MEASURING MATERIAL WEALTH OF THE TEA GARDEN HOUSEHOLDS OF SONITPUR DISTRICT ASSAM

Abstract

Terms and terminologies like wealth has been least focused in measuring the quality of life of a household, but it is undenial that material wealth indicators not only upgrade the economic but also the social position of a household accumatively. Hence a study on the material wealth of a household is a dire necessity which signifies the actual picture of a family/household. This paper connotes finding out the wealth index of sampled tea tribe household of the Sonitpur district. The tea tribes people have a tale of migrating from the eastern part of India since the colonial times. If we reflect back to the status of tea tribes in term of health education, material wealth, these people had undergone a lack in terms of having two meals a day, delivering more work than their required income, poor or no education and living under doomed condition. This paper dives into the colonial regime and post colonial prominence of tea tribes and accentuate the current status of household of tea estates of Sonitpur district Assam. The sampled household from each tea estates are collected with the help of simple random sampling technique and a wealth index is prepared which shall led forward to comprehensive analysis of the study area. A wealth quantile is prepared with the help of data reduction technique like Principal Component Analysis (PCA).