Tea Plucking, Munnar

The hill station of Munnar can well be described as a cluster of tea towns. These towns become most active in the mornings when thousands of labourers begin their work in the estates.

Tea plucking is the sole domain of women while the men are mostly employed in factories. Most of the labourers are descendants of the Tamil population who migrated from the nearby state of Tamil Nadu in the later half of the nineteenth century.

About 80 percent of the total tea cultivation in Kerala is in the Idukki district and a major portion of this is situated in and around Munnar. Wayanad and Thiruvananthapuram are the other districts where tea is planted on a large scale.