Resentment over unmet promises brews in Assam’s tea city

Zafri Mudasser Nofil

(Dibrugarh (Assam), Apr 7, 2019) Minimum wages, ST status, basic amenities and permanent employment avenues are some of the demands of Assam’s tea tribes, who form a considerable chunk of voters in this Lok Sabha constituency but are struggling to be heard above the din of political rhetoric.

This tea town, which goes to the polls on April 11, is home to around 4.5 lakh voters of the community, made up of scores of tribes who form the bulk of workers in the tea gardens of the state.

But things have not improved much for tea garden workers despite leaders from the community getting elected to Parliament several times. This time there are four contestants in the fray who hail from the community — Rameshwar Teli (BJP), Paban Singh Ghatowar (Congress), Titus Bhengra (Bahujan Mukti Party) and Israil Nanda (Independent).

In 2017, the Assam government formed an advisory board to fix minimum wages of tea workers. The board recommended an amount of Rs 351 but a final decision is yet to be taken. At present, a tea garden labourer gets a daily wage of Rs 167.

According to Teli, who represents the constituency in the Lok Sabha, the government cannot raise wages and it is up to tea garden owners to take a decision.

“We cannot put pressure on the tea garden owners to raise wages. They will face problems. So what our government is doing is giving support to the tea garden community to improve their living conditions. We are giving free rice, monetary help to pregnant women, mobiles to line sardars (head of labourers) and scooters for girls,” Teli told PTI.

His political rival, former Union minister and Congress candidate Ghatowar, questions the BJP’s stand on the minimum wage issue saying it has been fooling the tea garden community.

“Perhaps they don’t want to displease the garden owners,” he said.

The Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), the largest tea workers’ body in Assam, is critical of the government’s attitude.

“Did we fix the amount for minimum wage at Rs 350? The BJP government said the Congress was exploiting tea garden workers and they would raise the minimum wage. But they did nothing. They are doing nothing but politics. Since they could not fulfil their promise, they are now rolling out roles to buy votes,” said ACMS general secretary Rupesh Gowala.

Bhengra, a retired college professor who is fighting on a Bahujan Mukti Party ticket, claims the money being deposited by the government in the accounts of tea garden workers is their own PF money.

The Assam government last year announced it would deposit Rs 2,500 each to over seven lakh bank accounts of tea garden workers that were opened just after demonetisation. This amount is the second installment of the Rs 5,000 incentive announced in the budget for 2017-18.

“What people earn is not enough to make their ends meet, forget about education, medicines and other facilities. The ration given is not fit for human consumption. The government says a lot has changed in the tea gardens but I don’t see any change. People are in unliveable conditions,” Bhengra alleged.

Independent candidate Nanda, who is supported by Adivasi National Party of Assam and other small parties, says ST status and minimum wages are a must for the tea garden community.

He said the community is suffering because of the wrong policies of the government.

Gowala also rued the fact that no work has been done for the overall development of the tea garden community.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls himself chaiwala (tea seller) but he has done nothing for the development of tea workers who produce the chai,” he said.

Addressing a rally in Moran in Assam on March 30, Modi told tea tribe communities that only a chaiwala could understand the pain of fellow chaiwalas.

Gowala dismissed the government’s plan to grant ST status to the tea tribe community as nothing but an attempt to divide the people.

“The government is only talking about 36 tribes but we have 112 tribes in total. So we demand that ST status be given to all these 112 tribes and not even one less,” he said.

The Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association (ATTSA) has also been demanding that Scheduled Tribe status should be granted to all the 112 tea tribes of the state.

Assam has over 10 lakh tea workers in the organised sector working in 850 tea estates. The state roughly produces 55 per cent of India’s tea.

 

Minuscule Assamese Chinese community never misses chance to vote

Zafri Mudasser Nofil

(Makum (Assam), Apr 9, 2019) Their votes may not be the deciding factor in the elections, but for decades, members of the small Assamese Chinese community have been exercising their franchise without fail.

They consider themselves very much Indians and do not want to miss out on elections.

