In Assam, garden workers hold trump card in Phase 1

Guwahati: The direct benefit transfer scheme of the Narendra Modi government may prove to be a game-changer in tea plantation area of Assam where tea plantation workers also known as tea tribe communities hold the trump cards in first phase of polling for five Lok Sabha seats in Assam.

The five parliamentary seats going to poll in the first phase — Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Tezpur, and Kaliabor — are essentially tea garden concentrated, with 70 percent of tea gardens located in upper Assam. There are over 850 tea gardens in the state with 60 lakh workers, accounting for more than 17 per cent of the total population.

The plantation workers who were initially hesitant are very happy that most of the garden workers have bank accounts.

Ashwin Murmur a garden worker who recently got a mobile handset from the state government in a scheme for “garden sardars” says, “We are happy with what Modiji (Narendra Modi) has done for us. Now there is no middleman as we get our money directly in the bank accounts.”

Another daughter of a garden worker Seema Ghatowar who did her graduation from a local college and working outside the tea garden said, “The present initiative of the government has facilitated an opportunity for our community to live a dignified life. Many of us have completed our study and working outside the garden.”

It is significant that the 5-6 lakh tea garden voters in these five constituencies play the decisive role in upper Assam in every poll. And there seems to be no deviation of this trend in this general election as well.

The 2014 LS poll and the 2016 Assembly poll in the state bear testimony to the tea garden voters turning BJP-bound. The BJP ma-de inroads into the once Congress bastion in upper Assam.

Prior to 2014 LS polls, Upper Assam was a Congress stronghold. So much so that, even the AGP wave in 1985 failed to make inroads into the up-per Assam constituencies, fortified for Congress mai-nly by garden workers.