Quarry Workers in Assam

The quarries in Assam represent possibly the most exploitative sector in the state, with hazardous labour conditions and complete lack of unionisation to fight for greater benefits. In addition there is rampant use of child labour, paltry wages and no facilities for drinking water, creches, sanitation or shelter. Harsh material conditions force villagers to come to work in the quarries.

Please read article below for further details.

Exploitation in the Stone Quarries of Assam

[To be published in Himal South Asian in June 2008]

The idyllic and verdant hills of Nagaon district in Middle Assam mask a veritable web of labour exploitation in the various stone quarries across the region. Of vital use for road and other construction projects, the stones are derived through hard labour in extremely harsh conditions. The quarries mainly consist of manual crushers with some having machine crushers and Nagaon is the main centre for stone quarries in the state of Assam, providing stones for construction to many major cities, towns and road-building projects in the state.

The exploitation is harsh with extremely hazardous working conditions comprised of the most informal and unorganised labour. Furthermore a dangerous network of owners and managers including Surrendered ULFA (SULFA) folk, relatives of ruling-class political parties like the Congress and AGP, as well as members of the mercantilist class ensure that the oppressive web remains firmly in place with any attempts at unionising viciously thwarted down.

Unending Exploitation: Visits to quarries reveal the harshness of the working conditions on sight. In the blazing mid-day heat workers clear the ground of trees and bushes for digging, dig out boulders, manually crush them into smaller stones, and fill large boxes with them. The quarries don’t have any shady areas for rest or shelter, and even the natural shade of trees is gone because the foliage has been cleared away to dig for stones. Infants and toddlers, due to lack of facilities for crèches, are left on the ground or on the rocks without any care, while slightly older children work along with the adults. With no facilities for drinking water or a canteen, workers bring their own lunch and water, walking anywhere between 2-5 km early in the morning up rather steep hills in order to reach the quarries so that they might have enough time to fill boxes with stones.

The box is the unit of measurement for their daily wages, and workers receive around Rs 40 to 45 per box. Usually a single adult fills about one box a day on average, which results in workers receiving daily wages far lesser than the prescribed daily minimum wage of around Rs. 75. The wage payment is not only dangerously low in amount but also illegal in method. When workers spend their time clearing the area of foliage and digging for boulders, they get even lesser pay since they don’t have filled boxes to show. The boxes themselves are large, with a length of 6 feet, breadth of 3 feet and depth of 1 foot and with no real government standard for this industry, managers can exert further surplus labour value by trying to enlarge boxes. Payment is not given for half-filled boxes, so workers often end up working much longer than the prescribed 8-hour working day, often 11-12 hours or more, in order to fill up as many boxes as they can in a week.

A particular sign of criminality in the sector is the expansive usage of child-labour that one can witness in every quarry visited. Children as young as 8 end up crushing stones and filling boxes. Since it’s a matter of survival for families, quarry work ends up being a family-affair, as the more hands there are filling the boxes with rocks, the more income the family derives from the paltry piece-rate wages. The extraction of enormous surplus labour by managers and owners through the harsh piece-rate system, the complete lack of workers benefits, and extremely informal, unorganised nature of work has all members of the family working simply in order to survive.

The workers mainly hail from the Adivasi, Tiwa, Muslim and Karbi communities who reside in the various villages around the quarries. Labour is brought in through an abusive contractual network, each village having a contractor that the managers hire in order to recruit labour. Harsh material conditions and lack of choice, apart from a failure on the part of the state in properly implementing schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) result in workers being forced to work in the quarries.

Dangerous Nexus and Exploitative Tactics used: The workers showcased a genuine fear in trying to resist or demand higher wages, due to the presence of SULFA folk as managers, and who essentially function as a set of lumpen thugs in maintaining this exploitative environment. While being interviewed, they didn’t even want to reveal their names or the names of the quarries they worked in for this reason. In case a worker gets critically injured or dies, owners give Rs 2000 or 3000 for a small, traditional funeral and no compensation for the victim’s family. One of the quarries had a startling case of such criminality, where a worker had to have his legs amputated after a boulder fell on him. Soon after the operation, due to continued medical complications and lack of any medical aid or insurance, the worker died. The manager of the quarry paid Rs 2000 to the family and the rest of the medical expenses as well as costs relating to reclaiming the body and arranging for the funeral had to be borne by the family, a bill which ran up to Rs. 20,000. Such a disaster can be completely devastating for poor, rural family.

Discussions with progressive union activists and labour department officials also reveal the oppressive network of SULFA, ruling-class party folk and traders who run the quarries. On the other side of this dangerous situation are the various insurgent groups who extract “taxes” from the quarry owners. Indeed, while research was being done for this article along with a local labour activist, I was told to leave my backpack behind lest the two of us be confused as insurgents coming on an extortion spree since we were travelling by motorbike to the quarries.

A senior labour department official in Assam, who has witnessed numerous violations during his many inspections (and who would like to remain anonymous until his retirement) believes that what is happening in the quarries consists of the grossest and most criminal labour violations. He revealed that in reality workers are supposed to get around Rs. 75 per day, and that one of the main reasons owners feel emboldened to neglect labour welfare as per law is that even if prosecuted a case can drag on for years in courts, hardly easy for the working poor to deal with. And in the off chance that a verdict favouring labour is given, the punishment meted out for violations of the act is far too mild, usually a nominal fine that is hardly a financial hit for the owners.