The British brought hundreds of men from China to work in tea gardens. These workers soon became part of the Assamese society and many of them married local women.

But after the 1962 India-China war, they were sent to a detention camp in Deoli in Rajasthan so that they do not work as spies, says Sahitya Akademi-winning writer Rita Chowdhury, who has written a novel titled “Makam” on the subject.

Some of them were deported to China while a few were released later. Those released came back to Assam and settled across the state but mostly in the Upper Assam areas of Makum, Digboi, Panitola and Tinsukia. They consider themselves as citizens of India and their names too have found a place in Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC). They also speak chaste Assamese.

John Wong, in his 60s, runs the Hong Kong restaurant in Tinsukia’s China Patty (pronounced as “Cheena Patty” locally) area. His father, the late Wong Ssu Chin, was the headmaster of a Chinese school here which has now been converted into a Hindi school. John’s mother Lee Su Chen is in her 90s and is among the oldest voters of the community.

“As always, we are eagerly waiting to vote,” he says.

“My nephew Rajiv Gogoi, who works in Mumbai, is coming all the way to vote here,” John told PTI.

Social worker Akhil Chandra Baruah says there are 16 Assamese Chinese families in Makum with a total of around 30 members. Across the state, there are less than 50 families.

Makum falls under the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency, where voting will be held on April 11.

Tung Chin Tham is a third generation Assamese Chinese. He is an English language trainer in the aviation and tourism sector and is based in Guwahati.

Tham feels “Assamese Chinese” is just a tag and nothing else.

“There is no such feeling that we are Chinese. Our people have very well assimilated in the Assamese society,” he says.

According to Tham, whichever government comes, it should work for the concerns of the people and development and ensure that there is peace and harmony in the society.

Willie Ho, proprietor of C M Ho & Company, which manufactures tea machinery, says, “We vote like any other person does in India.”

The company was started by Willie’s father C M Ho.

Chowdhury had taken an initiative to help the separated families’ members in India and China reunite.

“They (those who stayed here) forgot their own language and most of them never went back to China again. Most of the people were illiterate and ignorant of political changes,” she says.

Penguin launches Satyajit Ray library, to bring out 5 unpublished works

(New Delhi, Apr 28, 2019) In some good news for Satyajit Ray fans, five previously unpublished titles of the master filmmaker author will be brought out from 2020 onwards.

Penguin Random House India has announced an association with the Society for the Preservation of Satyajit Ray Archives (Satyajit Ray Society) and the legal estate of the Ray Family to publish these five titles under the aegis of The Penguin Ray Library.

These works consist of previously unpublished essays by Ray, Tarini Khuro translations by Ray and a lot of his illustrated works remain unseen till date among many others.

“The Penguin Ray Library will give Ray’s works a unique look of their own. Establishing a series with a distinct identity, these new titles will be presented in a special layout with quintessential aesthetics inspired by Ray’s sensibilities. The Penguin Ray Library will be an endeavour to capture the brilliance of a Renaissance man and share his works with a wider readership,” Penguin said in a statement.

“Ray was an ace designer, music composer, illustrator and a gifted writer. This association will celebrate his contribution to the world of art, literature, cinema and music and take his work to the next level – opening them up to new platforms and readers,” it said.

Sandip Ray, member secretary of the Satyajit Ray Society and Ray’s son, says, “We are excited to be a part of vision that Penguin Random House has for perpetuating Ray’s luminous legacy. The Penguin Ray Library and The Penguin Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture are excellent platforms to introduce his works to new audiences.”

Premanka Goswami, senior commissioning editor at Penguin Random House India, terms it a historical moment for the publishing house to be able to engage with Satyajit Ray’s works in this way.

“We have visualised the Penguin Ray Library to be a hallmark of the master’s work as a confluence of aesthetic subtlety and creativity. The series of new titles is a first step to building an enduring and meaningful relationship with Satyajit Ray Society and the Ray family,” Goswami says.

Penguin is also collaborating with the Satyajit Ray Society to be a part of the annual lecture that is held in Ray’s memory each year. This year, The Penguin Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture, as it will be called hereon, was delivered by renowned filmmaker Tarun Majumdar Saturday.

