Celebrations in Dooars tea gardens in anticipation of Draupadi Murmu’s win

Celebrations broke out in the tea gardens in Dooars area of north Bengal on Thursday in anticipation of Droupadi Murmu, the NDA presidential candidate, winning the presidential poll. The tea plucker, mostly women from the santhal community to which Murmu belongs, lined up their baskets of tea leaves on the road in the tea gardens after their duty hours, sang and danced together to express their joy over the prospect of a tribal woman assuming the highest constitutional post in the country.

The labourers are paid by the tea garden authorities after they deposit their baskets of plucked leaves.

An overwhelming majority of the tea workers in the Dooars are tribals who had migrated from Chhota Nagpur, now in Jharkhand, about a century ago.

At Danguajhar tea estate, located about 16 km from Jalpaiguri town, the tea workers were agog with excitement. The men used plastic drums to keep rhythm as the women workers broke into songs and danced. Sikarpur tea estate workers played the madal, a hand drum used in folk music, and danced in glee.

Excitement was evident among the tea workers like Bijli Oraon, Rohit Roshan Tirki, Kusum Kusum Ratia and their colleagues. ”It is a matter of great pride and honour that a woman of our community is going to adorn the highest office of the country. We are extremely happy. Droupadi Murmu is one of us and we hope that she will do something good for us,” they told PTI. The exhilaration was the highest among the younger generation of women adivasi tea workers. The young women said they consider Murmu as their ideal. ”Her elevation serves as great encouragement to us. We hope she will do something for us, the poor tea labourers,” they said. Tirki hoped that more and more tribal women will join the various fields of work and make their mark in the society. ”So long we only saw them slaving away in the tea gardens. But now we see a future when they will change and take on responsibilties in many more field in the society,” he said. Majority of the tribal tea workers in north Bengal are labourers. In spite of their high workforce participation rate, their income is very low. Over the years, they have remained labourers and have not done much to effect occupational diversification. Their economic condition as a result has not advanced and tuberculosis is rampant among the tea workers. With many tea gardens closing down over the years the young women of the tea workers families are often prey to trafficking.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)