Encoding the Excluded: Economic and Livelihood Strategy of Tea Laborers The Plight of the Gauro Ethnic Community

Zahidul Islam, S. M. Arif Mahmud

Abstract

Tea is an important beverage and the world drinks more of it than any other beverage. The important tea growing countries are India, Sri Lanka, East Africa, Japan and Indonesia. It is also grown in Bangladesh, China, Georgia and Argentina. Tea was introduced as a plantation crop in 1854 at Malnicherra in Sylhet. The British planters developed the tea plantation industry based on low cost land and labor who will respond to strict discipline and hard work for subsistence wages. In order to create a steady supply of labor that suited the requirements of the industry the British planters brought in laborers from Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal who can be controlled through alienation from the local population without prospects of social integration with them and the authority tried to continue feudalistic trend under the capitalistic mode. Thus the landless laborers, mainly from the lower rungs of Hindu society, were brought in and housed on the plantations for work. The present generations of plantation workers have come from this stock of precarious immigrant laborers. At best the current generations are semi-literate but remain alienated from the mainstream of social and economic development. This, in other words, has resulted in the creation of a diversified social group as well as cultural heritage in the tea gardens of the country. Different small communities are engaged in this sector and the Gauro is one of them working in the tea gardens of Shreemongol and Kamalganj of Moulovibazar district. So, this is the time to look into their economy and livelihood strategy and record these for the sake of their valuable contribution and distinct identification. While contributing so much to this sector, the Gauros, in particular, have not been properly studied and encoded to the vast socio-cultural and geographic settings literally. In this regard the present article entitled “Encoding the Excluded: Economic and Livelihood Strategy of Tea Laborers, The Plight of the Gauro Ethnic Community” is part of an ethnographic study and focuses on the economic and livelihood strategies of these people with a view to understand their plight.

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