Assam tea workers comprise 17% of Assam’s population. Their vote decides 40 of the state’s 126 assembly seats.
Growers in March convinced a high court in Assam to halt a 50-rupee per day interim wage increase for tea workers. The Indian Tea Association was joined by 17 tea companies in filing the motion, citing the state’s failure in February to properly examine financial and other impacts via subcommittee. In India, the state sets the minimum wage paid by tea companies.
In mid-March, the Gauhati High Court ruled that garden managers are at liberty to pay the interim wage hike, but it is not mandatory, pending further review. It is not known how many growers decided to voluntarily pay the interim wage increase.
The decision means tea estates can continue to pay workers a minimum of INRs167, about US$2.30 per day (US$1.00=INR73.00). In the hotly contested Assam State elections India’s National Congress Party promised to more than double the daily wage to INR365. The ruling BJP promises to increase tea wages to INR351 per day. Neither party has delivered on its promised increase. In February workers called the INR50 hike “insufficient.” In Kerala in South India, wages are INR380 per day.
Assam state elections are held in three phases with balloting underway for 47 of the 126-seat assembly and 264 candidates for state office. Tea plantations dominate 38 of the 47 constituencies that balloted during phase 1, with 8.1 million electors eligible to vote in the first phase. Turnout was 77%, according to Assam’s Chief Electoral Officer. Balloting continues through early April. The Gauhati court scheduled a hearing on the wage hike April 23 — two weeks after polling closes.
Shift in Party Loyalty
In previous election cycles the tea tribes, which make up 17% of the state’s population and 30-35% of voters, reliably voted for candidates of the National Congress Party. That changed in the 2014 election as many tea workers supported Narendra Modi’s BJP. The term “tea tribes” informally describes members of the Adivasi.
Tea plantations employ 1.16 million to pluck and process and an additional 5 million in ancillary activities. The tea industry is India’s second largest employer. In Assam there are 800 registered gardens. The number of smallholders who harvest tea on their own property increased during the past 15 years. Together smallholders produce 20% of the state’s tea. Assam produces more than half of India’s total.
In 2019 BJP dislodged two of the Congress Party’s Lok Sabha seats, one in Dibrugarh and the other in Tezpur, both tea-growing regions. Since then, approximately 730,000 working families opened bank accounts for the first time. Incentives were deposited into the accounts to force workers who only experienced a cash-economy to become familiar with the more secure and efficient payments. The latest “payment festival” allocated INR3,000 per each individual bank accounts.
“What are the intended and unintended consequences of such political wrestling?” wrote Bhaskar Hazarika on LinkedIn. Hazarika, with LK Tea Company, since September 2009, produced a thought-provoking post. “Over the years social justice warriors, media, NGOs, and Robin Hood politicians championed this idea that the workers of the tea tribes that work in tea plantations are underpaid, exploited, and oppressed by the evil capitalist owners/tea production companies so that government must interfere and raise the wage. This narrative gave birth to numerous political careers,” writes Hazarika.
“If we compare with the wages of tea workers of south India, what do we see? First the per capita income per day of the southern states is much higher than that of Assam. Second, south Indian tea estates hardly pluck 18-20 rounds a year, employ less labor per hectare, mostly employ contractual workers from other states, yet pluck for 12 months so the productivity is very high with fewer man days,” Hazarika explains.
Assam plucks between 32-42 rounds in 9 months and is then idle for 3 months. Assam estates pay less cash per day, but ultimately there are many more worker-days, generating equivalent pay, he said.
“If Assam starts paying the cash equivalent of south India then Assam will automatically move towards plucking fewer rounds per year, with less labor per hectare, fewer worker-days overall, and huge mechanization for the simple reason that the minimum wage cannot be higher than the average per capita income of the state,” writes Hazrika. Implementing cash 351 or 361 will lead to dire consequences.
“Employers pay for the value of work, employers are incapable of paying based on needs, desires, and demands. If the work is not productive enough to generate the demanded amount it becomes a losing economic proposition for the entrepreneur and the business dies,” writes Hazrika. “Political force cannot trump economic forces — it will come back to bite. The quality of Assam tea for which we are known will be gone forever.”
Political observers predict that high voter turnout will benefit BJP. Prime Minister Modi said that modernizing the agriculture sector is the “need of the hour.”
“Modernization is essential in all fields of life” or progress becomes a burden, he said. His priorities include generating new employment opportunities, increasing the income of farmers. He said, “it is equally important to adopt new alternatives, innovations along with traditional agricultural practices.”