Tea Plantation Lebour in India This amount is deposited on the worker's name and is returned at the time of retirement or resignation. The worker can take advances from his or her fund for certain purposes; such as illness, daughter’s marriage, construction of own house, etc. The nature of savings other than the Provident Fund has been summarised in Table 12. TABLE 12 Nature of Savings Nil Bank PO LIC Put. SG Daoars 42 19 4 14 8 0 Terai , . 29 7 2 8 0 0 Darjeeling, 17 9 0 2 0 35 Total. 88 35 6 24 8 36 PO: Post Office LIC: Life.Insurance Pvt: mairly Peerless SG: NOTE: Savings Group (sce explanation in text). The total number of households comes to more than the actusl number of hou_sehulds tovered because some of the households have more than one form of saving and these have been recorded separately each time. C:)f the 182 houscholds covered, 88 of them (48 per cent) had no savings. This is a fairly high proportion and it perhaps indicates the level of living of the workers. It would be incorrect to assume that tl:nese workers live in isolated areas and hence do not have access to the different types of saving schemes. The workers are aware that banks and the post offices offer them interests for their money. The nationalised banks have branches in the townships near the plantations and post offices—or. sub-post offices—are quite accessible. Agents of the I_‘ife Insurance Corporation also visit the labour lines and try and convince workers to buy policies. In Dooars, some private savings organisations such as Pearless Corporation have their agents who persuade workers to save with them. These organisations offer higher rates of interests than the banks and post office. Therefore if the savings’ rate islow among these workers it indicates that they have little surplus for such purposes. . ‘ 78 Tea Plantation Workers in West Bengal In Darjeeling, where the household income is higher than that of. the other two districts, savings too is higher. The workers have developed their own method of saving, This is called the Savings Group and it is popular among the women. A group of women get together to form a Savings Group. They decide on what would be the monthly or weelly contribution of each member. This forms the‘kitty’ and the entire amount is given to one member. In the next round another member gets the amount collected and so on t1l the chain of members is completed. For example, if there are ten members contributing Rs. 10 every week the total collected is Rs. 100. This is given to one member. In the following week another member gets the amount collected and so on. Hence after 10 weeks each member gets Rs. 100. The main advantage the members have in this scheme is that they get lump sums of money which they can invest elsewhere or use for themselves. We found that 35 of the householdsin Darjeeling(56 per cent) were involved in this type of savings. An analysis of the district-wise break-up of savings shows that around 57 per cent of the households in Dooars and 63 per cent of the households in Terai did not have any savings. It is only after taking into account Darjecling that the proportion of households with no savings come down to 48 per cent. The workers in Dooars and Terai preferred to deposit their savings in banks. Aréund 42 per cent of the households having savings in Dooars and 41 per cent in Terai saved in banks. This was followed by the Life Insurance Corporation(31 per cent in Dooars and 47 per cent in Terai). Six of the households in the two districts had savings in the post office and eight houscholds in Dooars saved with Peerless. Conclusion In general the living conditions of plantation workers in the State was poor and there was a need to improve them. As compared to the living standards of agricultural workers the plantation workers certainly have a higher level. However it must be kept in mind that the plantation is at present a profitable industry and in this respect very little of the affluence that one sees in the lifestyles of the managers and other executives connected with the tea industryis visible where the worleers are concerned, There is an extremely wide gulf between these lifestyles 79