This May Day, as the world celebrates the dignity of labour, my mind returned to a tea estate in Cachar district in Assam. The tea garden is called Bhuvan Valley Tea Estate . It is a place of lush green tea gardens, but also of deep-rooted despair. Over a decade has passed since the starvation deaths of tea workers first shook the conscience of those of us in the Barak Human Rights Protection Committee (BHRPC), a human rights group, yet the memories remain vivid — etched into our minds like the lines on the tired faces of the workers we met.
The crisis began quietly in October 2011. There was no warning — just a sudden shutdown of the Bhuvan Valley Tea Estate by its Kolkata-based owners. Wages were withheld. Bonuses were denied. Nine long weeks passed without a rupee reaching the pockets of around 500 permanent and 1,000 casual workers. In those weeks, hunger spread like a silent plague. It was not just the absence of food, but of dignity, of recognition, of justice. Families exhausted their meagre savings, sold off utensils, and bartered clothes for rice. But the rice ran out, and so did time.
By early 2012, we were receiving scattered reports of unexplained deaths. When we arrived to conduct a fact-finding mission, we were unprepared for what we saw. Fourteen people — elderly workers, young mothers, children — had died. The causes given were vague: illness, weakness, fatigue. But the reality was plain to see. One of our team members muttered, “It is more like Death Valley than Bhuvan Valley.” And indeed, that grim title stuck.
We documented cases of workers surviving on a single meal a day, often just boiled rice or a piece of dry roti. A frail mother told us, “We eat rice and roti two times a day. One meal is full, the other half… When they were small they did not need so much.” There was no clean drinking water; only a contaminated canal from which children fetched water in plastic bottles. Diarrhoea, tuberculosis, and skin infections were rampant. The estate’s healthcare unit was a ghost facility, the roof caved in, medicines nonexistent.
The wages — when paid — were a pittance: ₹41 to ₹55 a day, well below the minimum wage even by Assam’s already exploitative standards. Welfare schemes, theoretically meant to protect such vulnerable communities, had all but evaporated. Most workers didn’t even have ration cards. Anganwadi centres claimed to be operational, but we found locked doors, falsified attendance sheets, and signatures forged to siphon off supplies.
In 2015, tragedy returned. Four more people, including a newborn baby and elderly workers, died after the estate once again cut off rations and medical support. We found 43 individuals suffering from visible signs of acute malnutrition. Their arms were stick-thin, their limbs swollen. Skin diseases and dizziness were common. At a health camp organized by volunteers, doctors confirmed what we feared: “The workers and their families are stalked by malnutrition.”
What was most crushing wasn’t just the suffering, but the indifference. Government authorities dismissed starvation as the cause. One official claimed alcohol abuse was to blame. Others said the deaths were “natural.” We knew better. Our reports cited violations of the Plantation Labour Act, 1951 — a law so frequently ignored that it might as well not exist. The law mandates basic rights — wages, housing, healthcare — none of which the workers were getting.
We brought the matter before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). After relentless advocacy, the Commission acknowledged the crisis, recommending monetary relief: ₹2 lakh to the families of deceased workers, ₹1 lakh for dependents. But the implementation was patchy at best. The bureaucracy was slow, the paperwork endless, and the political will absent. The families continued to wait.
We reached out beyond borders. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) issued hunger alerts and appealed to the United Nations. Their findings echoed ours: the government’s inquiries were deeply flawed, designed more to suppress than to reveal the truth. Meanwhile, Indian media — CNN-IBN, Tehelka, and others — gave the crisis the attention it deserved. “The question haunts Barak Valley,” Tehelka wrote. “Did they die of hunger?”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, things grew worse. With lockdowns in place, the fragile supply chains broke down entirely. We, at BHRPC, distributed grocery kits where we could, and pressured local authorities to provide hazard pay and health support to workers. Again, the response was slow. Again, the suffering deepened.
The systemic rot was — and remains — profound. The estate eventually reopened in 2012, but inequality continued: workers in Barak Valley were paid ₹68/day, while their counterparts in West Bengal earned ₹85. When a magisterial inquiry was finally announced, it turned out to be a whitewash. The state official leading the probe had conflicts of interest. We called it what it was: “A violation of natural justice… no one should be a judge in their own cause.”One woman’s son told us, “They gave us paracetamol for kidney disease. My mother died in pain.” These are not isolated anecdotes — they are testimonies, cries from the heart of a community long abandoned by the state, ignored by the nation, and betrayed by promises.
Yet the fight continued. We at BHRPC continued to demand universal access to the Public Distribution System, wage parity with other tea regions, and independent judicial inquiries. These are not just legal demands — they are moral imperatives. As we wrote in one of our submissions, “The right to truth and justice is a collective right… moral responsibility must be assumed.”
But even today, exploitation remains embedded in the soil of Bhuvan Valley. Starvation has not been eradicated; it has merely retreated into the shadows. One survivor told us, her eyes hollow yet defiant, “There’s no hope for me or my children… their condition is as bad as mine.”
On this May Day, I think not only of those who work, but of those who wither while working — the tea pluckers of Bhuvan Valley, whose suffering taught us the true meaning of justice delayed. Their story is not over. And neither is our responsibility.
