The Assam state government has a mammoth task on its hands – tackling the growing threat of the second surge of Covid-19 that claimed 55 people on May 6, making this the highest single-day death toll this year. 1,485 fresh cases were reported over the last 24 hours.

What is even more worrying is that the disease has now spread out of bustling urban centres to relatively secluded tea estates with as many as 90 tea garden workers testing positive, reported The Sentinel.

All these people are employed at Zaloni tea estate in Dibrugarh. The district administration has temporarily shut down the tea estate and a temporary isolation centre has been set up in two vacant staff quarters on the estate. A vaccination campaign has been planned for the workers. The district administration has also called for the closure of all weekly markets in the Tengakhat development block under whose jurisdiction the tea estate falls.

Tea is one of the largest revenue earners for Assam and tea-tribes account for at least 17 percent of the state’s population.

Meanwhile, as many as eight wards in Guwahati have been declared Covid hot-spots. These are wards numbered – 3, 8, 14, 16, 24, 28, 29 and 31. Micro-containment zones are being set up in each ward. According to The Sentinel, Ward number 28 has some of the worst affected areas such as Guwahati, Beltola, Basistha, Maidamgaon and Bormotoria, with as many as 723 cases have been reported from these areas as of May 3. This is followed by Ward number 16 where 506 cases were reported from Fatashil Ambari, Bhaskarnagar, Barshapara and Dhirenpara.

However, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is not keen on declaring the entire ward as a hotspot. He told media persons, “Declaring the entire ward as containment zone could cause inconvenience to the people in general and the businesses in particular. We want to control the spread by causing least inconvenience to the people.”

Assam is already reeling under the twin-blows of an earthquake and heavy rains, and this has only exacerbated the Covid situation, leaving more and more people vulnerable. All educational institutes including hostels and coaching centres have now been shut down indefinitely. Class 10 and 12 board exams have also been postponed indefinitely.

As per an order dated May 5, all shops and commercial establishments are to shut down at 2 P.M as would all government and private offices. A night curfew has been instituted from 6 P.M to 5 A.M everyday.

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Assam’s women tea workers are doubly marginalized – firstly as isolated and unassimilated descendants of migrant labourers, and secondly as women. Oxfam’s experience suggests that traditionally people with low incomes in India prioritize boys over girls when allocating limited resources for education, healthcare and nutrition. For example, the research commissioned by Oxfam found that around 78% of female tea workers are either illiterate or can only sign their names to collect their wages (compared to around 40% of male workers). Researchers also found a correlation between workers’ level of education and gender.

It is predominantly women who carry out the labour-intensive job of harvesting tea. This is because women’s hands are perceived as being better suited to plucking the delicate tea leaves for processing. Yet the concentration of women in these low-paid jobs; their low levels of literacy, education and union representation; and their high levels of dependence on employers are strong markers of gender discrimination.

Work in the factories – which is better paid, has better facilities and is regarded as more dignified and prestigious – is done predominantly by men, although women workers interviewed during the research asserted that they are just as capable as men of doing factory work.

There is little room for rest or recreation during the gruelling daily routine at work and at home (see Box 6). Including the unpaid domestic work women do, by the time they go to bed (usually for a maximum of six hours) they have done around 13 hours of physical work, including plucking and carrying up to 30kg of tea leaves. This is sometimes while carrying a baby on their back, and often in temperatures of up to 38 degrees or in torrential monsoon rain.
 

A typical day for a woman tea worker in Assam

• 4am–4:30am: Wake up and clean the house and courtyard (some also need to collect water)
• 5am–6am: Prepare food for the day
• 6am–7am: Get ready and leave for work, walking 8–9km to reach the plot
• 8am–4pm: Work in the garden (if even one minute late she could lose an entire day’s wages)
• 4pm–5pm: Weigh the plucked leaves (assuming manager arrives on time – if not, much later), sometimes collect firewood on way home
• 5pm–8pm: Home, freshen up and prepare dinner
• 8pm–9pm: Eat dinner
• 10pm: Go to bed

Source: Based on actual and average figures and times provided in: TISS. (2019). Decent Work for Tea Plantation Workers in Assam: Constraints, challenges and prospects.

Facilities such as canteens and toilets (which are generally available in the factories, where workers are predominantly men) are lacking in the fields, which is where women mainly work. Researchers learned that because of the presence of mostly male ‘sardars’ (supervisors), women try to find privacy to relieve themselves, moving far away from where their colleagues are working; however, this makes them vulnerable to sexual abuse or attacks by wild animals.

The lack of hygiene facilities in the fields, as well as water shortages at home (for washing menstrual cloths), pose health hazards for women. As a result, many stay at home when menstruating, thus losing out on earnings.