Arup Mahanto, leader of the Grameen Shramik Sanstha, a progressive rural workers union in Assam which has been trying to organise the workers in the quarries as well, said that the maximum labour violations occurred in the stone quarries, even more than the oppressive tea industry. With no water, crèches, first-aid facilities, sanitation facilities for women (who form the majority of the workforce), and a complete lack of protective equipment, the owners find every means to extract the maximum amount of profit from the labourers. In striking similarity to the tea industry in Assam, Mahanto further added that managers prefer women workers primarily because they can be exploited more, noting that any events of verbal, physical or sexual abuse are completely buried because of the oppressive environment and tight hold that the owners have over the quarries.

Buddheswar Timung, a local rural activist in Bamuni Karbi village, which is close to many quarries, said that the lack of unionisation was a huge problem. Any attempts at organising the workers have met with either violence or threats of dismissal. Help is not derived from any of the identity-based insurgent movements in the area as they were only interested in extorting money from the owners, rather than fighting for labour rights. He also pointed to the corrupt network that owners and businesses have with political parties as well as bureaucrats as another critical reason for the continuing exploitation.

The corrupt nexus between state officials and business owners was mentioned by numerous people as one of the critical issues. The same labour department official I interview mentioned numerous cases of high ranking bureaucrats, including former Assistant Labour Commissioners, as well as many judges completely in the pockets of the business owners. He said that some of the maximum corruption occurs with respect to the Workman’s Compensation Act that guarantees compensation for workers in case of injury or death. The owner, in what is nothing short of cold criminality, just figures out that it’s cheaper to bribe both, the labour department official and the judge rather than pay the worker his due compensation. And in case there are honest men at the bureaucracy or judiciary, like the labour official I interviewed, then there is always the fallback option for the business owners of going to the biggest bastion of corruption to solve their problems and that’s the political bigwigs whose campaigns are funded by these very big businesses.

Finding a way out: The key problems contributing to this labour exploitation are not altogether impossible to solve. The wilful dereliction on the part of the state needs to be corrected. Serious measures need to be taken by cracking down on businesses that are guilty of these labour abuses as well as corrupt state officials, and more power needs to be given to the labour department to seriously bring these businesses to book.

Another critical gap that needs to be filled by the state is the proper implementation of the NREGA, which guarantees work to one member of all rural families at prescribed minimum wage rates. One of the main reasons that families end up in the exploitative quarry industry is lack of a viable alternative. If rural families had a viable option of being employed under NREGA, then not only would they be guaranteed minimum wage and certain workers benefits, but there would not be a glut of labour enabling quarry owners to exploit and extract surplus labour value. Furthermore, proper implementation of the NREGA would result in an increase of the crude market rate for wages, as unless workers get better wages than what they get under NREGA they would have no incentive to work in the quarries or any other informal sector for that matter. This was amply evident in Tamil Nadu, which was fairly successful in implementing the NREGA scheme in many districts in 2006, which then resulted in an increase of wage rates across the board in the informal sector in certain districts with employers competing with the well-regulated NREGA for labour. It also becomes easier for workers under NREGA to organise themselves into unions and other formations, thereby building class-alliances with workers in the informal sector as well.

There is always the hope that things can change. One of the foremost needs of the hour is in unionising the workers into a progressive, fighting labour formation that can not only struggle for better working conditions and higher wages but also launch campaigns that can break the corrupt nexus between state officials and business owners. This is where groups like the Grameen Shramik Sanstha as well as activists like Mahanto and Timung play a particularly important role. Indeed, even as workers were being interviewed for this article, Mahanto and Timung, who accompanied me to one of the quarries spoke to workers and set up a meeting with them to start a local union in the quarry. While displaying some hesitancy initially, the workers soon enthusiastically agreed to the meeting upon realising the possibilities of bettering their situation through unionising. It of course, remains to be seen whether it will go forward and how. Unionising the workers in the stone quarries of Assam is not going to be any easy task, and would require grit and courage. It is a hopeful sign that groups like the Grameen Shramik Sanstha display both in what is going to be a long road towards struggling against labour exploitation in this sector.

Assam Sangrami Cha Shramik Sangathan (ASCSS) Members

Members and activists of the Assam Sangrami Cha Shramik Sangathan (ASCSS), a small but militant leftist union, which is trying to break the hegemony of the pro-management, Congress-backed Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS). Please read the article below on Struggles of Tea Garden Workers in Assam for more details.

Struggles of Tea Garden Workers in Assam

Struggles of tea garden workers in Assam


Sipped with lime and honey in expensive china by manor dwellers and savoured in tiny chipped glasses with milk and sugar by commuters in Indian railway stations, Assam tea is a household name for most lovers of the brew. However the story behind the cultivation, plucking and processing of tea leaves in the plantations is one of exploitation and untold hardships for the toiling workers who are the singular reason that this industry is one of the pillars of the Assam economy, and in making the entire Northeast Indian region the largest tea-growing region in the world. Assam alone produces more than 50% of India's total tea, and the Assam economy is deeply reliant on tea-exports of around 150,000 tonnes yearly, both within India and internationally, fetching over Rs. 400 crores in foreign exchange every year and resulting in an industry turnover of over Rs. 3000 crore per annum.


