Working On A Wage Of Rs 70 For Working Six Hours, These Tea Garden Workers Fight Everyday Against Starvation

Tribal people in and around the shuttered tea gardens of north Bengal are living on the edge of destitution and are being forced to a life of hard labor and exploitation by local contractors to stave off starvation.

Sali Ram finds it difficult to hide his poverty under his tattered clothes. Clearly undernourished, the 52-year-old worker at the closed Nirpania tea garden in Birpara of Alipurduar district in West Bengal, around 700 km from state capital Kolkata, is the sole breadwinner of his family of five, including three small children.