Home ›› 29 Aug 2022 ›› Editorial
The long procession is moving forward. All traffic has halted on the road. Onlookers standing on both sides of the road curiously watch it unfold. Those exhausted, frail people, small in stature, seem to have suddenly transformed. The men, women, children, and the elderly among them are all victims of malnutrition. On top of that, there are also hundreds of years of under-appreciation and frustration. With broken hearts and chests full of hope, they are screaming: "Our demands have to be accepted. How much more do we have to endure?” Many workers also have slogans written on their backs. For example, on the back of a worker named Ujjal Mia was written: "Pay me Tk 300 wages, or else put a bullet in my chest instead." These are poignant slogans and soul-crushing sounds.
Up to this point, there had never been such focus on the life of tea garden workers and their issues. Most of the tea garden owners are highly influential people and from the elite of society. Some of them run big media outlets as well. For obvious reasons, coverage highlighting the plight of the tea workers has been negligible until now.
What we see, more often than not, are photographs of tea workers carrying baskets while labouring in lush green vast tea estates. And people from urban Bangladesh throng these places attracted by the sheer beauty of these places. Visitors like to take pictures of themselves with baskets on their heads to resemble tea workers. Sometimes, television programmes featured the elegance and comfort of the bungalows owned by the tea plantation managers as well as the way of life of the workers. Such arrangements are used to stimulate people in their daily lives. Other than this, the common people were uninterested in their livelihood and plight.
The garden administrators forbade the researchers from entering while they went to work on the labourers’ lives and livelihood.
Researchers frequently attempted to contact plantation labour leaders. Little was known about their lives because the plantations were still some distance from the urban centres and the workers were restricted to certain areas around the estates.
However, researchers who are close to them have the chance to know about their issues, and numerous donors or NGOs are eager to cooperate in this area. They also launched a kind of business with employees.
Workers in some regions started speaking up about their concerns eight or ten years ago, albeit in a hushed voice. People know some of this in bits and pieces. The well-known book "Duti Pata Ekti Kuri" by author Mulkraj Anand is a history and a witness to several events and it merits equal testimony to the plight of the tea workers of South Asia.
In 1937, the Indian writer Mulkraj published a book about the tea workers of Assam from England. As soon as it came out, it was banned in several European countries. The book was widely praised when it was published in India seven years later. The author claims that once upon a time, the king of Ahom, or Assam, gave an Englishman by the name of Robert Bruce permission to remain in the capital since he was a trusted ally to the king. One day, Bruce came to know that the state's forest contained a bunch of tea trees. The East India Company received the information from Bruce, and after examining the trees, the company's personnel determined that the information was accurate. At that time, only Chinese tea was available on the market. They find out that the tea plant discovered in Assam is superior to Chinese tea leaves.
Incidentally, the Ahom king was at war with one of his neighbouring kings, and Bruce urged the East India Company to help the Ahom king. At this time, the company adopted its characteristic policy of helping in war and dethroned both kings and took possession of both kingdoms. Along with the occupation, crores of gold coins were seized, and England established the famous Assam Tea Company here.
Famine and several plagues at the time caused countless deaths in India. The British government gave this issue attention. They made an effort to entice the famine-struck people by offering them opulent cuisine, lavish clothing, and rent-free accommodation. Assam saw an unprecedented influx of destitute people who abandoned their homes in the belief that they would be liberated from the clutches of starvation.
After clearing the forest, tea trees were planted in the hills and valleys. This practice gradually spread to Darjeeling, Dooars, and the former East Bengal, or Bangladesh. The British sent workers to work on tea plantations across these regions. They worked to clear the forests in the Chittagong, Sylhet, and Srimangal regions so that tea plantations could be formed.
In the book, Mulkraj Anand claimed that the working conditions in Indian tea plantations were worse than those experienced by slaves in North America.
In the past 200 years, the situation has mostly remained unchanged. The starting pay scale for tea workers was quite low. Their daily pay was Tk 48 in 2009, which is not too long ago.
It was raised to Tk 69 in response to demands, and then it was raised once more to Tk 120 in 2016 in response to workers' demands. Following that, there was no increase in their pay. The cost of essentials has significantly grown since then. In recent years, the cost to the homeowner of hiring house help has climbed by Tk 200–300 each month. Why can't the employees afford their daily staples of rice and lentils, even when the plantation owners are reaping a large amount of profit by growing tea on government-owned land with minimal lease cost?
Workers’ wages should be fixed every two years based on negotiations between the owners and the workers. The last contract period ended in December 2020. After 13 meetings between the two sides in 19 months, no decision was made on the new wages. The workers went on a two-hour strike on August 9 to demand an increase in wages.
An indefinite strike then began on August 13. However, the workers refused to accept the proposal to increase their wages from Tk 14 to Tk 134. They want only Tk 300. Then on August 21, the daily wage was increased by Tk 25, to Tk 145.
The daily wages, however, have been raised to Tk 170 amid their ongoing movement across the country seeking a pay increase.
The announcement came after a meeting between the Prime Minister and the tea garden owners' organization Bangladesh Tea Association (BTA) at the PM's official Ganabhaban residence on Saturday.
The workers say that the labour leaders have been forced to call off the strike yielding to pressure from government officials and public representatives. The labour leaders say that since the workers have made them leaders through their votes, they cannot stop the workers if they want to remain in the movement.
According to media reports on August 23, some labour leaders accepted the daily wage of Tk 145 and signed an agreement withdrawing the strike and resuming work on behalf of the workers. On learning this, a section of the workers accepted it, but most of the workers were angered by this; for this, they condemned the labour leaders.
The employees claimed that the item that cost Tk 100 two years ago now costs double that amount. “We are unable to survive by eating normally as a result. I will shed blood if necessary, but I won't work if the demand is not met. We won’t stop the movement even if the trade unions want us to do so”.
To ensure that the incidents of the past are not repeated, everyone must exercise caution. This did not free them from that life of servitude but rather maintained it and made it much tougher for them today.
In the country's 163 tea estates, there are 1,03,000 registered employees and 35,000 unregistered ones. The tea garden's leaf-picking season has arrived. Because of the workers' strike, the trees' leaves have withered.
In a garden, leaves mature too quickly if they are not picked for 10 to 15 days. Since they don't brew tea, they must be thrown away. Plantation owners are losing roughly Tk 30 crore per day as a result of the strike. Nobody is aware of the potential repercussions if the loss is significant. However, we should all hope that the sad occurrences are over, that we have learned from the past, and that we do not have to witness any more unfortunate historical events.
The writer is a freelance columnist. She can be contacted at [email protected]