Across the many plantations in Assam, most of which are situated in the upper parts of the state, the condition of the tea garden workers is nothing short of abysmal. Adivasis brought in as indentured slave-labour from Central India by the British form the vast majority of the workers, with the rest consisting of other local tribal communities, as well as Nepalis, Bengalis, Oriyas and so on. During the initial decades from the 1850s till the 1920s under the British, the working conditions were akin to harsh slavery, with flogging, rape, torture and even the throwing of dead workers in rivers. While certainly not comparable to earlier times, the working conditions today are still far from being the well-regulated environment that functions according to the Plantation Labour Act brought out in 1951 to protect the interests of workers in plantations, who form the single largest organised sector workforce in Assam and the entire Northeast region numbering anywhere between 8 to 10 lakhs depending on the season.


The North Eastern Social Research Centre based in Guwahati conducted a comprehensive study in 2004 across 172 tea gardens in Assam along with numerous interviews and group discussions with workers and families. The study brought to light numerous violations of the Act, including inadequate or completely non-existent provisions for drinking water, crèches, schools, proper health facilities, sanitation for women workers and shelter. Even a cursory observation of the plantations today confirms these findings. Upon further investigation and discussions with workers, one learns that wages paid are much lower than prescribed minimum wage rates, no over-time payment is made, and occasional physical abuse occurs.


Babloo, Signus and Ranjit (last names withheld upon request), all workers in Mornia Tea Estate in Lower Assam, complained that they had to drink bitter-tasting, hard water from pre-existing wells, when in fact they're supposed to receive drinking water either through taps or tankers from a public water source. Late wage payments were another huge problem, with some workers receiving their wages as late as 3 to 4 months after the due date. Garden workers received around Rs. 1400 per month on paper, but portions were cut from that for shelter repair (which hadn't been conducted in over 10 years), canteen facilities (non-existent), and educational facilities (again non-existent). This translated to a real wage of about Rs. 45 per day, far lesser than the prescribed daily minimum wage of around Rs. 54. They further said that Provident Fund had been cut on a monthly basis from their salaries, yet since 2000 no retired worker had received gratuity from PF. When asked about this, management simply shifted the blame to their predecessors. The school was in a decrepit condition and the only education the children received, when they weren't working, was from the local church.


Further up north in Nagaon, this author was privileged to attend a few wide-ranging discussions with workers in various tea gardens in the area (whose identities have been protected due to their worker-mobilising activities) as well as with Arup Mahanto, a rural workers movement leader. All the workers said that the little benefits they did receive in earlier times were rapidly getting eroded over the years. This included rations, free medicines at the hospital in Kandoli Tea Estate (which has now been downgraded to a dispensary), money for firewood at Sagubhai Gardens and many others, all of which have disappeared with further and further deregulation measures in favour of capital in the post-liberalisation era. Mahanto further pointed to the nexus between management, police and corrupt union leaders as one of the crucial reasons for the deteriorating situation. Indeed, 4 of the 5 workers interviewed had been suspended and dismissed due to their attempts at mobilising workers, and all 4 now try to eke out livelihoods by working in the even more exploitative stone-quarry industry or selling firewood, while trying to fight a legal battle to get reinstated.


Women, who are the backbone of the tea industry and the large majority of the workforce, face even harsher working conditions. In all the tea estates visited, one couldn't spot a single crèche for infants and toddlers. Sanitation facilities were either inadequate or completely non-existent. And while nothing explicitly was mentioned, there have been many instances of verbal, physical and even sexual abuse. Women are in fact preferred as labour because most managers feel that they are particularly suited for garden work and easier to exploit. Thus, while women labourers for the most part get the same as their male counterparts, not a single woman can be spotted in the plantation factories where the wages for workers are marginally higher than their garden counterparts.


It must also be added that tea garden workers are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, and forced to accept increasing labour exploitation due to harsh material conditions and lack of choice. Some who have access to cultivable land tend to be better off and more self-sufficient, at times working in the gardens only for short durations of time out of temporary necessity. Those possessing no or uncultivable land, and who leave the gardens, often end up as informal labour in nearby towns and cities. Education levels, health indicators and poverty levels for the workers are among the lowest in Assam. Many families find it difficult to get their children into educational institutions and later on in finding proper employment. Thus the oppressive environment of the tea garden is often the only recourse for many of these families.


An examination of the reasons for this harsh predicament of tea garden labourers is particularly warranted. Discussions with progressive labour activists, tea garden workers and even upstanding labour department officials reveal three crucial factors contributing to this situation.


One is the present neoliberal environment grossly favouring capital and business. It is amply evident that post-liberalisation, labour has taken a real beating with the state often kowtowing to capital's demands for further deregulation. Now, while most of the legislation protecting labour is still intact, the present neoliberal environment has resulted in the state wantonly neglecting the various labour protection acts and even coming up with schemes like Special Economic Zones to bypass labour regulation as a result of genuflecting to private capital. Even the various levels of the judiciary, where prior to liberalisation would see more pro-labour verdicts, have become far more pro-business.


