Uplift and political transition of the tea tribes

Bishaldeep Kakati,

(Advocate Gauhati High Court)

Bagmita Borthakur

History has its tales that the tea leaves were discovered in Assam during the British Raj. A British officer named Robert Bruce bought many Adivasi and tribal communities from states of present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, to work in the various tea estates of Assam in 1823. By 1862 there were 160 tea estates in Assam. In Assam, according to the Directorate of Welfare of Tea Tribes, there are at present, around 800 tea estates, and out of these, Dibrugarh leads the list with 177 tea estates.

The tea tribes in Assam form a distinct part of its population and they are the descendants of Adivasi communities such as Munda, Oraon, Santhal, and other tribals of the mainland of India. The interesting part of the tea tribe community is that these people are recognized as STs in their own states, but in Assam, the debate still lingers regarding providing them the ST status. The tribes since a long time have experienced deprivation, exploitation, suppression and that has put a big question on their identity. Past years' data has also shown that the literacy rates of the tea tribes is as low as 23% and more than 70% of them are either landless or reside in encroached forest land. The Parliament also passed the Plantations Labour Act, 1951, which underwent many amendments over the years for socio-economic development and employment of labour by tea companies for production. However, failure to properly implement the provisions of this Act meant that the condition of the plantation labourers further degraded and the health and other social security related issues of these labourers further worsened. In fact, there have been always debates and conflicts regarding fixing of the daily wage of tea workers and the wage has varied from time to time, but has seldom brought much relief to the tea workers.

The tea tribes comprise of about 17% of the total population of Assam (which is around 31 million), and, therefore, it is important to safeguard their interests for the better benefit of the state as a whole. But the new government has actually come as a savior for the tea tribes in order to rejuvenate their interests and also solve their long-pending issues and thereby uplift their socio-economic condition. The government has already taken many steps to facilitate scholarships for pre-matric and post-matric students, engage youth in ANM/GNM training, established around 119 new model schools in tea gardens, etc., to uplift their literacy rate and also make them educated. In the health sector, the government has already conducted around 66,396 medical camps in 445 tea garden areas which benefitted 27,60,017 citizens dwelling in the tea gardens. The government has also come up with schemes such as Wage Compensation Scheme for pregnant women residing in the tea garden areas under which 36,000 tea workers have received Rs 12,000 in the last five years. The Jan Dhan Yojana alongside Direct Benefit Transfer scheme of the government has also provided significant relief to the tea workers as already a sum of Rs 8,000 has been disbursed to 7,46,667 tea workers ((Chai Bagicha DhanPuraskar Mela). In fact, the government has also tried to connect the tea workers of Assam with the mainstream by not only providing them with smartphones but also via the banking system.

In the 2021-22 Budget of Assam, provisions have been included for the all-round holistic development of the community as the government intended to provide assistance to 805 tea estates and thus provide tap water connections, piped gas supply and free electricity to 2,69,648 people from the community. In fact, in the 2022-23 Budget, the government proposed infrastructural development support for tea tourism and, at the same time, improve the health and educational conditions and other facilities of the tea garden workers and their families. To promote tea tourism, the government has proposed to build guest house facilities inside the tea garden by investing up to Rs 2 crore to 50 selected estates during 2022-23. Hence, it is evident that the new government has really been keen to uplift the socio-economic conditions of the tea tribes, establish their identity and thus, not make them feel alienated from the mainstream.

The tea tribe community was traditionally a vote bank of the Congress but with the timely steps taken by the BJP government in terms of providing cash benefits to pregnant women, money to meritorious students, setting up of schools, funds to the youths for setting up small businesses, etc, it has been able to make in roads and thereby pull the tea tribes in their favour, thus breaking the tradition tea tribe vote bank of Congress. In the recently concluded 2021 elections, the BJP and its allies bagged 33 seats out of the 40 where tea tribes play a decisive role. Thus, it is evident that the BJP government somewhere down the line has been able to win the hearts of the tea tribes of Assam to an extent, but there still lies a lot of issues that the government needs to resolve at the earliest in order to not only uplift the tea tribes of Assam but also uphold the trust that the community has bestowed upon the government.

The BJP government has no doubt brought various schemes and undertaken many steps for the betterment of the tea tribes, but there are still issues pertaining to their health, education, infrastructure and sanitization that need to be addressed. It also needs to come up with a proper order to fix the daily wages of the tea workers so as to not only enhance their standard of living but also save them from the ill effects of inflation. However, in Assam, there exists conflicts between original inhabitants of the area and the more recent settlers known as the sons-of-the-soils, as pointed out by Myron Wiener. This theory is relatable when we confabulate about whether or not to give ST status to the tea tribes of Assam, considering their migratory status to the land of Assam. But, the conspicuous fact is that in spite of not awarding the ST status to the tea tribes of Assam till date, the government has been trying its best to uplift the tea tribes of Assam via schemes and aids, so as to not alienate them from the main scheme of development and thereby ensure that the tribe never suffer from an identity crisis in the state.