The Hardworking Female Tea-Pickers Of Assam

With natural beauty and fields that stretch for miles, a community of hard-working women spend their day plucking leaves from tea plants so they can be dried and used for brewing tea.

Photographer Anuwar Hazarika travelled to Assam, India, on International Women’s Day to explore the working conditions that face the Assamese women.

Anuwar, 32, said: “It makes me feel proud to expose this story because in every sip of tea, lies the hard labour of these women.

“The tea industry is the biggest industry of my state, Assam.

“Tea is a cash crop here and is exported to almost all countries – almost every Assamese drinks tea.”

The earliest records of fields reveal that the Nonoi plantation was established in the early 1940s.

And here, the tea leaves are primarily cultivated on the plain’s undulating terrain and hill slopes. “Here we have both large and small tea gardens,” Anuwar added.

“During winter, the tea bushes are pruned and from March the plucking of new leaves starts.

“The women do the plucking and they often work for eight hours a day. It depends on the size of the tea estate for how many women work there.

“The leaves are then sent to the factories for processing at the end of the day.”