Maybe just a word, and yet words have their own tales. Picturesque plush green fields, healthy livestock grazing, and that grand mansion, are all etched in popular history. Yet, there are tales of lives which have remained shaded, in fact shadowed, under clouds that caress either the fertile fields, or for that matter the flowing hills of Tea Estates of Assam in India, or Sylhet and Hobiganj in Bangladesh. They are the tales of cornered lives, chronic poverty and chained hope. This is the tale of 'Tainted Tea'. Sprawling green hills, petit women in colourful saris, picking tea leaves and throwing them into the tukri on their back — the image we are shown. A picture perfect tale of harmony and prosperity, as portrayed by the many tea companies, is what belies modern day slavery.
The impeccable bone china tea cups filled up with affordable light lemon tea has a long journey. And that journey is not as pleasant as the vapour rising from that cup in a lazy Sunday morning. It is 'tainted' with the humid sweat of those tea workers, their cornered lives of minimum wages, their servile existence of generations stuck! I see Sabitri, dying without the right medicine. I see Alomuni, barely in her teens, carrying the sack of tea leaves, much heavier than the school books she will never carry. I see Nunia, with her irritated look while picking leaves, as my face wears the worry about insect bites. Yet I see, building a new house for the family. I see an eternal hope, in their gaze over the mountains, a dream of the Promised Land. They have remained our forgotten 'soldiers of fortune'.
Contact: munem.wasif at gmail.com
<http://www.lightstalkers.org/galleries/contact_sheet/2105> Jute mill crisis
The storied Adamjee Jute Mills have been shuttered since 2003, following the prescription of the World Bank and other donors. After all, it is easy to close down mills and factories in the interests of efficiency and productivity if one ignores the human toll and looks only at the bottom line.
The state jute sector limps on in the Khulna-Jessore belt, once a busy industrial corridor, now sadly reduced to a shadow of its former self. Seven out of eight state-owned jute mills remain idle for want of cash to buy raw jute and keep the wheels turning.
Workers and employees pass their days in tremendous hardship as the cash-strapped public sector mills are unable to pay them for months at a time. A good number of the workers have already sent their families back to their village homes as there is no way to provide for them.
The workers number about 19,000 regular labourers while about 6,000 are working on temporary basis in the eight mills in the region. The temporary workers are kept on a "no work, no pay" basis.
For every mill or factory that is shut down, thousands of workers and their families lose their means of livelihood. For every jute mill that sits idle or is unable to pay its workers, thousands suffer insecurity and uncertainty, wondering how they will scrape together enough to feed themselves and their families.
<http://www.lightstalkers.org/munem_wasif> Munem Wasif is a documentary photographer born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1983. A graduate of Pathshala – the South Asian Institute of Photography, Wasif started his journalistic career as a staff photographer for the Daily Star, a leading English daily of Bangladesh. He now works with DrikNEWS (International news photo agency) as a staff photographer. He is also represented by visavis.pl.
Wasif's prime area of interest revolves around socio-political documentaries. His photographs have been published in numerous national and international publications including Le Monde, Himal Southasian, Asian Geographic, Issue Magazine, Zonezero, Forum, pdfx12, Daily Star, Daily New Age, Daily New Nation, and Daily Shomokal.
In 2007, Wasif was selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in the Netherlands. He won an "Honorable Mention" in the 2007 All Roads Photography Program by the National Geographic Society, First Prize in the Konkurs Fotografii Prasowej, and Second Prize in the 2007 Polish BZ WBK Press Foto Contest for his extensive work on tea garden workers. He has additionally won two bronze prizes in the Daily Life and Arts and Entertainment category of China International Press Photo. His work is widely exhibited worldwide. -- Yoshie