Voices of the poor: demystifying the nexus between rights and agency of Bangladesh’s tea workers

ABSTRACT

This article aims to investigate the true situation of rights and agency of the Bangladeshi teagarden workers, drawing insights from James Scott’s theory of ‘public’ and ‘hidden’ transcripts and employing multi-sited ethnography. We collected data through qualitative in-depth interviews, case studies, focus group discussions, and direct observation for this study. Rights, in Scottian terms, are the public transcript to produce agency of the workers but they are, of course, facades. Agency does not truly exist for tea workers. The tea companies strategically dominate the workers for their profit maximisation and industrial sustainability, which constrains workers’ individual and collective bargaining capacity. Tea companies’ shrewd manipulation of public transcripts like managerial prerogatives, worker benefits like registration and free education and even use of alcohol addiction and corruption of the police and courts allow them to pursue a hidden transcript of domination and control. Co-opted trade union leaders, supported by the ruling Party, do little to protect workers’ rights and interests but join with the companies to squelch any attempt to create truly representative trade unions.

KEYWORDS:

• Rights
• agency
• labour movement
• tea workers
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgments

We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on the original manuscript. We also thank Professor Md Mozammel Hoque of the Department of Food Engineering and Tea Technology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology for his support during this study. We also appreciate Jasmin Begum and Nazira Aktar, who were graduate students at the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and worked as research assistants in this project.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by SUST Research Centre, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh [grant number SS/2018/2/39].

Notes on contributors

Md Al-Amin

Md Al-Amin is Professor of Sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. He received PhD at the University of Milan, Italy. He authored a number of articles which were published in various peer-reviewed journals such as Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, The Hong Kong Journal of Social Work, Asian Affairs, Multidisciplinary Journal of Gender Studies, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Labor History, Development in Practice, and International Journal of Environmental Studies. His research interests include gender and development, NGOs interventions of microcredit, neoliberalism, labour studies and development.

Md Nazrul Islam

Md Nazrul Islam is Professor of Political Studies at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh. He received PhD in Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His works appeared in various international peer-reviewed journals including Bandung: Journal of the Global South, Religions, Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, Social Sciences, Politics, Religion & Ideology, Labor History, Development in Practice, and International Journal of Environmental Studies. His most recent publication is a book (co-authored) entitled Islam and Democracy in South Asia: The Case of Bangladesh (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Dr. Islam’s research interests include religion, politics and governance; democracy and human rights; religion, environment and development; and poor and marginalised communities.