Furthermore the tea industry has been passing through a crisis with the free import of low priced tea and reduced exports being among its main reasons. This has again affected labour in a harsh manner, with managers increasingly using contract labour, thus reducing benefits, in order to ensure continued profits. Even progressive steps taken by state governments like the recent proposal by the Tamil Nadu Government to increase the minimum daily wage to Rs. 101.5 was met with derision and vigorous protests by plantations owners associations like the United Planters Association of Southern India. Plantation owners across India have refused to accept responsibility for social costs citing the crisis in the tea industry while labourers are almost fully dependent on the plantation system for their sustenance due to lack of viable, alternate livelihoods.


A senior labour department official in Assam, who has witnessed numerous violations of the Plantation Labour Act in the tea gardens he has inspected (and who would like to remain anonymous until his retirement) believes that one of the main reasons owners feel emboldened to neglect labour welfare as per law is that even if prosecuted a case can drag on for years in courts, hardly easy for the working poor to deal with. And in the off chance that a verdict favouring labour is given, the punishment meted out for violations of the act is far too mild, usually a nominal fine that is hardly a financial hit for the owner of a tea plantation.


In addition, due to this free hand being given to private capital by the state, many senior union leaders also point to a dangerous trend developing over the last few years in conflict-ridden states like Assam. Often large private companies demand further deregulation or cheaper land prices citing the supposed violent scenario in the region as a cause for making the place more attractive for private investment. Threats are then carried out of taking investment elsewhere or pulling out existing investment which gets the state governments to meekly capitulate, wilfully overlooking harsh labour violations.


The second contributing factor playing out in the oppressive conditions of the tea garden workers follows very closely on the heels of the present neoliberal environment, which is the developing corrupt nexus between tea garden owners and state officials. The same labour department official mentioned numerous cases of high ranking bureaucrats, including former Assistant Labour Commissioners, as well as many judges completely in the pockets of the tea garden owners. He said that some of the maximum corruption occurs with respect to the Workman's Compensation Act that guarantees compensation for workers in case of injury or death. The tea garden owner, in what is nothing short of cold criminality, just figures out that it's cheaper to bribe both, the labour department official and the judge rather than pay the worker his due compensation. And in case there are honest men at the bureaucracy or judiciary, like the labour official I interviewed, then there is always the fallback option for the business owners of going to the biggest bastion of corruption to solve their problems and that's the political bigwigs whose campaigns are funded by these very big businesses.


The third and possibly most changeable factor contributing to the exploitation of tea garden workers is the corruption and complete pro-management functioning of the Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS) affiliated to the Congress-backed INTUC federation. ACMS has a complete hegemony over the labour scenario in the tea gardens of Assam, and essentially run as the on-the-ground labour controlling wing of the garden owners.


Indeed the ACMS units I met across Assam seemed anything but aware or concerned about labour rights. In the Mornai Tea Estate, the president and general secretary of the local union didn't even know about the Plantation Labour Act 1951, which covers the very workers they represent! While in Kandoli Tea Estate, the ACMS unit was instrumental in teaming up with managers as well as the police and orchestrating the dismissal of numerous workers who were struggling to get compensation for the family of one of their dead fellow-workers in addition to fighting for better medical benefits.


However a small ray of hope can be found in some fledgling attempts at more progressive labour organising. In direct contrast to the ACMS is the much smaller and infinitely more valiant Assam Sangrami Cha Shramik Sangh (ASCSS) which has led numerous struggles and won some important victories in the few tea gardens that it has a base in. And while one didn't see a single woman in any of the meetings with ACMS unions, all the ASCSS meetings had at least a third of the participants being women. In addition, all of the ASCSS unit leaders had a good understanding of labour rights as well as the need to tackle issues of self-exploitation among workers such as patriarchy, alcoholism, and sectarianism.


Subhash Sen, veteran trade union leader in Assam and leader of the ASCSS pointed to numerous occasions when ACMS had been instrumental in sabotaging struggles to gain greater benefits for workers, and also indicated the longstanding tie-up between ACMS and tea garden owners in ensuring that more progressive and militant unions were prevented from fighting for workers rights. He pointed out to a particular event that showcased the abominable lack of concern that ACMS leaders had regarding workers. It was under the tenure of former Deputy Health Minister, Pawan Singh Gatwar, a former Vice President of INTUC and leader of ACMS, that hundreds of tea garden workers died of gastroenteritis and malaria, with nothing being done by the ministry. Sen further outlined the need and plans of the ASCSS in trying to break this hegemony of the ACMS and build a genuinely progressive movement that yields positive results for workers in the long-run.

Progressive groups like the ASCSS have a long way to go in this endeavour, as Sen himself pointed out that their membership of 50,000 was a mere drop in the ocean of tea garden workers, compared to the ACMS membership of around 7 lakhs. However launching a struggle in the tea gardens of Assam that can break the state-owner nexus as well as the hegemony of a corrupt, derelict union is no easy task. The courageous militancy shown by the members and leaders of the ASCSS in many struggles is a step forward, one of many that needs to be taken, but a hopeful sign nevertheless

Travel Log (14/4/08)

Dispatch 3 from Northeast India (14/4/08)

Identity and hegemony: Identity, with all of its philosophical and political complexities, is something that I have come face to face with numerous times in the short while I've been here. Whether it be the awe-inspiring struggles of oppressed identities in resisting both military and cultural hegemony or its degeneration into sectarianism and xenophobia, one is made to constantly think about where one is from, and its historical placing. Adivasi, Boro, Assamese, Naga, Khasi, Bangladeshi Muslim, Bengali, Bihari...often all other identities based on class, gender etc get subsumed under broad-based cultural-nationalist or sub-nationalist ones. In the Northeast, multiple identity-based struggles, positive or negative, and the acute nature of these struggles can more often than not be directly seen as a result of a very heavily armed occupationary presence.


