The determination shown by thousands of woman tea plantation workers agitating on the streets of Kerala’s Munnar Hill resort for better wages has forced politicians and trade unionists who have so far refused to take their woes seriously, to beg for permission to participate in the stir understanding that such movements could make them an endangered species.
“Where have all these politicians and trade unionists been so farIJ We have been in misery for all these years and we have been agitating for the past eight days. Only now they are admitting that there is a problem. We don’t want them … simply because we don’t trust them,” said Meenakshi, one of the 6,000-odd woman workers of the Kanan Devan Hill Plantations ltd (KDHP) agitating in Munnar.
After welcoming local MlA S Rajendran of the CPI(M) with slippers and loud protests forcing him to flee the agitation venue on Friday, the agitators, most of them women and of Tamil origin, on Saturday questioned his intentions in observing a hunger strike on his own in Munnar town to express solidarity with the agitation. “We don’t trust him either,” Meenakshi said.
On Saturday, the agitators disallowed CPI(M)’s central committee member PK Sreemathy to sit with them on Munnar’s streets to declare solidarity with the party’s women’s wing All India Democratic Women’s Association. “I respect their sentiments. But still we are with them in this agitation. The exploitation must stop and their welfare should be ensured,” Sreemathy said.
It was State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s turn next to try enticing the workers, but there was no change in their approach. Amidst total indifference from the agitators, he declared his party’s support to them and went on to warn the Government and the KDHP management that the Marxist party would join the stir if they did not honour workers’ demands. The coming days also will see political leaders queuing up to declare solidarity with the workers. Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan is set to visit Munnar on Sunday even as State Congress president VM Sudheeran said that he would visit the hill resort “if need be”. CPI legislator ES Bijimol has already joined the stir with or without the permission of the agitators.
“We are not eager to see politicians coming here to declare solidarity,” said one of the women leading the stir. “We want the company’s people, particularly the KDHP managing director, to come here and assure us that our daily wage will be `500 and we will be given 20 per cent bonus. We are also human beings who have needs,” said a woman leading the agitation.