Question

Which communities lost their
livelihood and what happed to them?​

Answer 1

Answer:

The even greater tragedy of the coordinated murderous December 23, 2014, attack on unarmed Adivasi forest dwellers in Assam, which left dead more than 70 people including children and women, is that the assault targeted one of the most oppressed and dispossessed communities in that entire region.

A meticulously researched paper titled “‘Lazy’ Natives, Coolie Labour, and the Assam Tea Industry” by Jayeeta Sharma recounts the grim history of their settlement as indentured labour in Assam since the mid-19th century as an element of the great colonial capitalist enterprise. The discovery that Chinese tea flourished in the hills and plains of Assam led to the clearance of vast forest tracts for tea plantations. They originally relied briefly on labour imported from China, but they were found unequal to the hard labour required for clearing the thick jungle undergrowth.

This gave way to employment of workers from indigenous tribal communities like the Nagas, who they found sturdy and hard-working and often willing to work in return for as little as some rice, shells and beads. But they worked when they chose, and refused to be regimented and controlled. They experimented with other local tribes, but the problem of their resistance to the iron discipline of the tea gardens led them to search for outside workers.