Even sectarian battles, not obviously against the Indian state, have strong elements of Indian hegemony. In Gossaigaon, I found out that the Indian government supported, either covertly or openly, both the Bodo Liberation Tigers and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland at different times, which not only resulted in internecine battles between the two groups, but also the massacre of Adivasis and Muslims at different times by both Bodo groups. A friend who was doing field work in Manipur investigating clashes between different armed insurgencies such as Kuki and Naga groups found that the Indian government had funded and supported numerous of these groups at different times, playing them upon each other so as to dilute any resistance to the Indian state or even suppress any popular, democratic assertions. She also added that since the region she was examining bordered Burma, there was added cooperation between the Burmese and Indian militaries in planning operations together.


And this takes on other more sinister proportions. Another friend made an interesting point that while usually soldiers from the Indian heartland in the North and Central regions are used to suppress identity-based movements in the Northeast, soldiers from the Northeast are used to suppress the armed radical-left Naxalite movement in Central India, which has its base among the tribal communities of that region. Again further proving the designs of the Indian state that pits poor working class people with similar material conditions against each other.

Mongrel South Indian from Bangalore: I must say that, with all this talk on identity, I am of course finding previously dormant elements of my own. Now I have to strenuously say that it has been nothing but pleasant for me. The moment I say I'm from South India and live in Bangalore, I am greeted with the utmost affection. Multiple friends have told me about the great love that folks here in the Northeast have for South India and South Indians. Thus far, they have been proved absolutely right. Whether it's workers, intellectuals, peers, shopkeepers, or bus passengers, I have faced nothing but wide smiles and friendliness when I tell them about my roots in Kerala/Tamil Nadu and particularly when I tell them of the city I grew up in. Bangalore seems to have really built up it's brand value (for lack of a better phrase) across the region. Everyone tells me about a sister, cousin, uncle or grandchild working in Bangalore as a doctor, call-centre employee or a waiter in one of Bangalore's umpteen "Chinese" restaurants (come on, we all know Indian masalas are used there...which only makes the food that much more enjoyable). South India and South Indians seem to be viewed with a lot of affection, and I think this has to do also with the large number of people from the Northeast region who have gone their for work and many who have ended up settling down there.


One of the most interesting aspects of this treatment I have received is that, even among those opposing the Indian state, I have not been viewed as necessarily a denizen of the occupying state. I am not too sure why, because the upper-caste Hindu community I was born into is right at the top of the beneficiaries of any expansionist designs or resource-usurpation on the part of the Indian state. I think partly this might do with viewing the hegemony here as essentially one emanating out of the power-corridors in Delhi and thus North India rather than Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore or even Mumbai and Calcutta. It seems that the cultural character of the hegemony is obviously viewed as a Hindi one, which almost completely separates it from any South Indian connection, the numerous regions of which itself would have strong anti-Hindi streaks.

Shillong, a cursory look: Finally managed a very short trip to the very-famous city of Shillong in Meghalaya state. The trip itself was rather trying. 12 adults and 2 children were squeezed into a Sumo taxi, which is pretty much the only way to get to Shillong from Guwahati (the famous Indian rail-connectivity is missing in most of the Northeast barring Assam). There was probably a little irritation directed at slightly larger people like myself, and possibly quite understandably at that. After all we were all paying the same, yet I was occupying much more space then some of my smaller co-passengers. Offers to buy tea at the rest stop and small-talk of course cleared the air (and I always had Bangalore to fall back on as an ice-breaker!). But the cramped traveling was not the problem, I had traveled in much more tightly squeezed situations and through distinctly less beautiful scenery. The biggest problem was that the trucks along the road from Guwahati to Shillong and back are among the most polluting, black-smoke-spewing monstrosities this side of the continent. And we had to travel with the windows down lest we suffocate from lack of air. Also the windows had to be down because invariably somebody pukes during the drive through curving, hill roads (as did indeed happen with one of the tykes in our taxi). So the lowered windows and polluting trucks essentially resulted in the entire vehicle being filled with smoke each time we overtook a truck or one passed us, which happened approximately 50 times. It was 14 coughing souls who finally emerged out of the vehicle at our final port of call.

Shillong itself is beautiful. On first sight it reminded me of Bangalore many years back, before the city went mad with capitalism and started adding 200 vehicles a day onto its roads. Old Bangalore on sloping hills that is. Shillong is also, funnily enough, the first place I've gone to where I heard a lot of Hindi being spoken, probably because of the high influx of tourists. The leads I had to do a couple of articles on the exploitative mining industry didn't pan out, and I had to postpone it to another trip in May, so I decided to explore the place anyway.

Police Bazaar, which from what I hear is the heart of the city, is like any other mid-sized or big city commercial centre in India with large ad-hoardings, restaurants, bars, shops, crowds milling about and of course the street market. There is also an obviously wannabe-hip culture among the city's youth, with many sporting gelled-up hairdos, earrings, and t-shirts with old heavy metal bands on the front. The love for heavy-metal and hard-rock music is quite obvious here. Even garages and small shops on the way to as well as in Shillong had Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and PInk Floyd emanating from them. The interesting aspect is that for all its commercial activity, the place pretty much closes down by around 9/9.30pm, which is when things are just about starting to heat up in places like Mumbai!

