Tea Industry In Assam Essay

Assam is a state that derives a large chunk of its economy from the tea industry. The tea industry is a highly commercialized enterprise that employs a large number of wage laborers and interestingly almost 99% of these laborers in the state are tribal people. These people were made to migrate from the Chotanagpur belt to Assam and North Bengal on a very large scale by the colonial masters as indentured laborers, during the mid nineteenth century. However, with the passage of time, they have adhered and blended well into the Assamese culture and society, creating their own distinct identity.

Assam has more than 765 (approx.) tea gardens with several other small gardens spread all across the state. Dibrugarh district alone has 144 (approx) tea gardens.

Initially, laborers were hired on a seasonal basis. However, as soon as the tea industry started taking the shape of an organized industry, these laborers too started settling with their families in the gardens, and thus became a crucial and permanent factor to the tea garden framework.

But despite of being such a crucial part of the economy, they still haven’t developed in the real sense of the term. They

He or she usually joins the garden at an early age, works till the age of retirement and tries to push his/her son or daughter as replacement before retirement. As a result of this, there is very little scope for these people to bring much of a change to their indicators of development. Consequently, they also have very little access to the education factor because of such an arrangement. Their level of education is not very encouraging. There would be hardly one or two instances of people having access to higher education. Even though, there are provisions of primary schooling in most of the gardens, people prefer making their children stay at home and do household chores or make them work in the gardens instead of sending them to