by Bikram Kairi
The Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Landholdings (Amendment) Bill 2025 passed by the Assam Legislative Assembly is a transformative reform in the land ownership of the tea tribes. This legislation will have an impact not just on the community but on the overall social and economic growth of the State. It will unlock human resources that have the potential to transform the State’s economy.
The Tea Industry of Assam has a 200-year-old history starting from 1833 when Robert Bruce first identified wild tea bushes in Assam. In 1839, Assam Company was formed in London. Since then workers have been contributing to building the industry. The workers who were brought to the tea industry settled here and assimilated with the local people accepting the cultural, economic, social and political set up of Assam.
The Government of India in 1951 enacted the Plantation Labour Act for regulation of work in the plantations and to ensure welfare of workers. However, these provisions were not able to take welfare to the doorsteps of plantation workers. The population of Labour Lines has been increasing. The total number of permanent workers in a tea estate is usually less than the total non-workers, including children and the unemployed. The tea industry persisted with an outdated colonial model designed for a labour deficit environment.
The Labour Lines are within the jurisdiction of the Panchayati Raj Institutions – ward members, GP Presidents and all functionaries are elected or appointed for every notified constituency – but implementation of rural development schemes by the Panchayats face bottleneck since the Labour Lines are property of tea gardens. The people living in Labour Lines are also electors of the State Legislative Assembly as well as of the Parliament of India. They have always come out in large numbers during successive elections to exercise their democratic right to vote and reaffirm their faith in the Constitution of this country.
The affirmative action by the State Government has increased tremendously in the last few years. The biggest hurdle in implementing interventions of the Government in tea garden areas, constituting about 1/5th of Assam’s population, is the landlessness of the residents. Landlessness is directly linked to rural poverty and causes a ‘spiral of impoverishments’. Land is not just a commodity, but an essential component of human dignity and well-being. In many cases, the children of tea workers give up studies and join the garden as badli (replacement) failing which the family can be asked to vacate the labour quarters. This dependence on tea companies for shelter, as part of consideration for work in tea estates, is a major constraint in the overall development of the community. It is an indirect system of forced labour. The families remain indebted to the companies for generations as they have nowhere to go. It increases the vulnerability to exploitation manifold. The situation, especially the humiliating terms of employment, is not in compliance with Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India and international human rights principles.
In the amendment to the Assam Fixation of Ceiling on Landholdings Act 1956, it is proposed to remove the Labour Lines from ancillary activities of the tea gardens and settle the land with the workers or their descendants. In addition, it is provisioned that the land shall not be transferrable for the next 20 years and subsequently it can be transferred only to those who are tea or ex-tea garden workers. This deliberate policy intervention is essential, keeping in mind the asymmetry of information and inequality of bargaining power among the backward tea and ex-tea garden community.
These steps will usher in real freedom for the community and expedite implementation of welfare programmes of the Government which, even after 78 years of Independence, are obstructed by non-issuance of ‘No Objection Certificates’ (NoC) by tea gardens. It is also a common experience that the politico-administrative machinery faces immense hardships in addressing socio-economic problems in Labour Lines due to complex ownership issues of land and resources. The welfare of such a large mass of people, cannot be left to the tea companies alone. The amendment will not just bring in social and economic transformation, it will also break the bondage of workers and their descendants for the first time in their nearly 200-year-old history.
There are several challenges in the tea gardens, both for the workers and the industry. In a State where Government interventions are made in every sector for uplift of the poor and marginalized, this section of the population is now going to be liberated from the bondage of their employers. A long-pending reform, this will bring in better social and economic outcomes for the tea garden workers along with an opportunity to exercise this freedom to express their full potential.
Land rights is the game changer in the developmental journey of this community along with an evolving major course correction in two other fundamental areas by the Government – Education and Worker-Employer Relation.
(Views are Personal). Bikram Kairi is an Indian Administrative Service officer. He is, at present, the Dibrugarh DC.
