Ivory Tower: Women face drudgery, health risks in turmeric farming, says study

WOMEN play a significant role in the cultivation of turmeric and follow traditional practices in many rural areas. The major activities carried out by women workers in turmeric cultivation are labour-intensive and time-consuming. The manual nature of the work can lead to various drudgery and occupational health hazards among women workers.

A study was conducted by a Phd student of Punjab Agricultural University’s Department of Resource Management and Consumer Science, Gayatri Moharana under the guidance of Dr Sharanbir Kaur to study the existing practices and extent of involvement of women workers in different activities and to identify drudgery and occupational health hazards of women workers involved in turmeric cultivation.

In present scenario, the farmers are looking for a new cropping pattern with high valued crops so that household income increases. In Punjab, it has been observed that turmeric is being cultivated by farmers as an inter-crop.

Women play a major role in turmeric cultivation which is being mostly done manually leads to drudgery and creating health problems among them. This involves lots of time and physical effort of the women workers. Keeping this view a study was conducted in Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur districts of Punjab with an objective to identify the drudgery of farm women involved in turmeric cultivation. Data were collected through primary sources with the help of structured interview schedule and participatory observations methods while performing different tasks related to turmeric crop.

Results revealed that most of the tasks were seasonal and take lots of time and physical effort responsible for drudgery and health hazards. Maximum time consumed in separating rhizomes (10 to 12 hrs/day) followed by harvesting, gathering, drying (8 to 10 ins/day) and rest of the activities took 6108 hours except boiling. It was seen that the workers were less comfortable while using traditional technologies while doing boiling/ followed by harvesting and sieving. It was evident that in most of the activities static awkward postures and repetitive movements were adopted by the workers by adopting sitting, squatting, bending and twisting of body parts. These prolonged awkward postures lead to musculoskeletal problem in the long run and also responsible for occupational health hazards.

Except harvesting (50.00 %) and carrying produces (33.33%) all of the post-harvest activities such as separating finger rhizome from mother rhizome. drying. cleaning, grading 8 sorting. packaging and storage were considered as repetitive task and forceful activities In all the activities body parts such as topper arm, lower arm, palm, fingers, shoulder, neck, head, upper and lower back were used repeatedly and forcefully.

Hence, this study suggested for further suitable ergonomic interventions of women friendly technologies such as improved harvester, boiling drum and polishing machine to reduce drudgery and occupational health hazards of women workers.

Jalandhar