英语论文网

and contribute about 96 per cent of the annual production. Out of the total number of gardens, Bangladeshi companies and individual proprietors own 132 gardens. However, among these gardens, individual proprietors own only a little more than 20 per cent of them. All gardens are divided into three categories namely A, B, and C depending on amount of production and percentage of land under tea plantation.

About two-fifths of the total gardens belong to each of A and B category of gardens, while the remaining one-fifth belong to C category. All the gardens belonging to Sterling Companies are A category gardens and occupy about 39 per cent of total land under tea plantation. But Sterling companies occupying only 39 per cent of land produce more than 49 per cent of total tea production of Bangladesh. Thus, productivity of Sterling Companies gardens is far more than that of the gardens of Bangladeshi Companies. Production of tea per hectare is 1,437 kg. Whereas the same for the Bangladeshi companies and proprietary estate is only 961 kg. Total acreage under tea plantation has not increased much over time. As can be noticed from Table 1.1, that over the period of 1990-1998 land under tea plantation increased only by 4.39 per cent, whereas total production rose by 23.61 per cent. As a result, production per hectare rose significantly from 967 kg in 1990 to 1,145 kg in 1998 accounting for about 18.41 per cent increase over nine years time. During the same period, total production of Bangladesh rose from 45,160 metric tons to 55,824 metric tons made tea.

It is encouraging to notice from table 1.2, that the growth of total tea production in Bangladesh over this nine years period is higher compared to the major tea producing countries in South Asia like India, China and Sri-Lanka (see Table 1.2). But still Bangladesh could not increase her share in the world market since her domestic consumption has also increased significantly. It can be observed from table 1.1 that, in 1990, a little more than 40 per cent of total production of tea in Bangladesh was consumed domestically. But this share of consumption increased to more than 60 percent in 1998.Figure 1.1 clearly shows how domestic consumption of tea increases sharply and exceeds total exports of tea in 1994 and 1998. Due to high rate of domestic consumption, her export dropped from 26,970 thousand kg in 1990 to 22,220 thousand kg in 1998.

TEA PLANTATION WORKERS AND THEIR SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND HEALTH CONDITIONS

Tea Plantation Workers

Results of our survey of 100 plantation workers reveal that only a little more than 46 per cent of the workers had visited the nearby Thana headquarter of Srimangal at least once in their life. Among the women, only 35 per cent had visited Srimangal. They do not know anything about what is happening outside their boundary and are isolated from the rest of the country. As a result, their aspiration is very low. With low aspiration they cannot demand anything big. Through our survey we collected information about their aspiration regarding their children's education and career. It was interesting to find out that only about 2 per cent of tea workers aspire that their boy child would study more than本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。