Counting Pennies, Carrying Stress: The Mental Health Impact of Low Wages on Tea Garden Workers in Sylhet and Moulvibazar

The workers in tea gardens of Sylhet and Moulvibazar (such as quota-based deductions, punitive fines, uneven payment schedules and absence of transparency) are not only subjected to economic hardship, but also to a kind of psychological oppression, which informs their daily choices about food, healthcare and the future of their children.It was a qualitative study that used an interpretivist approach, where the researchers examined how workers considered wage and payment practices as ways of getting into psychological distress and how these perceptions differed by gender, job role, and employment status.The main analytic sample was formed by 12 participants, including individual interviews, a triadic interview, and one group interview held in Sylhet, where the participants were recruited using purposive maximum-variation sampling; a second group interview held in Moulvibazar was used only to conduct triangulation with the context and is not included in the analytic sample.There were high refusal rates which limited the overall recruitment.In-depth interviews were semi-structured and in Bangali and the local dialect, Sylheti, and analysed through reflexive thematic analysis.It was found to be associated with six themes:(1) wage insufficiency and day-to-day survival trade-offs; (2) the timing of payment, quota regulations, and acute stress cycles; (3) deductions, the quality of ration, and perceived unfairness as a psychological pressure; (4) gendered burden, domestic pressure, and emotional stress; (5)