It was quite sad that I had to cut my trip short, because Meghalaya itself has so much to be seen and examined, especially around mining. Uranium mining by the Public Sector Undertaking UCIL is being planned in the state on a fairly large scale, part of India's ambitious nuclear plans, and supposedly Meghalaya has the largest deposit of uranium in India. The effects on the local villagers can only be imagined. Limestone and coal are some other continuing mining initiatives, mostly by private companies protected by the Indian state as well as some public sector companies. The state and indeed the entire Northeast is being opened up to capital with quite a vengeance, and it remains to be seen how resistance is mounted against it.

Adivasi Struggles in Assam

Adivasis in Assam: from the tea gardens to the struggle for ST status

(To be published in India Together - www.indiatogether.org - in April 2008)

Across India, Adivasis (also known as indigenous peoples or "first peoples") were and continue to be primarily agriculturists and that too subsistence cultivators who live off the land in tightly knit villages and communities, with a history, fraught with oppression, that can be traced back many centuries. In Assam the history of the Adivasis really starts from the 1850s onwards and is directly connected to the highly exploitive tea industry. It's a tragic history with longstanding implications of acute relevance till date. This article briefly examines that history, the longstanding disenfranchisement of the Adivasis in Assam and their struggle to gain Scheduled Tribe (ST) status in the state while highlighting its limitations.

The bloody brew: The British "discovered" tea in the early 1820s when the native tea leaf in Assam, long brewed by the Singpho tribe, was presented to a certain military man by the name of Bruce. The British East India Company (maybe realising the possibility of regaining monopoly from China in tea production) took over Assam in 1826 from the Ahom kings through the Yandaboo Treaty. Soon in 1837, the first tea garden was established at Chabua in Dibrugarh District of Upper Assam, and in 1840 the Assam Tea Company started the production of tea on a commercial basis. The tea industry started expanding rapidly from the 1850s onwards. Vast tracts of land needed were cleared for the establishing of new tea plantations, and soon by the turn of the century, Assam became the leading tea producing region in the world.

Of course, the rapid expansion of the industry and its highly labour-intensive nature meant that a large source of labourers were required. The locals generally preferred cultivation and, if at all, would work in the tea gardens out of temporary necessity. Furthermore the locals had a rather self-sufficient pre-capitalist economy and even considered tea garden work as derogatory.

Thus, there was no landless labour class in the region to exploit. The British tried abolishing certain local agricultural means of production and imposed heavy taxes on the subsistence farming of local peasants, but it was ultimately felt that uprooted labour would be far easier to control and exploit. This is where the import of labour began in the 1840s primarily from the Adivasi regions of Central and Eastern India. The process was of course extremely violent and hazardous, obvious from the fact that the first batch of labourers in 1841, from the Chotanagpur area, all died en-route due to malnutrition and illness. Recruitment was carried on through highly abusive contractual networks. Numerous episodes of fraud, forcible recruitment, kidnapping, and torture have been recorded as frequently occurring during the recruitment process. There is even the rumour that the British orchestrated a famine in the Chotanagpur Santhal Paragana areas by stopping food supplies from reaching there so that the Adivasis would presumably jump at the opportunity to work in the tea gardens of Assam.

All the Adivasis in Assam trace their immediate history through this torturous route of indentured, immigrant labour brought in to work in the tea gardens. The socioeconomic and political disenfranchisement that they faced then continues in large part today.

Continued disenfranchisement: In Assam, the Adivasis today can broadly be divided into two communities, the tea garden workers and those who came out of the tea gardens at the end of their contracts and settled in and around the area after procuring a little land mostly through government schemes.

The condition of the tea garden workers continues to be abysmal. While Adivasis form the vast majority of the workers, there are also small percentages of other tribal communities, as well as Nepalis, Bengalis, Oriyas and so on. During the initial decades from the 1850s till the 1920s under the British, the working conditions were akin to slave labour, with flogging, rape, torture and even the throwing of dead workers in rivers. While certainly not comparable to earlier times, the working conditions today are still far from being the well-regulated environment that functions according to the Plantation Labour Act brought out in 1951 to protect the interests of workers in plantations. Even a cursory observation of the plantations today brings to light numerous violations of the Act, including inadequate or completely non-existent provisions for drinking water, crèches, schools, proper health facilities, sanitation for women workers (who form the majority of tea industry labour) and shelter. In addition one notices the expanded usage of child labour. Upon further investigation and discussions with workers, one learns that wages paid are much lower than prescribed minimum wages, no over-time payment is made, and occasional physical abuse occurs.

The conditions of the Adivasis who came out of the tea plantations and settled as cultivators around the gardens, is certainly better but not by much. Those who have land tend to be better off and more self-sufficient, while the those possessing no or uncultivable land often end up as informal labour in nearby towns and cities. Education levels, health indicators and poverty levels for Adivasis are among the worst among all communities in Assam. Many Adivasi families find it difficult to get their children into educational institutions and later on in finding proper employment. Furthermore, while Adivasis, both tea garden and ex-tea garden communities form nearly 20% of the population, their representation in the legislative assembly is markedly lesser.

