Browsing by Subject "Labour"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Open Access
Crime, Criminality and Punishment in Colonial Darjeeling District
(University of North Bengal, 2017-03) Bhattacharya, Dahlia
Crime is behaviour against the rules of the society by which it achieves the status of crime and individual is treated as criminal. In the pre-colonial period the concept of crime and criminality existed in an elaborate form in texts and scriptures. But the legal perception of crime and criminality in the British period is essentially a colonial construction. They adopted a new method of identifying crime and criminality and of punishment in colonial India. In this article the crimes and criminality in Darjeeling and the methods of imprisonment is highlighted.
Open Access
Life of the Workers in an Abandoned Tea garden in North Bengal
(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2020) Rai, Ambika
A tea plantation, apart from being an economic unit, is a social institution, which, to a great extent, controls the lives of their resident work force. The tea industry of North Bengal provides employment to more than three lakh workers. These workers are dependent upon the plantation management for food, water, shelter, education, health, sanitation and more. However, it is taken to be caught in crisis since the early 2000s. The closure and abandonment of several tea plantations of North Bengal has thrown the labourers into a situation of dire uncertainty. They lose their jobs, and there comes a shift in the nature of their work, from permanent labourer in the tea estate to casual labourer elsewhere. Besides losing economic security, they are losing whatever minimum social security they had prior to the closure or abandonment of the estate. The paper aims to understand the reason(s) behind the closure of one particular tea estate from the Terai, namely, Panighatta Tea Estate. The estate has been abandoned since 2015. The paper further tries to analyse the impact of the abandonment and closure upon its concerned labourers.
Open Access
Locating the Workers ‘Coolies’ in the Tea Plantations of Colonial Darjeeling: A Historical Retrospect
(University of North Bengal, 2020-03) Subba, Salim
The labourers are the pillars of every industry. In fact, tea plantation is a labour-intensive industry in which, most of the works is done manually by the labourers. At the same time, it largely depends on cheap labour procured from the migrant population, however, such process entails structural transformations in the economy and society enabling the evolution of waged labour culture guided by the capitalist industrial model. Such arrangements facilitate the creation of a class who works in the plantation in lieu of wage i.e., the coolies. The coolies in general sense, are a well-researched topic in academia. However, tea plantation workers of Darjeeling with different anecdotal experiences cannot be homogenised with those of other plantation industries and the concerned topic requires separate analysis. Thus, this paper intends to trace the historical processes in the making of coolies in tea plantations and their consequences of Darjeeling using different methodological tools.
Open Access
Study on The Labour Welfare of Tea Plantations in North Bengal Region
(University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Roy, Nirmal Chandra; Biswas, Debasish
Labour is one of the most important assets in any organization for the enhancement of productivity. The concept of ‘labour welfare’ is dynamic. Multifarious dimensions of labour welfare enable labourers to maintain a portly and a comfortable life. Consequently, it leads to higher productivity of labour and proficiency of an enterprise. It also amplifies the value of the existent labourers by circuitously release the compulsion on their purse. The Plantation Labour Act enshrines the welfare of the labourers by way of ensuring facilities such as canteens, crèches, transportation, recreation, education for the children, suitable house accommodation of plantation workers and for their families in and around the work places of plantation, etc. In the present study, a deliberate effort has been drawn up to showcase the existing scenario of labour welfare facilities among the tea estates owned by different tea companies located in the North Bengal region of West Bengal. For the purpose of the study, 33 tea estates have been selected scientifically from the study region. ANOVA technique has been used to analyze the collected data. The study has found the significant imparity based on the labour welfare expenses among tea estates of the study region.
Open Access
Use of labour in the block economy of Chanchal
(University of North Bengal, 1990) Munsi, Asit.; Sarkar, P C.