates out to expand the household earnings. This feature is further highlighted by the fact that, even under the distress situation of unofficial tea garden lockout, many workers chose to stay and earn whatever paltry incomes could be made from union run system while family members not engaged in tea activity out-migrated. Around 50% of migrants who moved after the closure were household members not engaged in tea activity.

Out-migration of household members who are not tea workers is indicative of households’ strategy to expand the income base, particularly under the prevailing dismal situations. A permanent worker in most cases stays in the garden to work in tea garden under the locally run setup while a non-worker migrates out to seek additional source of income. Furthermore there exists a horde of casual workers who find work for a just little over six months in a year. Most of these workers migrate to urban areas on a seasonal basis when work is not available in the tea garden.

For tea worker household rural – urban migration is not an altogether new livelihood strategy but an income base widening strategy. The motive behind the migration to urban areas is to earn larger total household income. Since the households believe remittances can improve economic wellbeing but migration cannot be the lifelong strategy the migrant is generally not expected to stay away for a very long period of time. The success of the strategy thus lies on being able to earn the maximum during the migration years, which may vary from migrant to migrant.

The long prevailing low wage rates in tea regions of North Bengal have frustrated the workers. Even after working in the tea industry for generations they are still living hand to mouth. Alongside tea there are virtually no other labour absorbing industries in the rural regions where tea gardens are located. These push factors gives rise to out-migration to urban destinations. This kind of labour mobility is augmented by the work disturbances in the tea gardens, which has become a usual feature in the tea region of North Bengal. 

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