Some of the more prominent Adivasi organisations like the All Adivasi Students Association of Assam (AASAA) as well as groups active with tea garden workers like the Assam Tea Tribes Students Association (ATTSA) point to a particular policy feature that is historically missing here in Assam, which is the granting of Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Adivasis. The granting of this status is something these groups feel would go great lengths in ameliorating the historically oppressed condition of the Adivasis in Assam, and it is often the central, if not only, point of many of their campaigns.

ST Status and its limited scope: The struggle for ST status by the Adivasis in Assam warrants an examination as it is the only state in India to deny them this basic right by taking away their tribal status after Independence and instead classifying them as OBC (Other Backward Classes).

With Adivasis having borne enormous historical oppression and exploitation, the Government of India made special safeguards to protect them from exploitation and ensure social justice since the inception of Planning in 1951. This policy of "protective discrimination" for oppressed communities includes reservation of posts in public services, guaranteed political representation, and seats in educational institutions. And while far from perfect, this policy has certainly seen positive signs over the decades for a lot of communities like, for example, the Dalits (falling under Schedule Caste status) whose education levels, human development indices and levels of franchise have steadily risen across the country, and particularly in states like Tamil Nadu, which has historically been far ahead of most other states in India when it comes to safeguarding the interests of oppressed communities through a consistent policy of protective policy-making.

For Adivasis too, ST status in many other states of India has given them greater political representation and resulted in increasing presence in educational institutions and government jobs. This has resulted in some positives for the community with some sections slowly climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. However, despite this improvement, human development indicators still show Adivasis languishing at the bottom among all communities in India. It can be safely argued that, while hardly the only solution, protection through ST status for Adivasis needs to necessarily continue.

It is under this paradigm that the struggle for ST status by the Adivasis in Assam gains particular legitimacy. This struggle has faced a brick wall in the form of either the Assam government or opposition from other identity-based movements. Among the arguments against the granting of this status to Adivasis include pointing to the historic migration of the Adivasis into the state thereby arguing that they're not tribals of the region per say. However this is a rather flawed argument to make as every community in India has a migratory history behind them, whether it's the various Dravidian communities in South India, the numerous tribes in Northeast India, or any other community. Furthermore the migration was as indentured labour, of a very abusive and forced nature, and the Adivasis continue to carry the burden of their historical disenfranchisement even in Assam. Thus to deny the community what has been deemed as a fundamental right by the Indian Constitution is indeed a continuation of that historical injustice.

It must be strenuously added however that ST status alone, while important, will not be some kind of quick-fix panacea to cure all ills. This is evident in other parts of India, where political power via reservation often ends up in the hands of the political elite of that section of society, groups like AASAA, who themselves sometimes form an oppressive ruling class within the community. There are numerous other issues that the Adivasis face such as lack of economic franchise, serious labour exploitation and social problems such as alcoholism that will require strenuous social movements to tackle.

Without serious examination of the vast gamut of issues that form the oppressive existence that the Adivasis have to contend with, mere political representation will not wish them away. A worrying feature of a group like AASAA is the single-point nature of their campaigns, without vigorously examining deeper issues such as the conditions of Adivasi workers and women, as well as struggling against internal exploitation. A far clearer analysis of labour and gender by the numerous Adivasi organisations, looking beyond just identity, and the building of movements based on that analysis would serve the community tremendously. The Adivasis have a long history of valiant struggle behind them, with one of the first rebellions against the British Empire being the Santhal Rebellion of 1855 as well as a history of egalitarian living. This legacy of struggle and egalitarianism can certainly be a guiding force in taking on the oppression that the Adivasis face today in a truly fruitful manner.

Travel Log (23/3/08 to 3/4/08)

Northeast India Diary 2 (23/3/08 - 3/4/08)

Jhum and the markets of Tuenzang in Nagaland:

I'm going to continue to write a little bit about hardened working class women and so it would be a travesty to not mention the hard labour of women in Nagaland.

I had the opportunity to join a couple of friends on a project they were conducting on Art and Conflict, which gave me the chance to learn a little more about work and livelihood in Nagaland. Driving along the undulating hill roads of the region, my eyes were greeted with what can only be described as a riot of green starting with the tea gardens in Upper Assam that border Nagaland to a verdant explosion once we entered the tribal state. Now, my roots are in Kerala, which I chauvinistically believed to be the greenest region on the planet but I'm now forced to beat a timid retreat from that position, particularly as I was told that it was one of the driest times of the year! However the lush and dense foliage covering the steep hills pose a particular problem with respect to cultivation for the local population…a problem overcome only by dint of hard labour. And that is where once again, I came to witness the awesome strength of the local population, particularly women.

The cultivation practised in Nagaland and in many other parts of Northeast India is called jhum and is essentially cultivation along hill slopes. Anyone who has ever done some real hiking would confirm that trekking up a steep hill slope, even for fairly fit individuals, is hard work. Now imagine chopping firewood along a tract of hill-land, clearing that tract through controlled fires for cultivation, cultivating on the land as per a tight seasonal schedule, and then carrying large bundles of firewood (uphill) back to your village in the evening for cooking fire. Add to this, household chores, preparation of meals in the morning and evening, tending to livestock as well as rearing children and you've pretty much got a vague picture of the sheer volume of hard labour that rural women here (and all over the world for that matter) are immersed in. I'm not going to fall for the liberal middle-class trap of romanticising the idyllic village life while hardly being able to function without a computer, cell phone and a grocery store round the corner. What I saw with the women in Nagaland was hard work, the hardest there is, and it required not just strength of character but actual physical strength as well (both abominably lacking among upper-class city folk).