Further establishing the lecture as one of the most prestigious cultural events of the year, Penguin will work collectively with the Ray society and family towards building the property further, as a true tribute to Ray’s life and body of work.

Niti Kumar, senior vice president of Marketing (digital and communications) at Penguin Random House India says The Penguin Ray Library and The Penguin Satyajit Ray Memorial Lecture are the publishing house’s gestures to commemorate the greatness of Ray.

“This association is definitely aiming to step up and scale up the showcase he truly deserves. We have concentrated our efforts to be present in different mediums and induct more people to the iconic world of Ray’s books and other works of art, given the right exposure and platforms,” Kumar says.

India needs to create millions of jobs annually: Book

(New Delhi, Apr 26, 2019) India’s working age population or those above the age of 15 is seen to be expanding by 1.3 million a month and therefore, the country needs to create millions of jobs a year but the number depends on the estimates of the employment rate, says a new book.

“Jobonomics: India’s Employment Crisis and What the Future Holds” by Goutam Das goes beyond the data or the lack of it to analyse the story of India’s job and income scenario through real life stories.

It shifts the discussion from the Centre’s role in job creation to the states’ responsibilities and provides insight on how they need to go about it.

According to the author, job creation remains Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest challenge.

“For that matter, it is the biggest challenge for any government in 2019 and beyond,” he says.

Das is of the view that it is difficult to come across reliable data about jobs and job creation.

“Most of the government surveys either have design flaws or are released once in many years. One audacious private effort by the CMIE at tabulating unemployment – a household survey to measure unemployment that it started in 2016 – isn’t quite liked by many in the government,” he writes in the book, published by Hachette.

“The numbers aren’t encouraging. The employment needle, according to the CMIE, hasn’t moved in the past year. The number of people employed in 2017-18 was 406.2 million, 0.1 per cent lower than the year before. The employment rate, or the proportion of working age population that is employed, slid in 2017-18 to 41.45 per cent compared to 42.59 per cent the year before,” he goes on to add.

He terms the government’s unemployment estimates as more conservative, but feels its “surveys are not really comparable to those of the CMIE, whose computations are based on the status of the respondents as on the day of the survey or as on the preceding day”.

He says an unemployment rate of 5 per cent or slightly lower appears manageable right now.

“It does not indicate a job crisis. But consider this: more than a million young people enter the working age population in India every month. The World Bank’s South Asia Economic Focus Spring 2018 report states that between 2015 and 2025, India’s working age population, or those above the age of 15, is seen to be expanding by 1.3 million a month.

“India, therefore, needs to create millions of jobs a year – exactly how many millions depend on the estimates of the employment rate,” he suggests.

Manufacturing, according to the book, is getting more technology intensive and so is the services industry.

“The ability of these two sectors to absorb people migrating from the unproductive and less remunerative farm sector is on the decline. Robots and bots are also decimating the higher-paying white-collar jobs. Technological disruptions imply that jobs of the future would need people with higher technical skills,” it says.

The book also seeks to connect the dots on what’s coming and why the economy’s ability to absorb so many into the workforce every year is a slippery slope.

The first section of the book is about why the demand for jobs could shrink in the future, and how it could accelerate the pay crisis.

The second section narrates the problems with the supply side of India’s human capital and the conversations around poor primary and vocational education, health and attitudes. It also explores the implications that the shrinking demand for jobs and our poorly prepared human capital will have on the country.

The final section narrates success stories or best practices. Some of the ideas are scalable, others not so much.

Narayan Rane to bare all in memoir

(New Delhi, Apr 24, 2019) Seasoned politician Narayan Rane has penned his memoir in which his looks back at the years he has spent in the dog-eat-dog world of Indian politics and also tells stories of his encounters with the who’s who of the game in Maharashtra and at the Centre.

“No Holds Barred: My Years In Politics”, co-authored with Priyam Gandhi-Mody, will hit book stores on May 6.

