For the first time in more than 180 years, high schools will start functioning in Assam’s tea estates.
The Assam government had in 2020 established the State-Owned Priority Development fund to set up 119 model high schools in strategically-located tea estates. The State PWD was entrusted with constructing these schools at ₹1.19-crore each.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the academic year of 97 of these schools along with 13 others in non-tea growing areas will start from May 10. The date marks the completion of a year of his Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
“This is for the first time in 75 years of India’s Independence that high schools have been set up in the tea garden areas. The academic session for 97 schools completed so far will start this year. The remaining 22 model high schools in tea gardens will be made functional from the next academic year,” he told the principals and teachers of these schools at a function in Guwahati on April 2.
Mr. Sarma said his government, determined to improve the academic environment in the tea gardens, would set up another 81 schools across the plantation areas. “The newly-established model high schools will also be upgraded to higher secondary schools,” he said.
The government is planning to provide breakfast apart from midday meals to students of these schools, the Chief Minister said.
Major vote bank
The pay package for tea plantation workers has traditionally included the cost of education for their children. But tea estates in Assam, many of them ailing for the past couple of decades, had been requesting the government to take over education and other “social costs” for the industry to survive.
The Assam government responded by first deciding to set up 119 model high schools and then by promising to take over 436 tea garden high schools. The primary reason is the importance of plantation workers as a vote bank.
“Tea tribes” and “ex-tea tribes” (those who have moved out of the estates to pursue agriculture and other professions) comprise almost 20% of Assam’s total population of 33 million. About 1.1 million of them, employed across 803 major tea estates and more than 75,000 small tea gardens, largely influence almost four million voters of the community.
In 2016, the BJP won over the plantation workers _ once said to vote for Congress en masse _ to bag 26 of the 37 Assembly seats where they constitute the largest voting bloc. The Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the BJP’s regional ally, won four of these seats.
In the 2021 State election, the BJP improved its tally by winning 27 seats in the tea belt and adding two more in by-polls. The AGP won five of these seats.
