India's tea industry directly employs more than a million
people with many millions more dependent on it for their livelihoods. It brings
in about $3bn a year, with up to a quarter of that coming from exports. India
became a major tea producer after the British set up plantations in the 19th
Century to break China's monopoly. The huge estates have traditionally provided
for all their workers' needs - but if owners shut them down, thousands can be
left without jobs, health care or enough to eat. Bijiita's Ekka’s ancestors
worked as forced labour for British tea merchants, who set up India's
north-eastern tea-growing belt in the 19th Century, and imported workers from
central regions of the country.
Technically tea workers have been free for decades, but the
1951 Plantation Labour Act, introduced four years after India became
independent, remains based on the colonial system. It outlines a duty of care
owed by plantation owners to their employees, but at the same time it preserves
a system of cradle-to-grave dependency. And even now, although the minimum wage
is 169 rupees ($2.68) a day, tea workers typically only receive 96 rupees
($1.52), the companies arguing that the rest is made up by their welfare
package.
In 2007 the UN Children's fund, Unicef, found that hunger, disease
and child exploitation were a problem even on apparently successful plantations
that sell tea to high-end customers. Now India's tea industry is being
scrutinised by the World Bank, the National Human Rights Commission, the UN and
other institutions.
"They are cocooned communities," says Unicef's
Caroline den Dulk. "They have all their own services, nurseries, schools,
health provision - but they are run from a private sector point of view, and
the people there are among the most marginalised in India. They have fallen off
the radar."
The sprawling Bundapani Tea Garden in West Bengal, in the
foothills of the Himalayas is a vast, 3,000-acre (1,214-hectare) property which
had its own hospital, schools and shops and more than 1,000 families were
involved in the growing and processing of tea. Then, in July 2013, the tea
garden was shut down. No-one told the workers why - they assume it was not
making enough money. In the first 18 months, 10 people died from
malnutrition-related illnesses according to Partha Pratim Sarkar, who runs a
tea-worker charity, G-Nesep. Today Bundapani has an atmosphere of part
post-apocalyptic ghost town and part faded colonial glory. The once blooming
deep green tea bushes are overgrown with weeds. A post office, a factory and a
school are all boarded up and abandoned. The hospital is derelict with broken
windows and posters about health care strewn on the floor.
Bijiita Ekka, was a young teenager enjoying school “We had
no money and we had to get money from somewhere," she says. "So my
mother took me on a train to Delhi." There they went to see a labour
contractor. the pair were separated, and the 14-year-old was taken by train
north to Chandigarh, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) from her home.
"I was terrified because I realised that something
really bad was about to happen to me and I didn't know what I could do. I had
never felt so scared and lonely," she says, her eyes filling with tears. What
followed was a life of servitude in a military family that treated her like
dirt. "I worked all day and everything I did was wrong. They used to scold
me and hit me. Even the children would hit me." She speaks about being
constantly hungry, working all the time and being beaten on a daily basis. One
day her mother appeared in Chandigarh, and managed to take her away. She
doesn't know exactly how long she spent there, but she knows it was months -
and that she was paid nothing. "I can't go back to that life. Please. Never."
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32017529
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