Quality of Housing Environment and Health Status Among the Female Bidi Workers: A Micro Level Study of Indian Villages

Abstract Housing environment can influence our health in many ways. Health can be adversely affected by poor water quality, bad sanitation condition, nature of houses, housing using fuels and nature of works done by the dwellers for earning the bread. Bidi is also called poor man’s cigarette, made up of coarse uncured tobacco, tied with a string at one end. The bidi rolling is mainly a labor-intensive industry in India, coming under the category of un-organized sector, the lion share being women. The principle objective of this paper is to understand and analyze the quality of housing environment and status of health among the bidi workers. Malda district of West Bengal (India) has been selected as a study area, famous for mango cultivation and sericulture activities. The study is based on primary and secondary sources of data. Health is the most serious problems of workers in bidi industry. The working places of bidi industry are unhygienic, dingy and overcrowded, having little facilities of drinking water, even toilet facility and first aid. During the entire working time the bidi workers are exposed to tobacco fumes, thus these incidences create serious diseases (major and minor). The study also provoked that among the major diseases cough and cold diseases are mostly found (33.33 per cent) and Tuberculosis disease is at the lowest (9.00 per cent). The researchers suggested that there is an urgent need to issue the Health Card to the workers for treatment and curing of various diseases at government hospitals at subsidy rate.