Digital divide in tea sector

AVIJIT SINHA, TT, Siliguri: Digital India continues to remain a distant dream for hundreds of thousands of workers in the tea industry in north Bengal even a year after the demonetisation announcement.

As the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, announced the demonetisation decision on November 8 last year, the major problem that cropped up in the tea industry was the delay in wage payment because of absence of adequate cash in banks.

The Centre and the Reserve Bank of India then said the tea estates would have to start cashless payment system for workers.

"But even today, nearly 90 per cent of the tea estates are paying wages in cash because no banking infrastructure has been set up in the gardens. The local banks, where workers have opened accounts, lack adequate manpower and infrastructure to cater for the garden workers at one go," said Ziaur Alam, the convener of the Joint Forum, an apex body of 24 tea trade unions.

A tea planter in Siliguri pointed out that there was utter confusion when workers of one or more tea estates poured into the banks located close to the gardens to withdraw their fortnightly wages.

"In fact, officials of some banks informally requested us to revert to the old system of cash payment, expressing inability to handle thousands of workers on a single day," he said.

Further, no initiative was taken to set up ATMs on all tea estates. In the Darjeeling hills, no ATM has come up yet.

"Many tea estates in the Dooars had spent money to build rooms in the plantations so that ATMs could be installed. Several months have passed but the ATMs still elude the estates. In fact, banks have called up managers on some tea estates and told them that V-SAT machines which were put up in the gardens for better connectivity of the ATMs will be taken away," said a representative of the Indian Tea Association, a body of planters.