Nearly 20,000 workers from the 50 odd tea estates in Valparai in the Nilgiris have migrated to Coimbatore and other cities.
VALPARAI: Tamil Nadu’s tea country is in disarray. If it is low wages for tea estate workers in Valparai, the hilly town bordering Kerala, it is the small tea growers who are in distress in the Nilgiri hills.
Tamil Nadu produces 155 million kilogrammes of tea annually, but the industry is facing a crisis over the past few years. The demand of the workers for better wages and more work seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
The net result: nearly 20,000 workers from the 50 odd tea estates in Valparai have migrated to Coimbatore and other cities. Now, with the assembly polls due on May 8, it is the candidates who are feeling the heat and they are falling head over heels with a promise of a better future.
The two main parties, AIADMK and DMK, have opted out of this reserved constituency and have offered the seat to its allies. Kovai Thangam, who is the sitting MLA of Congress, is seeking re-election from the DMK-led Democratic Progressive Alliance. S Kalaiarasan, state deputy general secretary of Dalit Panthers of India, has been fielded against him by the AIADMK-led alliance.
“Talks will be held with the tea estates management and ensure a decent hike in wages in six months,” Thangam promises.
The small town, with a population of about 200,000, is also demanding another road to connect the towns below the hills. “If the situation doesn’t improve, then more people will migrate from the tea estates,” Manickavelan, a worker at the Waterfalls tea estate told DNA.
In Nilgiris district, home to the tourist hub of Ootacamund, nearly 160 kms from Anamalai hills, hundreds of small farmers have moved to work in Coimbatore and Mysore. Their grouse is the lack of support price to sustain tea farming.
Chief Minister and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa has promised a subsidy of Rs2800 an acre to the nearly 50,000 tea growers in the district. “We will continue with the subsidy till the tea sector crisis is over,” Jayalalithaa said recently, while campaigning for Tourism Minister A Miller in Gudalur constituency.
AIADMK has fielded candidates in all the three constituencies — Gudalur, Udhagamandalam and Coonoor. All the three constituencies are traditional strongholds of the party and Jayalalithaa hopes to advantage of the subsidy schemes she has offered to the tea growers. This subsidy, said an AIADMK source, will take the “wind” out of DPA.
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