Sandhya Topno, a 16-year-old girl from Charaideo, Assam, was seen carrying her uterus tied around her waist with a piece of cloth. Pregnant at the tender age of 15, she had a complicated delivery, due to which she suffered loss of muscle tone and weakening of pelvic muscles, which eventually causes prolapse of her uterus. Like many other teenage girls, Sandhya was married off when she was just 14. I met her during my research fellowship on the lives of Adivasi women living in the tea estates of Assam.
Says Proshik Das, former employee of an NGO named Prastuti, “In tea estates, young boys usually remain unemployed. Their only job includes loitering and boozing around. Thus the father of the boy marries him off and then citing the marriage, goes to the manager seeking a job for him.”
Due to poverty, the life of a girl revolves around making do with rice and salt. The lack of proper nutrition has led to an alarming rise in cases of anaemia, eclampsia and haemorrhage. In Sandhya’s case, early marriage and lack of nutrition led to her inability to bear the weight of a child, causing a rupture in her pelvic floor.
Sexual and reproductive health practices and rights are alien concepts for young girls in the tea estates. Typically, a girl is married off at an early age. Even if she is not willing to conceive, the pressure from her in-laws to give birth to a male child creates such a burden on her; that even if her body is unfit to conceive, she’s forced to.
Bhuban Tanti, an activist from Bogapani says, “In our tea estates, the locally brewed rice beer infested most male population. They believe that it de-stresses them from the day long hard work that they do in the fields.” Thus, young men, drunk and aggressive, resort to sexual violence. Even as the larger debate on criminalising marital rape evolves, married Adivasi girls continue to face the wrath of their husbands, who violate their sexual rights with impunity.
Clearly, sex education and awareness among the people in tea estates are flawed. There is virtually no knowledge of contraception in these communities. The practice of coitus interruptus (or pull-out method) is the most common practice of birth control. But this is proved to be one of the least effective contraceptive methods as there’s not only lesser chance of preventing pregnancy, but it could lead to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STD), HIV and other venereal diseases.
Shivani, a pre-final year medical student from Madhya Pradesh, said, “The high consumption of tobacco, smoking and alcohol among the male population also gave rise to cases of prostate cancer, testicular cancer and epididymitis, etc. which may also affect the sexual health of men.”
The tea tribe community- one of the most ostracised communities in India – has remained alienated from any dialogue on sexual and reproductive health, rights and practices. The stigma and taboo around such topics flourish in the patriarchal setup of the community. The need to provide more information and immediate counselling, along with providing sexual/gender-based violence support is dire, to ensure better sexual and reproductive health practices.