Doomdooma: When the day’s last baskets of green tea leaves are emptied and the labour lines of Doomdooma’s sprawling tea estates begin to settle into darkness, a different kind of activity takes hold in parts of the gardens in upper Assam’s Tinsukia district.
Makeshift cinema screens light up open spaces, gambling circles attract young crowds, and fighting cocks are brought into arenas where money changes hands alongside blood.
For many families, these are no longer occasional distractions during festivals. They represent a growing social crisis that threatens to rob an entire generation of its education, childhood and future.
The seriousness of the situation has now reached the administrative authorities through a memorandum submitted by the Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association (ATTSA), Doomdooma Branch Committee, to Doomdooma Co-District Commissioner Nuzhat Nasreen. Dated November 12, 2026, and signed by president Irot Tati and secretary Joygeswar Nanda, the memorandum identifies gambling (juwa), cockfighting (kukura yuddha), illicit country liquor (chulai) and unauthorised cinema screenings as major sources of social disruption in tea garden communities.
The association alleges that these activities are draining workers’ hard-earned wages, encouraging domestic violence, damaging children’s education and creating an atmosphere of insecurity in the labour lines.
“Workers spend their entire week’s wages in one night of juwa and chulai,” the memorandum states, warning that continued administrative inaction could compel the organisation to launch democratic protests.
Its demands are unambiguous: an immediate halt to cinema screenings, gambling and cockfighting inside tea gardens, alongside a crackdown on the sale of illicit liquor in the gardens and adjoining villages.
When a fifty-rupee bet becomes the beginning of an end
Behind the memorandum lies a much larger human story.
Fifteen-year-old Raju (name changed), who dropped out of Class VIII last year from a tea garden near Hansara, represents the vulnerable face of this emerging crisis.
His introduction to gambling did not come through a major betting operation or an organised network. It began with curiosity and the excitement surrounding cockfights after a jhumur programme.
“First it was just watching the cockfights after the jhumur. Then someone offered me a bet of fifty rupees. I won. Next week I lost everything my mother had given me for books. Now I wait for the next festival night. School feels far away,” he recalls.
His experience illustrates how seemingly harmless entertainment can turn into a destructive habit. Small winnings create excitement, losses encourage repeated betting, and the desire to recover lost money can gradually draw vulnerable adolescents deeper into gambling.
Local youth workers, according to the account provided, describe a familiar pattern in which some young people eventually abandon education, enter uncertain daily-wage employment or become vulnerable to petty criminal activities. They also raise concerns about the presence of narcotics at certain gatherings.
The invisible burden carried by mothers and daughters
The consequences are not confined to the boys who gather around gambling arenas.
For women and adolescent girls, the crisis often unfolds inside homes and through the gradual disappearance of educational opportunities.
Late-night cinema screenings in open spaces within garden labour lines have also become a matter of concern. A woman tea worker in her forties, who requested anonymity, describes the vulnerability of young people after such screenings.
“After the film, the boys and girls hang around. Some elope the same night. Parents are either drunk or too tired from plucking to notice,” she says.
The concerns extend beyond individual incidents of elopement. The broader issues facing tea garden communities include school dropout, early marriage and adolescent motherhood.
When household earnings are lost to gambling and illicit liquor, the financial and emotional burden frequently falls disproportionately on women. Mothers must somehow manage household expenses, while daughters may be compelled to leave school to look after younger siblings or join their mothers in the tea gardens.
For some girls, interrupted education is followed by early marriage and motherhood, narrowing their opportunities even further.
A Class X girl who continues to attend school offers another glimpse into this atmosphere.
“The noise, the smell of liquor, the boys calling out. My mother tells me not to look. But many of my friends have already left school. Some have babies now,” she says.
Her words capture a disturbing contradiction: while education is widely viewed as a pathway towards a better future, some children are growing up in surroundings that make remaining in school increasingly difficult.
Poverty, insecurity and the search for escape
ATTSA leaders argue that these social problems cannot be separated from the larger economic and political concerns of the tea tribes and Adivasi communities.
Land rights, inadequate wages and the long-standing demand for Scheduled Tribe status remain central to the community’s concerns.
A senior ATTSA functionary from the regional committee links these structural difficulties to the growing vulnerability of young people.
“If a family has no land security and the daily wage remains insufficient, the young will look for escape in whatever is available, liquor, gambling, a quick elopement,” the functionary tells this correspondent. “We are watching our next generation being lost in front of our eyes.”
The argument raises a difficult question: can social reform succeed without addressing the economic insecurity that shapes everyday life in tea garden settlements?
For families struggling to meet basic needs, the loss of even a small portion of weekly earnings can have serious consequences. Gambling and illicit liquor, when combined with unemployment and limited opportunities, can deepen an already fragile situation.
A memorandum, an administration and a generation waiting
The administration has reportedly conducted occasional raids against illegal gambling activities. In one recent instance elsewhere in Assam, officials seized gambling materials from a tea estate following complaints.
However, residents of Doomdooma’s labour lines allege that enforcement remains inconsistent. They say night-time cinema screenings continue, cockfights attract participants from neighbouring gardens, and illicit liquor continues to circulate openly.
The ATTSA memorandum also recalls that previous appeals received sympathy but failed to produce decisive action.
“The social environment is completely destroyed,” the memorandum states.
The organisation’s intervention has brought an issue often confined to private family conversations into the realm of public accountability.
“The challenge before the administration is not merely to stop a gambling session, seize betting materials or prevent an unauthorised film screening. It is to protect children from environments that normalise addiction, prevent household earnings from disappearing into gambling and illicit liquor, and ensure that young people have opportunities beyond the narrow choices currently confronting them,” a senior local journalist said.
“A tea garden is more than a workplace. It is a living community where generations grow up, families struggle and children inherit both dreams and disadvantages,” the journalist added.
The question confronting Doomdooma is whether its next generation will inherit opportunities for education, dignity and a secure future, or the same destructive cycle of gambling, addiction, interrupted schooling and poverty.