From Labor to Life in Vegetal Geography: Exploring Ontological Marginalization and Critical Externalities in the Plantationscape of a Global South Country

In the ever-expanding era of urbanization where the dominance of the “urban human” increasingly defines global society, marginalized subaltern groups in remote rural spaces remain stark reminders of systemic inequities. Nowhere is this more evident than in India, a rising superpower whose rapid growth paradoxically coexists with deep-rooted societal divides. Within its vegetal geographies, such as the tea plantations of the Global South, landscapes of cultivation are not merely sites of production; they are living terrains where plants, labor, and social hierarchies intertwine, reinforcing the very inequities that urban progress claims to transcend. This study explores the ontological marginalization within the tea plantationscape of the Dooars region in India. Ontological marginalization is conceptualized as the “systematic exclusion of marginalized ways of being,” rooted in colonial histories and perpetuated by modern socioeconomic systems. The findings reveal a paradox of livelihood duality. On one hand, subsistence practices rooted in collective labor, seasonal variability in livelihoods, and reciprocal exchange continue to sustain households. On the other, these practices are increasingly enmeshed in exploitative wage economies that define the vegetal geography of tea gardens. In this landscape, the very plants that anchor livelihoods also structure social relations, tying human survival to cycles of cultivation that reproduce dependency and marginality. The research reveals how historical disruptions, contemporary structural inequalities, and gendered dimensions of exclusion have perpetuated intergenerational poverty and systemic vulnerabilities. It argues that addressing ontological marginalization demands rejecting colonial development logics and embracing justice-based frameworks that value diverse “ways of being, knowing, and surviving.”