CM Sonowal reviews schemes for welfare of tea tribes

• Sonowal also asked Power Minister Tapan Kumar Gogoi to ensure electrification of all households in tea garden areas on a priority basis under the Saubhagya scheme of the Government of India.
• He also asked the Assam Power Distribution Company Limited to install individual meters in the households of tea garden areas.
• He at the same time asked the Tea tribe welfare Department to achieve complete target of the schemes like Smart Phone to line sardars in tea gardens, pre-matric scholarship to tea gardens, post-matric scholarship, construction of patient guest house at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital.
• Sonowal also took stock of the implementation of daily wage hike of tea garden workers and bring in parity of the wages in the Barak and Brahmaputra Valleys.
• Moreover, the schemes like Prime Minister Surakshya Bima Yojana and Prime Minister Jiban Jyoti Bima Yojana, under which the tea labourers having bank accounts would be availing of life insurance and the annual premium of Rs 342 per scheme per beneficiary would be paid by the State government were also discussed.
• The Chief Minister asked the Principal Secretary Finance to take schemes to their logical conclusion.

Tea Tribes of Assam:

• Tea-tribe of Assam is a term used to denote those active tea garden workers and their dependents who reside in labour quarters built inside 800 Tea Estates spread across Assam while "Ex-tea tribe" to those who were once active as labourers but now have left the job and labour quarters for other employment opportunities after retirement.
• So the contradictory terms "Tea-tribe" and "Ex-tea tribe" are collectively used for those set of people who are the descendants of both tribals and backward caste Hindus who were brought by the British colonial planters as indentured labourers from the predominantly tribal and backward caste-dominated regions of present-day Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Telangana and Chhattisgarh into colonial Assam during 1860-90s in multiple phases for the purpose of being employed in the tea gardens industry as labourers.
• They are found mainly in those districts of Upper Assam and Northern Brahmaputra belt where there is high concentration of tea gardens like Kokrajhar, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Nagaon, Golaghat, Jorhat, Sivasagar, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia .
• The total population is estimated to be around 6 million of which estimated 4 million reside in residential quarters built inside tea estates.[1] Santhali speakers are also found in parts of Kokrajhar, Baksa and Bongaigaon districts.
• They generally use Nagpuri or Sadri having high degree of Odia and Bengali influence as lingua franca among themselves along with use of other languages like Odia, Santhali, Kurukh and Mundari. They have their own dance form, Jhumur, which is quite popular in Assam.

By: Ziyaur Rahman