Conversations in a Tea Garden Ahead of the West Bengal Elections

 The Mujnai tea garden has temples, churches and Buddhist gumphas. Its population in 2011 was 3,962, and had around 3,500 voters in 2021.

  

 

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya 

Alipurduar (West Bengal): “Even seven-eight years ago, hardly anyone got compensation for elephant attacks, but now people get them,” said 28-year-old Sanjit Lama. He is a Buddhist who owns a grocery shop in the courtyard of his home, next to a tiny Buddhist gumpha at the western end of Mujnai tea garden, 27 km south of the Indo-Bhutan border in Alipurduar district.

He elaborated further with the example of his neighbour, septuagenarian Maili Tamang, who died after an elephant attack in 2019. After this, her son, 47-year-old Bijay Tamang, received cash compensation from the government and a job as a home guard in 2020.

The Mujnai tea garden has temples, churches and Buddhist gumphas. Its population in 2011 was 3,962, and had around 3,500 voters in 2021. Members of Scheduled Tribe communities make up 78.5% of the local population. Most of them are not native to West Bengal; they had migrated from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh during the British Raj. They are more comfortable speaking Hindi, so the few newspapers in the village are in Hindi.

Sitting in front of his grocery shop three days before their constituency, Madarihat, was to go to the polls in the fourth phase on April 10, Lama spoke about how, during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as chief minister, the roads, sewerage and the water supply had been mended, electricity supply fixed for every household, rations made more regular, even how the panchayat offered more schemes than before.

The Mujnai tea garden opened in September 2020 on the state government’s initiative, after having been closed for 21 months. In fact, it has been shut on and off since 2002. In September 2020, state labour minister Malay Ghatak visited the village and reminded the residents of how the wage had increased from Rs 67 per day in 2011 to Rs 176 per day in 2020.

“Whatever development has taken place in the recent years is due to the state government,” he said, adding that the Centre had failed to handle the economy, was selling crucial national assets, did miserably in controlling inflation and, most importantly, failed to work on its promise to improve the state of the tea gardens.

There are 17 tea gardens in Madarihat assembly, which was one of the three seats that the Bharatiya Janata Party won in 2016. The incumbent MLA, Manoj Tigga, is contesting again, with the Trinamool Congress’s Rajesh Lakra as his principal rival. Lama was upset with both candidates: he thought Tigga didn’t care for the constituency after winning and Lakra “did not have a good image”.

Photo: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

Asked if he was one of those who voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, helping the BJP win not only Alipurduar but also achieve a big lead of 43,838 votes over the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in Madarihat, Lama said simply, “Yes.”

Then why the change of mind since? “The way the Centre ruined the economy.” would he mind telling us who he was going to vote for in the coming elections? Lama said without a thought that he had no problem: “Modi.”

That was confusing. Asked to explain, Lama just said, “I like Modi.”

“It’s true that the economy has gone to the docks and important government institutions like banks, railways and the LIC are being sold,” Lama continued. “But Modi has travelled the world and made friends for India all around. These friends will come handy in case India ever has trouble, especially with external forces, say China or Pakistan.”

“Above all, Modi looks good. He has a style and is a genuine man. I vote only for Modi.”

Lama also said he believed the Centre and the states should have one government and that there should be only one election, to save money. His sources of information, according to him, are social media sites.

His friend, 24-year-old Biswajit Bara, called him an “andh bhakt”, or blind follower, and described himself as an ex-bhakt, or former follower.

“I too voted for Modi in 2019. I was young and I understood things less. Pulwama [terror attack] and Balakot [air strike] created strong emotions and I forgot every other issue. But later, I realised that he is a bluff-master,” Bara said of the prime minister. “People quite rightly call him ‘feku’

.” Bara is a third-year undergraduate student of political science at the Binnaguri College and an activist of the Uttar Bangal Chai Shramik Sangathan.

“They are speaking of building a golden Bengal. Have they managed to build a golden Assam, forget golden India?” Bara asked. “In Assam, the tribes living in the tea gardens are not even enlisted as STs.”