Packed with revealing stories of his encounters with the bigwigs of politics – ranging from the Thackerays, Pramod Mahajan, Gopinath Munde, Manohar Joshi, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Ashok Chavan and Devendra Fadnavis to Sharad Pawar, Ahmed Patel and Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, this is a candid and fearless tell-all that exposes the true nature of India’s corridors of power, publisher HarperCollins India said.

Rane says he learnt the hard way very early in life – that to work for the people of the land, just good intent will not cut it.

“You need power – the kind which has a personality of its own and makes sure that the one who wields it is constantly spoken about by one and all – whether it’s good things or bad is inconsequential,” he says.

“The kind of power that makes all other people – politicians, money spinners, corporate tycoons, foreign investors – feel servile. And this kind of power comes from one and only one source in modern India. Rajneeti (politics),” he adds.

Early in 1999, when Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray decided to install a new chief minister in Maharashtra, he was asked who the man of his choice was.

“New CM? Narayan Rane,” he replied, as though the question need not even have arisen. His pick was a leader who had first caught his attention as a teenager in a Mumbai suburb when Thackeray had just started his party in the 1960s.

The Shiv Sainik with close access to the supremo, however, stormed out of the party and joined the Congress in 2005.

In the years that followed, he was a powerful fixture in the cabinet of one of India’s most politically significant states Maharashtra – always with a fighting chance of making a comeback as chief minister, and perennially holding out an existential threat not only to his one-time bosses in the Shiv Sena but also the leaders of his own party.

Today, having broken from the Congress too and been elected to the Rajya Sabha on a BJP nomination, he remains as unpredictable and aggressive as ever.

My book bid to remove masks we all hide behind: Lisa Ray

(New Delhi, Apr 19, 2019) Supermodel-actor-cancer survivor Lisa Ray, who is all set to publish her debut book, says she attempts to remove the mask people hide behind and hopes that by sharing her harrowing journey, she will come out stronger while also helping others become stronger.

“Close to the Bone” is an insightful travelogue of Lisa’s life-changing experiences, which goes beyond the memoir and will be out in May, publisher HarperCollins India says.

According to Lisa, “Close to the Bone” is not a memoir but her writing debut.

“It has taken years and it’s been worth the effort. When I began writing this book, I realised that my disease did not happen in isolation from the rest of my life. Life and experience have taught me many lessons, and today, I have the ability to honour all the places I’ve been, and a drive to find deeper meaning and truth.

“In writing the book in my 40s, I have the perfect vantage point from which to understand that I am more beautiful for having been broken, and that I am living my best life on my own terms,” she says.

Lisa sees the book as an offering.

“I truly hope that, in sharing the harrowing journey back to myself, I will come out stronger and that the book will make others stronger. It is honest, raw, an attempt to remove the mask we all hide behind. It’s a way to rise in truth and love.

“It’s my attempt to take back my story and voice – as a woman – and a way to connect with all the wounds and tender aches that make us human. There is humour. And tragedy. And celebration. Just like life,” she says.

Lisa was first approached to write a book after she documented her 2009 cancer diagnosis with multiple myeloma in a blog called “The Yellow Diaries”.

“This is the story of Lisa Ray. An unflinching, deeply moving account of her nomadic existence: her stumbling into the Indian entertainment industry at sixteen; her relationship with her Bengali father and Polish mother; life on the movie sets and her brush with the Oscars; her battle with eating disorders; being diagnosed with multiple myeloma at 37; her spiritual quest; lovers and traitors, mentors and dream-makers; and the heartaches and triumphs along the way. It is also about Lisa’s pursuit of love,” the publisher said.

Lisa is a well-known advocate for cancer awareness through her writing and public talks. She writes poetry centred on identity and a life of no fixed address. She recently announced the birth of her twin daughters via surrogacy, writing and speaking about it as a way to normalise fertility options and choices for others.

Her long and serendipitous career in the modelling and entertainment arts began when, at 16, she appeared on the cover of Gladrags, an image that made her an overnight sensation.

Lisa also starred in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s famous “Afreen Afreen” video. One of India’s first supermodels, Lisa made several forays into acting, memorably in the Oscar-nominated “Water”, and television (“Top Chef Canada” and “Oh My Gold”).

