Ration issue to tea garden workers – a brief history

The Tea Industry in Eastern India had set up an unique example of taking upon themselves the responsibility of providing the most vital item of living i.e., the foodgrains to their workmen and family members in the gardens when there were severe scarcity in the market availability of foodgrains and a famine condition was prevailing in the whole of the Eastern part of India in the early Forties. The Tea Industry Management who operated in a very organized and professional manner took upon themselves the responsibility of providing the basic necessity of the workmen to surmount the acute crisis and literally saved them from starvation.

For procuring and arranging supplies of foodgrains to the tea gardens in the organized sector of the industry, the services of the most experienced multinational company operating in Asia viz. Steel Bros. & Co. Ltd. was requisitioned.  A beginning was thus made in the orderly foodgrains ration issue arrangement on a regular basis to the tea garden workers at a price mutually determined between the workers’ representatives and the industry.  This arrangement was made much before the Public Distribution System (PDS) was conceived and put into operation in India.

With the passage of time and after the formation of the National Government in 1947, welfare legislations had been enacted to protect the interest of the tea garden workers.  While the Legislation (Plantation Labour Act) took care of all other aspects of the welfare of the plantation workers, it did not provide any guidelines or direction in regard to foodgrains ration issue to the workers as this aspect had been taken well care of by the industry much before and was already in practice in an organized manner.  Subsequently this system became a part of the wage structure and came under the purview of the Labour Department of the State Government as would be evident from the Industrial Tribunal awards under the Industrial Disputes Act dated the 6^th July, 1952 over the question of reduction in the rice ration scale following the introduction of the All India Ration Scale.

Formation of Assam Bengal Cereals Ltd. (ABCL)

In the sixties the Reserve Bank of India had put a number of restrictions on the operation of Steel Bros. & Co. Ltd., which was incorporated in England.  As a result, Steel Bros. & Co. Ltd. which was basically an Agency House, took the decision to wind up their operation in India.  Following this decision, the member Tea Companies of the Indian Tea Association took steps to form a consortium body of their own to maintain foodgrains ration supply arrangement to their tea gardens in Assam and West Bengal and Assam Bengal Cereals Ltd.,(ABCL) was thus born. Assam Bengal Cereals Ltd.,(ABCL), now ABC Tea Workers Welfare Services(ABCTWWS) was incorporated as a Public Limited Company in the same year in 1968 with contributions made by all the major Tea Companies towards its Share Capital.

With its formation, Assam Bengal Cereals Ltd. (ABCL) took over the infrastructure including the staff of Steel Bros. & Co. Ltd. and commenced its operation under the control and supervision of a Board of Directors.  Senior representatives of the participating Tea Companies were nominated on the Board of ABCL, who controlled and guided ABCL’s operation with the formation of the Board comprising of Mr. Malcom Lamond, Mr. Peter John Parr, Mr. Ranesh Chandra Mazumdar, Mr. Claude Francis Shaw-Hamilton, Charles John Noel Will, Amalendra Nath Ghose and Inder Madhok as the Directors of the Company.