'Life Has Become Easier': What Has Changed For Tea Garden Workers In Assam In Last 10 Years — Ground Report

As a child, Monil Manxi, 43, had to walk over cratered dirt tracks to his school about eight kilometres away from his home — a small mud hut in the labour colony of Nilmoni Tea Estate at Tingkhong in Dibrugarh. 

His parents were workers at the tea garden, earning barely subsistence wages, and so couldn’t afford to send him to a high school which was farther away from the estate. Monil had to drop out of school and had no option but to become an unskilled labourer in the same tea garden. 

Today, his son Bandhan, 14, sits in a modern classroom in a model school located inside the tea garden and aspires to become an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer.

Monil does not have to worry about his son’s higher education, thanks to the scholarship schemes for children from poor and backward communities started by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Assam. 

The Assam government has, over the last eight years, initiated a number of welfare schemes for tea garden workers and employees, and also got the management of gardens to improve living conditions of their permanent and casual employees. 

All that has made a huge difference to the lives of around 70 lakh tea garden workers like Monil in Assam. 

Monil’s son Bandhan zips to the new school — the ‘Nilmoni Cha Bagicha Adarsha Vidyalaya’ — that started functioning from the last academic session in his bicycle over a smooth paved road barely a couple of hundred metres from his concrete two-room house. 

Bandhan’s ‘best friend’ and classmate Sonjib Kondo is also good in studies and wants to become a scientist. He wants to specialise in biochemistry. 

Such dreams had no place in the imagination of children in tea gardens earlier. All they could aspire to was to become drivers or factory workers. It is only after the BJP came to power that they are daring to dream. 

The bicycle that Bandhan rides to school was gifted by the state government under a scheme to help children from poor and backward sections go to school. The road was constructed two years ago under another special state scheme for improving connectivity to and within tea gardens. 

The school was also constructed under another scheme that envisages constructing a high school within most of the 2,500 tea gardens in the state. 

Monil’s wife Sabita, unlike his mother Hema, does not have to travel nearly a kilometre to fetch water. Two years ago, all dwellings in the tea estate, and many other estates like Nilmoni in Assam, got piped water connections under the Union Government’s ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’. 

Till two years ago, Monil used to stay with his family, including his ageing parents, in a mud house. He, like many other workers in the tea garden, got a concrete, two-room dwelling under the Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY). 

He has a proper toilet attached to his house and the womenfolk of his family are spared the daily indignity of going to remote parts of the tea garden to relieve themselves everyday. With LPG cylinders and ovens provided under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the daily trudge to collect firewood is history and cooking has become much easier. 

Not only is education free, the state government now supplies books and school uniforms also for free. Apart from the free midday meals under the Union Government’s PM-POSHAN scheme, the state government also has its schemes for supplementing the midday meals, especially on special occasions. 

Anamika Goala, a worker in the tea garden, tells Swarajya that life has become much easier in the last few years. 

“We used to vote en masse for the Congress in the past. Some of us voted for the BJP in 2016 (Assembly elections). We thought that a new party (BJP) coming to power would make no difference to our lives and we would continue to remain poor. But within a couple of years, we realised that the BJP government was interested in our well-being. Now, all of us vote for the BJP because the BJP is doing many things for us. The Congress, we now realise, used to take us for granted and used us as mere vote banks,” said Anamika. 

A mother of two sons and one daughter, Anamika regrets that the BJP didn’t come to power sooner in the state and at the Centre.

Rajesh Orang, 59, harbours the same regret.

“My entire life has been such a grind. We could barely make ends meet even after working 16 hours a day. It is only now, after I have retired, that I’ve got a pucca house under PMAY and other benefits. At least in my old age things have become better and I know children of my neighbours have a brighter future ahead of them,” Rajesh told Swarajya. 

Meenakshi Manxi, the Anganwadi in-charge at Nilmoni tea garden, is a proud mother of three sons.

“My children are good in studies and have big dreams. Had the BJP government in the state and the Centre not rolled out all the welfare measures, they would have ended up as workers in the tea garden. But thanks to free education, bicycles, free books and uniforms, scholarships etc, my eldest son is a graduate and will enrol for a masters in mathematics. 

“My second son is an undergraduate and plans to study business management. The youngest is in higher secondary first year and wants to become an architect. When we were kids, all we could think of was becoming, at best, a semi-skilled worker in the garden’s factory like my husband Chandrasekhar,”  Meenakshi told Swarajya. 

“The BJP is a Godsend for us,” she added. And not the least because of her new workplace — a gleaming new structure that she is justifiably proud of. 

“They are mini-celebrities because of their intelligence. Both are very good in academics and we all know that they will become famous one day. And it is the BJP that will help them become famous,” said Monil Manxi. 

Pradip and his younger brother Rambau — both unskilled workers in the garden — got a new house under PMAY two years ago.

“My nephews will bring us fame and honour someday. We know they will because we are confident that the BJP government will do all that is required to make them achieve their dreams,” Rambau told Swarajya.  

Amar Dhonowar, 24, and Amlush Urang, 29, were forced to discontinue their studies after completing high school because college was too far away and their parents simply couldn’t afford to send them to college. Both now work as casual staff in the Nilmoni tea garden. 

“Wages were very low and there wouldn’t be enough to eat also. So sending us to college was out of the question. I wish the BJP had come to power earlier. There would have been free scholarships and other facilities and we could have completed our education,” said Amar. 

Amlush recalls his family’s struggles when he was a kid.

“The government has also ensured that the garden managements invest adequately in healthcare infrastructure in the gardens — we now have a quell-equipped 10-bed hospital inside the garden that is good for treating minor ailments and medical emergencies, and two new ambulances have also been provided.

“The Modi government has opened bank accounts for all workers. Old age pensions and all payouts get transferred directly to these new accounts. We even have an ATM inside our garden, something we could never have dreamt of. We would waste one whole day to go to the branch of the nearest bank to withdraw or deposit money and for other transactions. Now its all done in seconds inside our garden. Life has become much easier and more comfortable with the BJP in power in the state and Centre. ‘Double engine sarkar’ is a boon to us,” said Amlush. 

What is also significant is that all the welfare projects — the school building, roads, piped water, construction of houses under PMAY and toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission — have been completed in a time-bound manner. 

“Earlier, under successive Congress governments, projects would drag on for years at a stretch. Now, everything happens very fast,” said Pradip Urang.   

Nimoni Tea Estate is just one example of the countless spread all over Assam of the sea changes that the BJP governments at the state and Centre have brought to the lives of lakhs of workers in the tea gardens. 

The happy faces at Nilmoni, located about 49 kilometres southeast of Dibrugarh city, tell an eloquent story of the good work done by the BJP, and the benefits that accrue from the ‘double engine sarkar’. 

This report is part of Swarajya's 50 Ground Stories Project - an attempt to throw light on themes and topics that are often overlooked or looked down. You can support this initiative by sponsoring as little as Rs 2,999/-. Click here for more details.