Sandhya Pasoni at a training session at Assam Agricultural University. Telegraph picture

Jorhat, Dec. 16: With women planters making a mark among small tea growers in the state, the All Assam Small Tea Growers Association has decided to send a group of women planters to South India on an exposure tour.

“A large number of Assamese women are taking to tea-growing. We have approached the Tea Board of India to sponsor a trip to the South for the women planters, where a large number of women small tea growers have organised themselves into self-help groups,” Cheniram Khanikor, the president of the association, said.

From among the small group of women tea growers, Kakoli Dey of Dhekiajuli, Sandhya Pasoni of Akshaybari Sonarigaon, Meleng Balisapori of Jorhat and Lonima Phukan of Bahupathar, Golaghat, all from diverse backgrounds and different places, have each admitted the need for a platform to air their grievances and gain from government schemes meant to promote women.

This group of women growers have had to fight social stigma and other problems to create a niche for themselves in this field and pave the way for others to follow.

Narrating her initial years of struggle, Kakoli said she went into the business with the help of her family after the death of her husband.

“I had a five-year-old son and was running a beauty parlour. With finances running low, my younger sister’s husband, a field agent, showed me the path and took me to a bank to arrange for a loan,” she said.

“My first application was summarily dismissed. However, I persisted and finally got the loan. I bought 16 bighas of land with it,” Kakoli said.

She faced taunts and rebukes from her in-laws and neighbours and had to make innumerable trips to the bank before the loan was sanctioned.

Today, she is an executive member of the Dhekiajuli Small Tea Growers’ Association.

Lonima Phukan had begun a nursery and the tea garden with her husband, but he fell sick and she was forced to go it alone. “I was often greeted with comments like ‘the man of the house is going out while the woman is sitting at home’,” she said. “But I had to go on, sometimes living on boiled kosu leaves, for the sake of my son and daughter, both of whom were very young then.”

Sandhya did not get much support from her husband but strived on by tilling, planting, plucking, weeding and spraying all on her own.

“From 2001 till today, I have extended my area from two bighas to four and will continue to bring in more land to feed and educate my two daughters,” she said.

In the All Assam Small Tea Growers’ Association meeting to be held in March, Sandhya is the only woman from mid-Jorhat to be invited. She has also inspired several women of the Pubali self-help group to take to tea cultivation.

M. Taparia, co-ordinator of the small tea growers’ advisory programme, Assam Agricultural University, said the 30 women tea growers trained by them were found to be more sincere, better learners and better implementers than the men.