ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the understandings and workings of agency among the tea plantation workers of Dooars. Their stories encapsulate the various ways in which the women exercise their agency in a prevailing structure of constraints. Ranging from expressions of will to counter-attack to critiques, the women's everyday lives are a kaleidoscope of actions and inactions which places them as agential beings. The chapter maps out the agential behaviour which originates not only from material appropriations but also personal humiliation characterising exploitation. The various forms of everyday agency could be identified in patterns of arguing, ridiculing, deception as well as taking and executing decisions which at a glance seemed counterproductive. The conception of agency has to be explored in terms of the specific forms of expression, modalities in varied social circumstances and the grammar of concepts in which its meaning resides.
