The Hindu : Tea industry crisis: Bengal seeks Central help

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Dec 11, 2003

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Tea industry crisis: Bengal seeks Central help

By Malabika Bhattacharya

KOLKATA DEC. 10. West Bengal has taken the lead in building a lobby of tea-growing States to pressure the Centre to bail out the tea industry that is witnessing increasing closures of gardens, layoffs and violence.

The Labour Minister, Mohammad Amin, said the State Government was holding talks with Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and other tea-growing States on how best the Centre could be sensitised to the the hardships being faced by lakhs of jobless tea garden workers and the threat posed by the entry of foreign companies into the Indian market.

For the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Government, the current crisis in the tea industry is proving to be a major political headache as well. Over two- dozen gardens have been closed in north Bengal where the economy is already under a strain and the various ethnic groups are going into an overdrive to exploit the situation to their advantage. After last month's violence in the Dalgaon tea estate, triggered by the alleged corrupt practices of a CITU leader, in which 19 persons — all CITU supporters and mostly garden workers — were killed, the Government has begun to look at the problem in its face. There is the realisation that the plight of the tea garden workers could spell disaster both for the Government and the CPI(M), leader of the ruling coalition.

If the trade unions get more combative over the condition of the workers — many of whom died of malnutrition — and take to the streets in north Bengal and here, it would be a blow to the Government's ongoing attempts to curb union militancy for bringing in investment.

Also, the party's allies such as the Forward Bloc and the Opposition Congress are trying to use the issue to hijack the CPI(M)'s support bases in north Bengal, especially in the vast garden areas.

The Commerce Secretary, Sabyasachi Sen, heading a committee, toured the tea growing areas of Terai, Dooars and the hills in north Bengal last week and listened to the grievances of the representatives of garden owners, trade unions, garden managers, marginal growers, local politicians and the people. The committee will soon submit a report to the Government. "We are talking about a deep-seated crisis that casts a shadow over the future of a few lakh people involved in the working of the industry,'' Mr. Sen said. "The situation calls for both short- and long-term measures which we will formulate on the basis of our findings."

The Government has decided to engage the garden workers in the food-for-work programme in rural areas with the help of the local panchayat bodies.

A health drive has also been launched in the garden areas where cases of malaria and blood disorders have been reported.

During their discussions with Mr. Sen, the CITU, the INTUC and other trade unions said that many a garden was closed because the owners had shifted to Kolkata and other places without making the statutory and other payments to the workers.

A few gardens owned by the Centre were also closed, with their workers yet to get their dues.

The State Government has written to the Centre saying that its help and intervention was necessary to handle the situation.

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Tea industry crisis: Bengal seeks Central help