‘Chowkidar’ Narendra Modi turns ‘chaiwala’ in Assam’s tea belt

GUWAHATI: ‘

Chowkidar

’ Narendra Modi turned ‘

chaiwala

’ again in Assam’s tea belt on Saturday, when he was on a whirlwind tour across upper Assam and neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh.

“They (Congress) not only hate chowkidars but also chaiwalas. Initially, I thought they were targetting only one chaiwala. Later, I realized that be it Assam or West Bengal, from chai grower to chai maker, Congress didn’t care for anyone. Otherwise, why would you, who have been feeding Assam tea to the world, be neglected for so long? Only a chaiwala can understand the hardships of chai growers,” Modi said, addressing a huge gathering at Moran in the Dibrugarh

Lok Sabha

constituency.

Dibrugarh as well as Tezpur, where he addressed the next rally, are part of Assam’s tea belt. The tea tribe vote bloc, spread across six districts and 800-odd tea gardens, is the third largest in the state, right after caste Assamese and Muslims. This base plays a decisive role in the upper Assam Lok Sabha seats that go to the polls in the first phase on April 11.

In 2014, to drive home the “special connect” he had with the state’s tea workers, he had said he used to sell Assam tea as a chaiwala. The pitch on Saturday was not very different. Only, this time, he was defending his government’s commitment to them. “For the first time since Independence, we have opened bank accounts for tea garden workers. Not just that, we have deposited Rs 5,000 in each account in two instalments. For the four lakh families of tea garden workers, we have provided free rice and sugar at Rs 2 per kg. For every expecting mother from the tea garden worker community, we have extended a one-time assistance of Rs 12,000,” Modi said, referring to the community-specific sops and schemes announced by the BJP-led state government.

Moran has been Modi’s favoured ground in Assam. In 2016, before the Assam assembly election, too, Modi had kicked off his campaign at Moran. Then, he had said he only wanted to be known as ‘chaiwala’ and that the “hard work put in by tea garden workers generation after generation had made India proud”.