Child labour in many forms and guises is again back among the tea garden workers. It was inevitable, given the low wages in tea (lowest in any organised industry, lower than even the agricultural minimum wage) and the thin line that most workers have to walk on between starvation and survival. Of course, there is a view that poverty is not the cause of child labour but the reverse is true. Child labour deprives generations of children of the education that can make them and their families climb out of poverty and the need for labouring at an early age. The present study shows the hard to climb language barrier in the tea garden educational system and the abject poverty that provides the etiology of child labour in the tea gardens.
The present report seems to be a serious totalising effort to understand and change the predicament of the tea worker. This totalisation may be superseded, but will definitely remain a landmark. Young trade union activists, workers and intellectuals, worked on this report with diligence, sobriety and commitment. That is a sign of hope for the proletarian movement in India. I would like to recommend it to be used as a handbook by activists and all who are interested in the tea industry.