Women Beedi Workers of Cooch Behar, West Bengal: Accessibility of Welfare Programmes

The labour market in India is largely unorganised in character, employing 93 per cent of the country’s labour force. India is a country where female work participation rate is very low, yet some specific sectors like beedi manufacturing have an overwhelming female work participation. Today, beedi manufacturing is a traditional and largely home-based industry in India in which 98 per cent of beedi workers are females. This article attempts to capture the accessibility of labour welfare programmes by female beedi workers in the Cooch Behar district of West Bengal. As a welfare state, the Government of India, along with the state government of West Bengal, has enacted several welfare schemes to protect the basic social needs of these women workers. But their backwardness, illiteracy combined with poverty, and a lack of administrative transparency appear to be major constraints in female beedi workers having any access to welfare programmes.