Health care practices among the tea plantation labourers: a sociological study in the tea gardens of North Bengal

Abstract

In this modern age Health is a matter of concern to all strata and health care is one of the important aspects of human life. Worldwide mission has been started by World Health Organization (WHO), along with various governments, private as well as non-government organization to develop health care service among the population. But, despite remarkable progress in the field of diagnostics and curative and preventive health still there are disparities in the people’s health among the different strata’s or communities across the country on the basis of socio-economic and socio-demographic construct such as ethnicity, age gender, religion and caste, social class. Different studies show that, the distribution of health resources – practitioners, dispensaries, hospitals, equipment, beds, nurses, ANMs, drugs, etc. – is highly uneven between rural- urban poor - affluent and developed- backward section of populations in India. Earlier the health, or lack of health, was merely judged by the attributes of genetic or biological disorders. But it is the discipline Sociology which has first established the close link between the ethnic traditions, socioeconomic status and cultural beliefs of individuals and spread of diseases. Where medical research might gather statistics on a disease, a sociological perspective of an illness would provide insight on what external factors caused the demographics that contracted the disease to become ill. The sociology of health and illness studies the interaction between society and health. In particular, sociologists examine how social life impacts morbidity and mortality rates and how morbidity and mortality rates impact society. This discipline also looks at health and illness in relation to social institutions such as the family, work, school, and religion as well as epidemiological statistics on the distribution of illness, the causes of disease and illness, reasons for seeking particular types of care, and patient compliance and noncompliance.Therefore, the present paper Health Care Practices of the Tea Plantation Workers in North Bengal attempt to intensively study the working, living and health conditions of the tea plantation workers along with the socio- economic political factors affecting the health situations of workers and the role of the tea garden management and other stake holders from a holistic perspective as a socially produced phenomenon.