The pressure on women workers in the tea industry continues throughout pregnancy and motherhood. A 2016 fact-finding mission in West Bengal  and Assam by the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition found that women are not given lighter tasks during pregnancy, and while most return to work a month after delivery, some workers reported being put to work the very next day after giving birth. Temporary workers do not receive any maternity benefits.

Anaemia is a leading contributor to maternal deaths in Assam’s tea estates, with 363 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017 – compared with 174 for the rest of India.61 Indeed, according to the British Medical Journal ‘Assam has almost double the national average maternal mortality rate’.62 Yet Oxfam-commissioned research found that pregnant women were missing out on regular health checks because the roads to health centres and hospitals were in such poor condition, which also makes it difficult for ambulances to reach women (they can take a whole day to arrive).

The lack of childcare facilities means that mothers of newborns often work with them strapped to their body – or leave them at home in the care of older children. One woman worker explained that ‘most of the elder girls have to stay at home and manage the [house] work if their mother is a permanent worker in the garden’ and that dropping out of school at the age of 12 is therefore common. This perpetuates the vicious circle of under-education, exploitation and lack of capacity to stand up for their rights.

Another issue that emerged during the research is that domestic violence against women tea workers is common. This is within the context of wider Indian cultural norms that traditionally sanction violence by men to control women and girls, and where gender norms reinforce inequality and lack of women’s agency.
As well as physical violence, one woman worker told researchers how ‘the psychological stress borne by the pluckers is very high inside the gardens’ too. Both this and domestic violence could be an underlying symptom of alcohol abuse, which is common and cuts further into workers’ meagre wages.

As media enquiries have revealed,64 the poverty and hardship of life as a woman worker on Assam’s tea plantations have driven some young women and girls to seek a better life elsewhere. However, they can find themselves in even worse situations, trapped by traffickers in domestic or sexual slavery.

These are some of the many insidious ways in which women workers on Assam’s tea estates are exploited, marginalized, disempowered, abused and ignored. Any attempt to bring about improvements in the lives and working conditions of Assam’s tea workers must therefore begin with addressing the specific challenges and vulnerabilities facing women workers.
—
Click HERE to download the report

Courtesy: https://counterview.org/
 

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Perhaps the void that is produced by death sometimes creates a space – to reflect and to introspect. The despair that some deaths evoke, rather than pushing us to a state of nothingness or blind blame-games should set in motion strings of questions in which we and some of our fellow beings exist and how. Such has been the recent death of Dr Deben Dutta; a doctor/medical officer who was brutally attacked and lynched by a mob on the 31st of August, 2019 at Teok tea estate. Of course, it is beyond painful to come across such tragic news. But pain at times gives us a deeper understanding of living that is beyond the dichotomy of death-life, absence and presence. Thus, along with our condolences for this particular death, in this article, we attempt to look deeper into the paraphernalia of issues of ‘justice’ in question following it. These reflections are imperative at this point as we cannot afford any more of such tear-jerking incidents.

After the death of Dutta, the civil society in Assam, particularly the doctors have called for protests and strikes. Police arrested 21 men, because of the video, which is widely circulated in social media. Although it is a distressing incident, such a ‘death’ inside a tea plantation of Assam is not an unfamiliar one. In colonial and post-colonial times, these ‘deaths’ have also been categorised as ‘spontaneous’ and ‘violent’ means of protests. The news of this incident has sadly ignited a ‘class’ war in the social media. The print and television news media are not left behind. Most of the dominant ‘Assamese’ media houses are calling them ‘uncivilised’ and primitive’, somewhere mentioning them as ‘coolies’. This is certainly not an adequate approach to bring justice by evoking colonial stereotypes.

The term ‘coolie’ has its origin grounded in the history of atrocities and exploitation done to the indentured labourers during colonialism. If today some section of the ‘Assamese’ population privileged by their class and caste are classifying themselves as ‘modern’ subjects, and at the same time painting the ‘adivasis’ on the canvas of ‘other’, it is because they suffer from certain kind of a historical amnesia. They have forgotten that Assam achieved ‘modernity’ because of the work and labour provided by these very ‘adivasis’ in the tea plantations, often under exploitative circumstances that have hardly changed even in contemporary times. The exploited ‘adivasi’ workers are dehumanised by the brahminical/colonial system which privileges the latter. They enjoy a hegemonic authority through the cultivation of norms, culture and idea of progress, civilisation and barbarism. The ‘adivasi’ labourers are dehumanised in the same way as the one who adopts the coloniser’s world as their own and look upon their fellow colonised with anger, disgust and pity, through a profound internalisation of prejudices of the colonisers.