I was also told by locals and friends familiar with the area that jhum is usually a cooperative system of production with a village or many villages cultivating one tract of land and then sharing the produce at the end of the harvest. The practice of jhum is however sadly affected in certain parts of the region due to the presence of the Indian army and the resulting conflict, which causes disruption in the cultivation cycle resulting in harsh insecurities for people depending on the produce to feed themselves.

Cut to the main market in Tuenzang town, and one can see that out here almost every element of public commerce has women pretty much running the show. About 90% of the vendors were women, many clad in jeans and t-shirts, and wearing makeup. They were selling anything from vegetables and tubers to snails and frogs. To those of you whose quasi-brahminical sensibilities are a little pricked, I would like to add that in many European and Asian countries snails and frogs are delicacies in some high flung restaurants (they just have some hoity-toity name for it that make it sound all exotic when some upper-class twit eats them with a small silver fork).

Mothers, daughters, relatives, and friends ran small stands together, many with babies on their laps. Older children would sometimes take the young infants on their backs and care for them while the women worked at the stands. Unloading boxes, setting up the stands, arguing with shoppers on prices…all women, all the time, at the Tuenzang market.

I hope and pray that the strength and public presence of women in this region continues to grow and show others how, even poor societies functioning under tremendous pressures from outside forces can function with remarkably lesser patriarchy and macho male oppression.


Anti-immigrant sentiments against those who toil:

Thus far I have been quite struck by many aspects of the region...it's raw beauty outside the cities, extremely hardworking people in the face of numerous obstacles, strength of women and amazing diversity. However I feel compelled to write a little bit about some very stark anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiments (especially in Assam) that I am continually coming to face to face with, which is starting to feel a little disturbing in a place I'm fast falling head over heels in love with.

Right at the beginning of my travels here, on the train to Guwahati from Bangalore, I chatted with an obviously middle-class woman (we spoke in English), who was returning to Assam after working for a couple of years in Bangalore. As the conversation started veering towards the issues that the people face, she seemed to feel that all the problems were singularly because of Bangladehsi Muslims, whom she felt were taking over the state with their continued migration as well as the Biharis, whom she felt were corrupting the purity of Assamese culture.

I dismissed it as a one-off incident incident, but again and again, speaking with workers at the Guwahati Oil Refinery, a very intelligent, proud Assamese intellectual as well as shop keepers and traders in Uzaan Bazaar, the anti-immigrant (read Bihari and Bangladeshi) sentiment, at times virulent, hit me hard. Of course none of the people mentioned had any problems at all with me, being an outsider myself, rather they were extremely friendly and helpful to me. My head rang out "CLASS"

Let me elaborate...two extremely brutal incidents (among many) came to my mind regarding this. One happened very recently, when about 60-70 Bihari migrant labourers were gunned down. The other occured in 1983, and is now known and as the infamous Nelli massacre when hundreds of Bangladeshis were killed in a riot. Now I'm not going to speculate who perpetrated these crimes, as I've been getting different accounts from different people. But what is clear is that this is a particularly bloody manifestation of the xenophobic sentiments in Assam, that I can now only assume to be a fairly mainstream one.

I earlier mentioned the class factor...because in both incidents, it was poor, working-class people who were killed. The softest targets. They weren't the occupationary forces, they weren't the armed police state...they were toiling workers. Many

An Assamese friend told me that if the Bangladeshis were to leave, then the entire vegetable supply and a good amount of the grain supply to Guwahati would come to a halt as they are the ones who cultivate on the chars (little island-like tracts of land along the Brahmputra river). In all the building and road construction sites that I have had a chance to speak to workers, a huge chunk of the contract/daily-wage labourers come from Bihar often working for private companies based in Guwahati.

These are the vegetables and grains eaten by the very people who feel that Bangladeshis are taking over the country, the roads and buildings used by the same people who say that these uncivilised Biharis should be thrown out.

The paradigm, lacking in any rationalism or political sensibilities, is astonishingly similar to the one in the USA with strong streams of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, particularly against migrant Mexicans and other Latin Americans who work in all the crappiest jobs for even crappier wages building the roads, manning the stores, repairing the cars and pruning the gardens used by well-off white folk.

It is sad that in a region like Assam, which boasts of such a proud and diverse histroy of peoples struggle, one finds a mainstream sentiment akin to what is found in an imperialist rogue state.

Of course this sentiment is not even minutely unique to Assam. As recently as a couple of months back, a few North Indians were attacked by goons of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Even a few days back, in my own neck of the woods, the longstanding conflict between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over Cauvery Water threatened to flare up again. All over India, there is xenophobia and often the degeneration of positive identity-based movements into hatred for the other.

Northeast India which has been facing the brute end of the armed Indian state, has a host of rather wonderful identity-based sentiments, and it's sad to see a few of them go down the route of sectarianism and xenophobia, but one is hopeful that this is not a trend that will engulf the region.