She was recently seen in the Amazon Prime Video’s original series “Four More Shots Please!” and her upcoming acting releases include A R Rahman’s first production, “99 Songs”.

Rushdie’s new novel inspired by ‘Don Quixote’, to release in Aug

(New Delhi, Apr 17, 2019) Salman Rushdie’s new novel is inspired by the classic “Don Quixote” and is the story of an ageing travelling salesman who falls in love with a TV star and sets off to drive across America on a quest to prove himself worthy of her hand.

This book “Quichotte”, acquired by Penguin Random House India, will be published in India under the Hamish Hamilton imprint in August.

The tragicomic tale of “Quichotte” is one of a deranged time, and deals, along the way, with father-son relationships, sibling quarrels, racism, the opioid crisis, cyber-spies, and the end of the world, the publishers said.

“In ‘Quichotte’, this rich epic of the immigrant experience in modern America, we are delighted to see that Rushdie is back – with his signature dazzling prose – to tell the tale of the here and now within the realm that all that could have been,” says Manasi Subramaniam, senior commissioning editor at Penguin Random House India.

“In his quixotic storytelling, he remains the master fabulist, always playful and humorous and detailed, and never failing at the same time to be relevant, provocative and marvellously original. We believe that this is the perfect follow-on to the extraordinary success of ‘The Golden House’,” she says.

Rushdie is the author of 13 novels including “Midnight’s Children”, for which he won the Man Booker Prize and Booker of Bookers Prize, and one collection of short stories.

He has also published four works of non-fiction, including the internationally acclaimed bestseller, “Joseph Anton”, and has co-edited two anthologies.

America’s criminal justice system through Preet Bharara’s eyes

(New Delhi, Apr 14, 2019) American lawyer Preet Bharara explores the gritty, tactically complex and often sensational world of the US criminal justice system in his new book.

“Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law” is the sum of Bharara’s experiences in cases that he handled personally or oversaw.

He is of the view that in the world of criminal law, asking innumerable questions helps avoid embarrassment, errors, and miscarriages of justice.

“A case is more likely to be harmed by suppressed questions than by suppressed evidence. This is true in all important endeavours involving truth,” he says in the book, published by Bloomsbury.

The book is divided into four sections: inquiry, accusation, judgement and punishment. Bharara shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system and stresses that there is a need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in one’s daily life.

Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career – the successes as well as the failures – to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action and in some cases, not taking action.

For eight years, Bharara was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and successfully prosecuted some of the most high-profile crimes in America.

Along the way he gained notoriety as the ‘Sheriff of Wall Street’, was banned from Russia by Vladimir Putin and earned the distinction of being one of the first federal employees fired by Donald Trump.

He says this is not a book just about law but also about integrity, leadership, decision making, and moral reasoning. These are all crucial to the meaning and nature of justice, he says.

Book explores how Jallianwala Bagh massacre has reflected in literature

(New Delhi, Apr 14, 2019) A new book explores how the Jallianwala Bagh massacre has reflected in Indian literature and in English and reached the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination filtered through the mind of the creative writer.

“Jallianwala Bagh: Literary Responses in Prose & Poetry” is a selection of prose and poetry, edited by literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil that traces the history of events leading to the massacre.

The book attempts to open a window into the world of possibilities that literature offers to reflect, interpret and analyse events of momentous historical import.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre on April 13, 1919 saw the butchering of unarmed innocents – hundreds of bullets fired in a matter of 10 minutes, the blocking of exits, preventing help reaching the injured are all acts of unmitigated bestiality.

The selection offers ways of ‘seeing’ history, of exploring how an incident that stirred the conscience of millions, found its way through pen and paper to reach popular imagination filtered through the mind of the creative writer.

According to Jalil, the prose and poetry included in the book, published by Niyogi, offers ways of ‘seeing’ history.

“I was curious to see how an incident that stirred the conscience of millions, one that had far-reaching implications for the national freedom struggle, that made British colonial interests in India morally untenable, found its way through pen and paper to reach the nooks and crannies of the popular imagination filtered through the mind of the creative writer,” she says.

