[Assam] The £ & $s earned fattening up the BROWN SAHIBS and enriching Delhi only?

[Bartta Bistar]

Planter's killing triggers panic in Assam gardens

 

http://in.news.yahoo.com/050325/43/2kdq8.html

 

Moran (Assam), March 25 (IANS) Tea planters in Assam are becoming increasingly shaky with garden workers continuing to launch fatal attacks on them for non-payment of wages and other trivial issues.

The latest attack took place Thursday when a group of workers clubbed to death Dwijen Bora, owner of the Dhekari Nepali tea garden in eastern Assam's Dibrugarh district, 430 km from the state's main city of Guwahati.

"Some workers engaged by the planter did not report for duty and when Bora went to enquire about their absence, the group attacked him with crude implements and killed him," said Dibrugarh district police chief Pradip Chandra Saloi.

Soon after the news spread about the planter's death, villagers attacked the workers' colony and torched at least a dozen houses.

"The situation is tense but under control. We have placed adequate security personnel in the area and arrested four workers suspected to be involved in the attack," Saloi told IANS.

The killing of Bora comes less than a month after another planter in eastern Assam's Golaghat district was attacked by garden workers with spears and machetes. They later threw his body in a blazing fire.

At least half a dozen tea planters have been killed by angry workers in Assam during the past three years on charges of non-payment of wages, no rations, and lack of healthcare facilities. Some dozen planters were assaulted by workers for similar reasons.

"The industry is facing a crisis and the workers are getting violent. Under such circumstances, it is really difficult to continue working in the gardens," said H.P Sharma, a planter.

Community leaders also accuse planters of following the British legacy of subjugating workers with an iron fist, leading to frequent confrontations.

"Some planters still try to behave like the British who in the past publicly flogged tea pickers or made workers believe he was the insurmountable monarch of the area," said Rameshwar Teli, a legislator who belongs to the tea community.

"You now cannot expect to increase the yield by taking out the whip like the sahibs in the past did."

According to tea community leaders, garden workers in Assam are getting restive with the recession-hit industry unable to clear wages and meet basic requirements of the workforce.

At least 200 gardens have defaulted in paying up daily wages to its workers - some of them not clearing salaries for months together, leaving hundreds to starve.

There are an estimated one million workers spread over Assam's 800-odd gardens.

Up to 70 plantations in Assam have closed down in recent years with India's $1.5 billion tea industry facing a crisis with prices dropping in the weekly auctions, besides a slump in export figures.

India is the world's largest tea producer with Assam accounting for about 55 percent of the total 825 million kg produced in 2004.

 

 

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