Letter from Ron Fream

As you know, I’ve been working with some of the 22 old and older courses scattered through the Assam tea plantations in North East India. A few of these courses are well over 100 years old. They reflect their British colonial origins. Their clubhouses are simple, and their budgets are sparse. The staffers earn just a few dollars a day.

Our goal is to recondition some of the better courses, including Jorhat Gymkhana Club, the second course built in India (in 1876). We would also refurbish colonial raj-era cottages and executive villas to serve as accommodations, recreating the feeling of bygone days.

Of course, our main goal is to help create new sources of employment for the rapidly expanding numbers of youth across Assam. There’s a population of around 30 million in Assam, many of them young and uneducated.

My several visits and studies are basically pro bono efforts to do something meaningful.

The state has experienced social problems. On one visit, my wife and I had a police escort in a Jeep ahead of us as we traveled. An armed guard sat in the back seat of our minivan. At one course, armed escorts walked with me as I toured the layout.

The past few months have been brutal in Assam. The massive Brahmaputra River flooded, displacing tens of thousands of villagers. An elephant reserve was also inundated, driving the elephants into villages on higher ground.

Discord has also increased, as mostly Hindu native tribals fight against the incursion of Muslim Bangladeshi who are trying to take living space and land from the indigenous locals. Bangladesh, which borders Assam, has more than 160 million mostly destitute residents. To them, Assam looks like paradise.

People have been pushed to violence by religious conflict, resistance to selling or giving up family land, and serious over-crowding. In a recent battle, more than 80 people were killed. Several hundred thousand locals have fled to what they hope are safer locations. Houses have been torched, lives disrupted.

Assamese working elsewhere in India have been threatened by local Muslim agitators in retaliation for the Muslim deaths in Assam. Ten thousand or more Assamese have left their jobs and returned to their home towns, seeking shelter.

The state and national governments are almost helpless to stop to the violence. Assam, a remote state, is the largest tea producer in the world but offers scant else. For that reason and others, it’s always been underserved by the central government.

Creating employment opportunities must be the priority of the governments in India and Bangladesh. In both countries, youth education is clearly not universal, and poverty will always be the result.

Best wishes!
Ron Fream

Ron Fream, the golf course architect who founded GolfPlan, is now mostly retired and living in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. His previous letters to the World Golf Report appeared in February 2011 and March 2011.