While a great deal of scholarly work has been done on the Jallianwala Bagh, Jalil says its reflection in Indian literature in the different Indian languages and also in English has been overlooked.

The works of literature featured in this volume include those of Saadat Hasan Manto, Mulk Raj Anand, Krishan Chander, Abdullah Hussein, Bhisham Sahni, Ghulam Abbas, Subadhra Kumari Chauhan, Sarojini Naidu, Sohan Singh Misha, Muhammad Iqbal, Josh Malihabadi and Nanak Singh.

To empower VP Singh, had urged him to implement Mandal report: Lalu

(New Delhi, Apr 7, 2019) After the formation of the National Front government in 1989, there was growing unease between the two power centres – Prime Minister VP Singh and his deputy Devi Lal – and as a solution Lalu Prasad Yadav advised Singh to implement the Mandal Commission report, the RJD boss writes in his memoir.

“They (Singh and Lal) routinely issued contradictory statements, imperilling the sustainability of the government…

“I began to worry that the growing unease between VP Singh and Devi Lal could lead to the fall of the National Front government, and in the process could endanger my government in Bihar,” he says.

Yadav then conceived a formula to save the VP Singh regime in August 1990. He sought an appointment with the prime minister and told him that he must take action against Lal or else his government will fall.

“VP Singh had a sharp mind and good political instincts. He replied, ‘Devi Lal ji is a leader of the Jats and the backwards. If I act against him, he might fan out in India, propagating that I am anti-backward and anti-poor.’ I responded, ‘There is a way out. “The Mandal Commission gave its report in 1983, recommending a 27 per cent quota for the backward classes in government jobs. The recommendation is gathering dust in your office. Implement it with immediate effect’,” he said.

Yadav was of the firm belief that, if it was done, it would take the sting out of any propaganda that Lal might circulate about Singh being anti-backward.

Singh was reluctant but Yadav says he was able to convince him and finally the Mandal Commission report was implemented.

“Senior leaders (who were in the ministry) such as Sharad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and many others were unaware of my meeting with the prime minister. I now took them into confidence, informing the surprised leaders that VP Singh had agreed to implement the Mandal Commission report.

“After I left for Bihar Bhavan, VP Singh called a meeting of the Cabinet, and it was decided to implement the report. He sent me a copy of the notification through a special messenger. I put it in my briefcase and hurriedly left for Patna,” Yadav writes in “Gopalganj to Raisina: My Political Journey”, co-authored with Nalin Verma and published by Rupa.

Among the several other topics that he touches upon in the book is his love-hate relationship with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Yadav writes that after severing ties with the ‘grand alliance’ in 2017 and joining the NDA, Kumar wanted to come back to his side.

He also asserts that Kumar had sent his emissary Prashant Kishor to him on five occasions, a claim dismissed by the former poll analyst.

“Kishor seemed to indicate that if I were to assure in writing my party’s support to the JD(U), the latter would pull out of the BJP alliance an rejoin the mahagathbandhan. Though I was not bitter with Nitish, I had lost trust in him completely,” Yadav writes.

The book also brings out the rustic wit of the veteran politician.

He says his witty disposition, skill of mimicry and earthy simplicity played a bigger role than his educational qualification in getting an admission in Miller High School in Patna.

Soon after joining school, Yadav says, he aspired to become a doctor but when he leant that he would have to study biology and operate upon frogs in his practical classes, he gave up the idea.

He then realised that science was not his cup of tea as he did not like algebra either.

“I enjoyed Arts more because it dealt with society, agriculture, politics and basic rules and laws which I could connect with,” Yadav writes.

He also mentions how he emerged as a passionate footballer in high school and was robust, rustic and got the maximum number of yellow and red cards from the referees.

“Gopalganj to Raisina Road” also talks about the arrest of veteran BJP leader LK Advani during the latter’s Rath Yatra, Sonia Gandhi’s decision to not lead the UPA government and Yadav’s acceptance of Manmohan Singh’s candidature for prime ministership in 2004.