CALCUTTA, 15 February 2005 — As many as 250 laborers have owned up to the cold-blooded murder of a tea estate manager in Assam’s Golaghat district foxing police investigators. And there are 91 women and 45 children among those who confess lynching Gobindapur tea estate manager Rupak Gogoi on Friday. After battering 38-year-old Rupak to death with iron rods, they poured petrol and set his body on fire. The mob pounced on Rupak, son of former Congress Minister Jibakanta Gogoi, when he refused to clear the backlog of three weeks’ unpaid wages, citing a cash crunch.
The killers surrendered en masse when the police arrived. “Now 250 people are claiming to have killed Gogoi. But we are trying to identify the trade union leaders who instigated them”, said Golaghat Deputy Commissioner G. B. Ekka.
Even as the police grapple with the Herculean task of interrogating so many killers and catching the ring leaders, Rupak’s lynching has turned the spotlight on the crisis brewing in India’s recession-hit tea industry.
A few months ago, seven tea estate laborers were killed in police firing. Last year, four senior managers of Assam tea estates were lynched by angry workers. Rupak’s murder has badly shaken both the government and tea industry but experts are warning that there will be more deaths and destruction.
Besides lynchings, looting and arson, executives are being beaten up and given ultimatums by marauding mobs of workers to pay arrears or get killed. Assam’s militant trade unions blame tea companies for the grim scenario but owners say they are helpless because of plunging prices and a slump in exports and domestic consumption which has brought business virtually on the brink of collapse.
Indian Tea Association (ITA) Secretary-General, D. Chakraborty said average tea prices had slumped to 65.34 rupees per kg from 81.91 rupees in 1998 — an unprecedented drop of over one-fifth at a time when labor costs have increased dramatically.
“Margins have been squeezed out by plummeting prices and the steep rise in labor, fertilizer and electricity costs,” said Chakraborty.
Moreover, exports have declined to 177 million kg from 211 million kg in 1998. Indian tea is facing fierce competition from Sri Lanka, Kenya and low-price producers like Vietnam, Indonesia, Malawi and Argentina.
“There is no sign of revival in the immediate future and the current slump has been so prolonged that the very survival of the tea industry is at stake,” said Chakraborty.
Of the two million tea workers in India, over one million are in Assam’s 750-odd estates bearing the brunt of the worst recession in the past century.
Ad hoc lockouts have left tens of thousands jobless. Payments are irregular in plantations which are somehow still running. Workers have not been paid for months in many estates.
Hundreds are reported to have already died of starvation and women are being forced into prostitution to feed children. Citing a growing funds crunch, tea companies are scrapping subsidized ration, free housing, educational and medical facilities, triggering demonstrations and violence.
Police say the situation is very volatile as workers are in a bad mood everywhere. Many are ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of suffering coworkers and their families.
An Assam Tea Planters’ Association official, who did not want to be identified, said the situation had degenerated into a reign of terror. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has set up district-wise coordination committees comprising senior administrative officials and tea estate managers to instill some confidence.
Recently, a Switzerland-based international labor union took up cudgels on behalf of Assam’s tea workers reeling under the unprecedented recession. In a letter, the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations urged the Indian Government to take immediate steps to nurse the industry back to health.
The union’s general secretary, Ron Oswold, wrote that the government’s first priority should be to reopen plantations illegally shut down by unscrupulous tea barons.
“We are shocked by reports of workers committing suicide and woman workers resorting to prostitution to keep home fires burning. The government must uphold the law and punish those driving workers to death and prostitution,” Oswold wrote.