Photo: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

He didn’t say who he was going to vote for but he said he recently took part in a campaign called “No vote to BJP” held in Alipurduars together with the farmers’ protests in north India.

Barely 300 metres from Lama’s residence stand two churches – a Baptist church established in 1991 that also offers sewing classes to women, and another, called the SDA church, founded in 2007 and which runs a school for children.

Near these churches, on a plot of empty land, the government is building a cluster of 290 two-bedroom houses of 909 sq. ft each for the tea garden’s permanent workers. Named ‘Cha Sundari’, Chief Minister Banerjee announced the scheme last year in north Bengal. Mujnai was still closed when the government sanctioned this project.

The construction commenced earlier this year and stood half-complete at the time of this author’s visit. The cluster will also have an Integrated Child Development Services centre, free electricity and drinking water supply and a covered sewerage system. On March 20, TMC district president Mridul Goswami brought workers from the neighbouring Falakata to give them an idea of what ‘Cha Sundari’ was like.

 

Lama’s younger brother, Ranjit, is a permanent worker at the garden and has been allotted one house – but he’s unlikely to relocate, like several other beneficiaries. According to local residents, the designated plot of land is on the edge of a forest and the Mujnai river, and they’re wary of elephant attacks and floods.

“In monsoon, the cluster will be cut off from the rest of the village if it rains heavily,” Ranjit said.

Moreover, the government has also stipulated a condition – that the land or the houses can’t be sold, rented out or used for commercial purposes. This has rendered villagers suspicious of their ownership status, adding to their unwillingness to leave their current homes.

The project’s supervisor, 27-year-old Shrawan Sharma, is a Brahmin whose father Narayan Sharma is a permanent worker at the tea garden. Shrawan had been working in Dubai for two years as a construction worker until the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to return in the middle of 2020.

Photo: Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

Sharma was more than happy with the TMC government. “We can all see how the area has changed under the new government. If you consider the welfare of the poor people, this government has done much better than the previous one and there is no reason why this government should be voted against,” he said. “They really helped people with relief during the COVID-19 lockdown and thereafter.”

Several youth from the area have also joined the Indian Army or other paramilitary forces. In January 2020, Ganga Bara, a young fellow from the Bangabari Division of this tea garden who had joined the Border Security Force, died in an avalanche in Jammu and Kashmir. Leaders of all political parties had thronged Bara’s tiny ancestral home to pay their respects.

Moving a step ahead, during the labour minister’s visit in September 2020, the TMC’s then district unit president Mohan Shamra had announced that the party would install a statue of Ganga Bara. But in January 2021, Bara’s family alleged that the TMC leaders had taken no steps towards fulfilling their promise, so the family was going to install the statue by itself. The statue was erected on January 14, Bara’s death anniversary. Local children stood in salute while many other villagers gathered around it, including members of the local Bir Birsa Yuba Club. 

Which government had worked better for the tea gardens? Club secretary Rajesh Shaw sounded confused. Founded in 2019, the Bir Birsa Yuba Club organises Chhath Puja, Lakshmi Puja and Kali Puja in the village, and conducts awareness campaigns, such as on human trafficking and COVID-19 guidelines.

Since its formation, TMC leaders have maintained good relations with the club, towards distributing relief material and organising social events. In February 2020, the TMC’s former Lok Sabha MP Dashrath Tirkey visited the village and stayed the night as part of the party’s ‘Didike Bolo’ campaign. He spent a substantial part of his time with the club’s members. When Mohan Sharma visited with Malay Ghatak in September 2020, it seemed he had also coordinated with the club’s members in advance.

Now, both Tirkey and Sharma are with the BJP.

“TMC has worked, but…” he paused. “The leaders are all deserting” the party.

 

About a week before the polls on April 10, the Mujnai tea garden had a new entity on its campaign trail: the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthy Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP. The student-activists undertook a poster campaign asking people to ensure 100% turnout at polling booths. They urged the voters to elect a Rashtrawadi, or nationalist, government in the state.

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is an independent journalist and author based in Kolkata. 

SOURCE ; THE WIRE

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