 "A tea garden worker plucks tea leaves inside Aideobarie Tea Estate in Jorhat in Assam, India. Photo: Reuters")
The ongoing protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act have severely hit the tea industry in Assam, as nearly half of the tea estates have remained closed for the past few days owing to a large number of workers joining the stir.
Although the Indian Tea Association (ITA) or the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), the largest tea workers’ union in India, could not provide any official estimates, sources in the know suggested that over 60 per cent of the tea workforce in Assam, or 660,000 of the total 1.1 million, has joined the protest. This has led to the halting of
