Tea labourers' plight main poll issue in scenic Alipurduar

Tucked below the Bhutan hills in North Bengal's Dooars region, Alipurduar Lok Sabha constituency - one of the greenest places in West Bengal with its tea gardens, forests and rivers - will witness a battle mainly between two parties - the TMC and the BJP.

A reserved constituency for scheduled tribes, Alipurduar has a large percentage of adivasis who migrated to the region during the British era to work in tea gardens and also has a sizeable chunk of Nepalis and Rajbangshi tribals.

The "poor condition" of tea garden workers is going to play a major role as the constituency goes to polls on April 11 in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections.

Closure of several tea gardens since the 1990s has led to hardships for the workers and their families, forcing them to do other menial work for survival.

The ruling TMC, the BJP and the Left Front constituent RSP had fought neck-and-neck - each bagging over 3 lakh votes - in the 2014 general elections, but the support base of the Left party appeared to have dwindled since then. The Congress had come a distant fourth at that time.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Dasrath Tirkey, who has been renominated by the party, claimed that out of a total 65 tea gardens in Alipurduar, 15 had earlier been closed.

Now, 13 of these are open and efforts are on to reopen the remaining two gardens, Tirkey said.

BJP candidate John Barla claimed that tea garden workers were being exploited by owners and contractors who force them to work for very low wages.

He said the workers are paid Rs 176 per day, though the minimum wage for a daily labourer is fixed by the government at Rs 350.

"In some gardens, workers are paid even Rs 132 per day and the workers are forced to accept it since they have no alternative," he claimed.

"The state labour department is not looking after the interests of the tea garden workers, a large number of whom are adivasis," the BJP candidate said, adding that about 45 per cent of the constituency's population are adivasis.

Suman Rai, a tea garden labourer at Kalchini, said the condition of the workers should change for the better and leaders should make their promises a reality.

"Since the Left Front, we have seen many leaders who gave us hopes of a better life. I only wish that our future generation gets a better deal," he said.

In this backdrop, claims and counter claims on workers' conditions are being made by the two major players in the elections - the TMC and the BJP.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remarked in a recent public rally at Siliguri that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a "speed breaker" in the welfare of tea garden workers and others, the TMC supremo has said the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has not done anything for them despite having made "tall promises."
Talking about his opponent and the sitting MP from TMC, Barla said, "He claims to be an adivasi, but has never done anything for the indigenous people."
Reacting to this, Tirkey said, "He must have developed cataract if he cannot see development in the area."