Silchar, May 5: When Manju Rikiason votes, she exercises her forefinger, not her mind. The more important job of choosing the candidate is left to the males of her family. The story is the same in household after household in the south Assam tea belt. Illiterate women voters turn up at polling booths to cast their votes in favour of candidates chosen by their equally untutored husbands, fathers or brothers.
Manju, a mother of three, is employed as a leaf-plucker at Doloo tea estate and one of the women voters who were interviewed as part of a University Grants Commission-sponsored study of voting patterns in the gardens of Cachar. Political science researcher S.N. Singh, who conducted the survey, said the majority of the women he met admitted they did not know who the Prime Minister was.
The former head of the department of political science at Cachar College was even more startled by the findings of his survey of Lalamukh tea estate of adjacent Hailakandi district. An overwhelming 98 per cent of the women voters in the estate were found to be blissfully unaware that Atal Bihari Vajpayee is the country’s premier.
Singh said a mere two of the 165 workers interviewed at Dullavcherra tea garden of Karimganj district knew that the BJP leads the ruling coalition at the Centre. Most of them, however, responded enthusiastically on being asked who Mahatma Gandhi was.
One of the key findings of the survey was that women voters in the south Assam tea belt have been ritualistically following the trend of “deferential participation” in elections, which Singh described as the outcome of a person’s “strong identification with the source of influence”.
In the 64 tea plantations of Cachar, the rate of literacy is only 32 per cent, which is half of the overall district percentage. The mostly uneducated tea workers account for 12 per cent of the electorate.
The Cachar Cha Sramik Union, which is the apex tea union of the district, favours the Congress and takes pains to convince the workers that it is the only party that cares for them. And when the males agree, the women have no choice but to nod in approval.