Manali Karmakar 
Mittwoch, den 1. Juli 2026, 18:00–20.00 Uhr
Universität Oldenburg, A14 Hörsaal 3

Karala Valley Tea Garden is owned and operated by Ellenbarrie Tea and Industries Limited. The tea garden workers primarily belong to marginalized communities, with women workers comprising 60–65% of the total workforce. Surrounded by a lustrous green valley, the Karala Valley Tea garden – a few minutes away from Jalpaiguri (Town) – seems like a different world, open, green, and unhurried. The phrase seems like a different world, has a literal as well as a metaphorical connotation. Metaphorically, the phrase foregrounds how, regardless of their belonging to a city equipped with administrative, educational, and medical infrastructure, the narratives of human rights violence against the tea garden workers draw a stark contrast with the lived realities of the city-based people, thus presenting them as belonging to a different world. The tea worker communities have historically been the victims of gender-based violence, leading to intergenerational trauma. 

This paper focuses on the intergenerational reproductive trauma of the women workers of the Karala Valley Tea garden. The paper draws on narrative and phenomenological research design, and critical perspectives from critical medical humanities, to examine how the reproductive rights and decision-making of the women workers are systematically violated in the maternity ward of the city hospital. It dives deep into the concept of obstetric violence to reflect on the underlying historical reasons of systemic violence that inform the doctor–patient relationship in the maternity ward. In this regard, the paper also draws on the theoretical concept of care to reflect on how the narrative of care is deployed by the medical practitioners to regulate the maternal bodies. 

Keywords: reproductive choice and decision-making, intergenerational trauma, systemic violence, disenfranchised grief, Karala Valley Tea Garden, Women Workers

Bionote: Dr. Manali Karmakar is a senior-grade Assistant Professor at the Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai. She is the recipient of the 2025 Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. Karmakar is the principal investigator of the ICSSR project on Reproductive Justice, Decision-Making, and Motherhood. Her research publications employ a narrative and phenomenological approach to analyse issues related to sexual and reproductive health and rights, posthumanism, and disability studies.