The disciplined workforce is produced through a culture of patronage and in the contemporary situation the figure of burra sahib (senior manager) is the outcome of colonial lordship. Social practices inside the garden are explicitly patriarchal, however the women pluckers inside a garden has been exploited through ‘wage slavery’ to create the system of inequality. Manager’s hukum(order) works through a hierarchy of overseers and supervisors who all are man, however, the role of sardarniis also ‘masculine’ in nature. Work and domination inside the garden along with colonial roots also carries oppressive material practices. The relationship maintained between planters and workers are in the form of mai-baap meaning father and mother, which still exists inside the tea gardens.

Thus, gender, class, caste, and ethnicity are closely embedded within the plantation practices of difference, power, and hierarchy. The social separation inside the garden can be understood through symbols of caste, race and ethnic boundaries, which comprises of rituals, gestures, conversation, demographics and the disciplined body of work. A majority of the plantation workers either belong from lower caste or adivasi community and there is a clear differentiation between the workers and the upper castes planters. The commentary on atrocities cannot be limited to the social history of colonialism. The upper caste ideology towards a lower outcaste is coded within the feudal practices.

We should also scrutinise the economic condition of the plantation labourers.In most of the gardens in Assam they receive a wage of Rs. 167 per day. The student unions Assam All Adivasi Student Assoction of Assam (AASAA) and Assam Tea Tribe Student Association (ATTSA) are still protesting for the increase in wage to Rs. 351 per day. Last week the tea estate management decided that in the upcoming Durga Puja the labourers would not get the usual 20% bonus. This authoritarian resolution was outrageous for the labourers.Under the Payment of Bonus Act, 1965 the minimum bonus payable is 8.33% while the maximum stands at 20%. But the Consultative Committee of Plantation Associations (CCPA) told that the tea industry might not be able to pay more other than the minimum 8.33% due to ongoing recession in the tea industry. While the trade unions and student associations are protesting against the issues of bonus and wage increase of the labourers, all of a sudden, the lynching case took the central stage and the agony shifted against the adivasi community of Assam. Although on 3rd September the AdivasiJatiyaMahasngha, AASAA and ATTSA condemned the incident of Teok tea estate.

Moreover, the dismal state of public health is not a secret. A public health system which is affordable and accessible not only in terms of quantity but also the quality is something that is most needed for the masses. Education, working conditions free from exploitations and humane living conditions are much needed if such deaths or any tragic incidents have to be averted in the near future. If we care about ‘justice’, we also need to address the circumstances that lead up to such violent outburst by a section of people. By merely taking recourse to an idealized romantic picture of Assam’s tea gardens would not serve us much. Without a doubt, we need to face the discomfort of seeing what lays beneath all the beauty of lush green tea gardens of Assam.

Prithiraj Borah is a PhD candidate with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay.

Courtesy: https://countercurrents.org/
 

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Their dues have remained unpaid for over 15 years, an event that has led to a lot of distress among workers, even causing deaths due to starvation during these years.

The Huma Resources Law Network (HRLN) has pursued this cause under the guidance of senior counsel Colin Gonsalves.
 
Hundreds of the workers had died out of starvation during this period. Their cause has been diligently pursued by HRLN and senior advocate Colin Gonsalves through these 15 years. The submission of the Central government was that the dues of the workmen was 249 crores in Assam, 27 crores in Kerala, 70 crores in Tamil Nadu, and 30 crores in West Bengal. In view of this gross underpayment and negligence, the SC ordered that each state government should pay approximately half the dues outstanding by way of interim relief to the suffering workers and their families, within a period of 60 days.
 
All the companies that have been running the tea estates have been summoned by the SC as per a list submitted to the court. The companies have been asked to appear in the next hearing.
 
As per submissions by PBKMS it was recorded that rogue employers had abandoned gardens with unpaid dues of 135 crores for 29 garden in West Bengal and they intend to raise the recovery of total amount in the next hearing. The unions also intend to monitor payment of dues by the State Government and the employers and regular status reports should be provided to the SC order to ensure that money has reached the workers.

In 2010, a Supreme Court Bench presided over by CJI SH Kapadia had stated in its order, “We find that till 2006, this writ petition has been pending, No steps have been taken. The tea estates have been abandoned by the tea companies. The workers are left high and dry. They are living in a pitiable condition. They have not received their dues”. This was the first intervention by the Court in which it ordered the Central Government to use its powers under Sections 16B, 16C, 16D and 16E of the Tea Act to take over gardens and recover dues.
 
The decision comes as an enormous relief to over 300,000 tea garden workers who were forced into a precarious life for the last two decades. Thousands of them had died of starvation and the remaining live in sick state in closed tea garden without ration, drinking water, electricity, school for children and medical dispensaries.

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