Uttara Choudhury takes a close look at the fiefdoms
We just sit in our bungalows, watch television and hope the Sunshine Boys dont drop by, says Asim Barua, assistant manager of a tea garden in Nowgong district, Upper Assam. Sunshine Boys is an euphemism for the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) with its symbol of the rising run and seven rays. In July, ULFA levied a tax of Rs 10 lakh on tea gardens in Upper Assam. Now it is spreading its tentacles throughout the Brahmaputra Valley.
The Sunshine Boys have lots of company. In Darrang district, across the river from Nowgong, it is the Bodo boys who call the shots. The Bodos come in many shapes: the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU), the Bodo Security Force (BSF) and the Bodo Liberation Tiger Force (BLTF). In end-August, the dreaded BSF announced that it was hiking its annual tax on tea gardens from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,500 per hectare.
Assam has over 800 tea gardens spread over 180,000 hectares, so that could work out to Rs 45 crore assuming, of course, that the BSFs tax administration machinery covered the whole state. But then the tax rates themselves are arbitrary: one tea major alone is rumoured to have paid Rs 10 crore to the BSF!
In the picturesque plantations of the Moriani tea belt, the threat is from the battle-hardened Naga militants. We consider ourselves lucky if we can buy peace by paying the Nagaland Socialist Council Rs 2 lakh as protection money. Our tea estates proximity to the Nagaland border has made us sitting ducks, says planter Dhiren Barua.
Coming over for tea
What happens if Barua doesnt pay? Since 1990, at least 14 senior planters have been killed by the militants, while 40 top-level tea executives have been kidnapped and then released for undisclosed ransoms. Like most tea companies operating in Assam, Tata Tea is caught in a bind. The last few years have been fraught with trouble for the tea major.
In 1993, Bolin Bordoloi, who spearheads Tata Teas Guwahati office was kidnapped by the Bodo Security Force and kept hostage for 11 months. The Sunshine Boys also moved in for the kill by picking up two Tata Tea garden managers from Nonoi Tea Estate. P C Scaria, one of the companys senior executive was shot dead. Once again, the tea major finds itself at the receiving end of the stick as Assam DGP K Harishkeshan is bent on making an example of it.
Last week, the police arrested S S Dogra, general manager, northern Indian plantation division, for allegedly extending financial aid to the ULFA. Two more officials Mumbai-based K Sridhar and Calcutta-based executive director S M Kidwai are being put through the wringer.
Caught in a no-win situation, Tata Tea is now fighting back. It issued an open letter in the front pages of the national dailies on September 22 lambasting the state government for its failure to control militant organisations holding the state and its industries to ransom. It also details how company officials have met the Home Secretary of Assam and sought assistance to deal with repeated threats. Caught on the backfoot chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, called Tata Teas outburst Operation Cover-up. The state government maintains that tea companies should beef up security on the estates, instead of cowering before the militants. This is easier said than done. Tea majors such as Williamson Magor, Tata Tea and Goodricke have roped in the Indian Tea Association (ITA) sponsored Special Tea Protection Force (STPF) at a cost of more than Rs 8 lakh annually.
But the smaller tea companies gripe that the STPF security blanket only covers estates belonging to members of the elite Indian Tea Association the rest (approximately 700 plantations) are left out in the cold. Drawn from the existing battalions of home guards, approximately 2,500 personnel are deployed in 70 gardens at a phenomenal cost.
All this is telling on the health of the Rs 2,200 crore tea industry in the state, which has already been under pressure due to depressed tea prices in 1996 and rising input costs. Most companies have been declaring profits out of other income including sale of assets. Tea alone cannot give us the profits to declare dividends. There is no chance of any tea company offering bonus shares in the next 10 years, says N C Kankani, president of Jay Shree Tea and Industries in industry journal, Tea Time. The flow of investments has also been stemmed. Senior bank officials insist there is a flight of capital. Says one of them: Some plantation owners have not visited their properties in the last ten years. Why should they plough money into Assam? Surrendra Paul, owner of Assam Frontier Tea Company (a part of the Apeejay Group), was gunned down on a visit to his estate in Tinsukia in1990. Calcutta-based BM Bhaduri, the owner of Sonapur Tea Estate, was abducted while making a whistlestop tour of his plantation in Upper Assam.
Coming to a boil
While tea executives live in fear, there are others who are standing up to the militants. On August 29, Bharat Das, principal of a primary school in a mofussil town called Barpeta, organised his schoolchildren to march down the main street to protest against the spurt in violence. The very next day he was gunned down on the way to school by suspected Bodo extremists.
Despite the brutal retaliation, the school teacher is unlikely to be the last protester. Now Assams 5-million-strong tea garden labour is closing ranks against the militants. They have been silent spectators so far, but now they feel that militants are taxing them. We go out and pluck tea leaves come rain or sun. Yet our labour quarters have no electricity or fresh paint. Meanwhile, a bunch of Assamese or Bodo boys with guns can just walk into the managers bungalow, demand and get lakhs of rupees. It cannot go on forever, says Samundra Singh, an upcoming Adivasi labour leader.
The Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangha recently sponsored a state-wide strike in the tea gardens to demand greater security for the labour and management. The law and order situation is so grim that we hear of a case of green leaf theft every other day, says Pawan Singh Ghatowar, Congress MP and firebrand president of the Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangha.
Anger is building up against the state government as well. Today, the government is a sleeping partner in the tea business, taking out not less than two-thirds of our profits in taxes. And yet, it hardly lifts a finger to protect our lives, says Bhaskar Barua, a member of the Indian Tea Association. Chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta will need to find a suitable reply to that.
Otherwise, he could be looking at a scene reminiscent of Hindustan Levers pull out from Assam. On 8 November 1990, executives of Doom Dooma India Limited, Brooke Bond and Lipton (all member companies of the Hindustan Lever Group) were airlifted from their estates in the picturesque countryside of Upper Assam.
The ULFA had reportedly demanded Rs 35 lakh for Doom Doomas seven tea gardens in the state. Moreover, both Brooke bond and Lipton were asked to surrender five per cent of their net profit which meant a few crore. The three Lever group companies refused to buckle under extortionist pressure. Instead, they evacuated their employees from the state and suspended operations in Assam.
The whole rescue operation which was carried out with the help of the Army, Air Force and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was executed under top secrecy. So much so that even the state administration was kept in the dark. It came as a sharp jolt to the Mahanta regime.
Now, the battle between the Assam Government and the estate owners is about to reach a flash point once again. And the big question is where the tea industry goes from here.
(Some of the names of those quoted in this article have been changed on request.)
In July, ULFA levied a tax of Rs10 lakh on tea gardens in Upper Assam. Now it is spreading its tentacles throughout the Brahmaputra Valley.
