Too strong a brew

WHEN Mridul Dowerah, assistant manager of Nandanban, a tea estate in Dibrugarh, saw six labourers he went up to speak with them and they res...

WHEN Mridul Dowerah, assistant manager of Nandanban, a tea estate in Dibrugarh, saw six labourers he went up to speak with them and they responded by beating him to death. The provocation: he had apparently not regularized their jobs.

This is not an isolated case. Dowerah8217;s murder, which took place on June 13, was part of a rising graph of violence in Assam8217;s tea gardens. Two weeks earlier a deputy manager and an assistant manager of another tea estate in Sonitpur district were killed by their labourers.

Assaults on tea executives by their own men was unheard of in the past. The last five years has seen an alarming rise in them. 8216;8216;There have been 29 cases of assault on managers and assistant managers by workers since 1998 that have resulted in the death of at least five executives,8217;8217; says Dhiraj Kakoti, secretary of the Assam Branch Indian Tea Association ABITA.

Alarmed by the recent trouble in the tea gardens, many are now looking for its causes. Union leader and general secretary of the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha Madhusudan Khandait puts the problem down to low wages. 8216;8216;Living conditions of the labourers have not improved, nor have wages and other facilities. The amount of bonus has been reducing year after year, while unemployment too is increasing among the labourer community.8217;8217;

For over two decades workers got a bonus at the rate of 20 per cent. But with the industry on a downslide, most of the companies cut their bonus to 8.33 percent8212;the minimum prescribed by the government. This caused widespread resentment among the labourers.

The problem of low wages is compounded by a low literacy rate. Over 43 percent of labourers8217; children do not go to school8212;in violation of the Assam Plantation Labour Rules, 1956, under which it is mandatory for every plantation employer to provide primary education to the labourers8217; children. A fact-finding team comprising many trade unions, in a report submitted in 1999 said tea labourers were the lowest paid among the unskilled labourers in the state.

On the health front, things are dismal too. Infant mortality rate in the tea gardens is higher than Assam8217;s 76 out of 1000 ratio. The national rate is pegged at 68.

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Assam8217;s tea industry is currently passing through one of its worst phases. Production is up while India8217;s share in the world market has gone down from 26 percent in 1995 to 13 percent in 2001.

As Indian tea loses out in the international market, several companies have laid off temporary labourers. 8216;8216;The situation calls for a serious review and the state government should take the initiative,8217;8217; says ACMS general secretary Khandait.

In Assam, the tea community has a major hold in the ruling Congress . But even that has failed to end the brewing trouble in the tea gardens.