210 4 Photo, women in Assam (India) sorting tea leaves under male supervision, c. 1862–1885. 3 Photo, workers wearing baskets during the tea harvest on a plantation in Darjeeling (India), October 2004. Many women and sometimes children worked as tea pickers. They were often members of low or outcast social groups, and lived and worked under strict control in the plantations’ tight hierarchical system. The tea industry became a major employer of wage labour during colonial rule. The tea pickers (coolies) were economically exploited by the mostly British plantation owners through poor working conditions under coercion and low wages.
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