Police have instructed planters to collect the details of the workers before employing them
Sumar Ali, who has travelled all the way from Assam to work in a coffee estate in Ballupete village in Hassan district in Karnataka, always keeps his voter ID in his pocket. Reason? To prove that he is an Indian and not an illegal immigrant.
Over the years, Assamese workers have become an integral part of the coffee-growing areas of Karnataka. like Sumar, there are tens of thousands of labourers from the north-eastern State working in Hassan, Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu districts. The Karnataka Growers’ Federation puts their number at 1.5 lakh.
They first came to Kodagu and gradually spread to Hassan and Chikkamagaluru districts, earning daily wages ranging from ₹220 to ₹260, which is less than what is paid to the local workers who charge ₹300 a day.
The estate owners hire them through agents, who happen to be from the first groups of workers to arrive at the estates.
In recent times, however, a problem has cropped up for them. In July this year, a group of Hindutva activists stopped a bus that carried Assamese workers from Bengaluru to Alduru near Chikkamagaluru. They assaulted Ohijul Sikdar (32) and warned the other Assamese, whom they called Bangladesh nationals, that they should return to Bangladesh. Sikdar had to spend a day in the hospital because of his injuries. A case was registered against the activists in Alduru police station, but many such instances are never reported.
Recently, Chikkamagalur MLA C.T. Ravi of the Bharatiya Janata Party, while addressing a pepper growers’ conference, alleged that many Bangladesh nationals were working in the coffee estates of Chikkamagaluru and Hassan. “Our estates should not become havens for terrorists,” he said.
Antecedents check
He wanted the Central Government to set up a mechanism to check the antecedents of all labourers from distant places working in the estates. He narrated an incident how his supporters were able to detect a ‘Bangladeshi’ worker near Mudigere. This they did by asking him to sing the national anthem.
“That fellow had a voter ID to show that he was from Assam. But when our party workers asked him to sing the national anthem, he wasn’t able to. He was a Bangladeshi,” he concluded.
Planters who employ these workers also harbour that suspicion. “No doubt many of them are infiltrators from Bangladesh. But somehow they have got records to show that they are from Assam. What to do, our planters are not getting local people to work in their estates ,” said Purushottam, a resident of Sakleshpur taluk, also in Hassan.
Not enough work at home
Assamese labourers come to Karnataka because they don’t get enough work at home. “There the daily wage is about ₹250, but we don’t get work throughout the week. Besides, women seldom get a chance to work there. Here, women are also paid and that is the reason we bring our family here,” said Sohar Ali, another plantation worker.
Many planters have built colonies for the workers in their estates. Tiny rooms are allotted to two to three families. They make partitions within and set up their tiny kitchens within the available space. They are not skilled labourers, though some them have worked in tea estates. They are made to learn picking (harvesting coffee beans) and other coffee plantation related-works for a few months before they start work. But their children remain without education.
Police in both Hassan and Chikkamagaluru districts have instructed coffee planters to collect the details of the workers before employing them. K. Annamalai, Superintendent of Police of Chikkamagaluru, told The Hindu that all planters have been directed to submit copies of documents establishing their employees’ identities to the nearest police station. But he also clarified that so far, there have been no incidents of crime involving any worker from Assam.