Special Correspondent
SILCHAR: Among the 104 tea estates of Barak Valley, Rosekandy Tea Estate has made a place of distinction for its good management, healthy relations with labour and also for its social obligation. There has hardly been any incident of acrimony in respect of regular payment of wages, distribution of rations and most important bonus. The estate has been known for the production of best quality green leaf, selling 8 lakh kg annually in the valley market. In fact, it is a dominant brand and quite popular as a beverage of taste and flavour.
All this has been possible due to the hard work and untiring effort of Ishwar Bhai Ubadiya, manager, with excellent managerial skill and a great social face. But, the high tradition of a well managed and well governed tea estate got a sudden jerk and jolt when some trouble mongers purely for self-aggrandizement and ill motive hatched a conspiracy against the management. The tea industry as a whole too got a shock. Fictitious and concocted grounds were built up by the leader of the conspirators, Babul Kumar, a self projected leader of workers and his henchmen, against the manager.
Stoking the flame of passion and hatred, Ishwar Bhai Ubadiya was made the prime target. The workers were incited and provoked on the grounds that there is no freedom of expression and to raise voice of protest in the tea estate. Workers are denied justice and their mandated benefits. A close monitoring of the hot situation brewing across the tea estate made it clear it was a case of leadership hegemony of vested interests. It also centred around collection of toll gate collection and to have a dominant role in the allotment of benefits of social schemes like PMAY and Deen Dayal Upadhayay kutir among workers. All sorts of coercive and threatening gestures by the leaders failed to move IB Ubadiya.
The situation reached its climax by May end and sensing it was going out of control, the management declared a lockout in June in the hope that good sense would prevail and normalcy return. From July 1, the lockout was lifted. But, the dastardly attack on manager Ubadiya by the gang of trouble makers and the setting on fire of labour quarters again forced the management to declare lockout and this continues. The administration had to act tough to save the only industry of the valley.
Babul Kumar, the mastermind of all trouble, and his associates, Jaydeep Mali and Dilip Ree were taken into custody by the police on Friday, produced before the CJM Court and sent to jail. Jaymati Kumar, wife of Babul, her aides Geeta Pandey and 7 others were also arrested for blocking Silchar-Dwarbond Road along the tea estate in protest against the arrest of their leaders. According to observers, the administration should have taken stringent measures at the initial stage against these forces. The positive signal is that there was no political interference. The sooner the tea estate re opens, the better for the British made industry, the mainstay of Barak economy.