Invisible chains? Crisis in the tea industry and the ‘unfreedom’ of labour in Assam's tea plantations

Abstract

During the post-liberalization period the Indian tea industry has been facing a severe crisis. This study looks at the question of inter-generational occupational mobility among tea garden labour in Assam, against the backdrop of, on the one hand, a fall in tea auction prices, decline in exports, and closure and abandonment of tea gardens; and on the other hand, increasing labour unrest, at times leading to violent protests and confrontations, declining living standards and worsening human security in the tea gardens. On the basis of data collected through first-hand primary research in three tea gardens of upper Assam, the paper analyses limitations on the inter-generational occupational mobility of tea garden labourers. We also probe into the reasons behind the relative mobility or immobility of tea garden labourers within and outside the tea gardens.

Keywords:

• Assam
• tea gardens
• plantation labour
• occupational mobility

Acknowledgements

The paper is based on findings of a research project entitled ‘Occupational mobility of plantation sector in Assam: determinants and implications’, carried out with financial support from the National Tea Research Foundation, Kolkata. We owe a special debt of gratitude to Sewali Kurmi, Jawan Singh, Kamakhaya Prasad and Robin Khataniar for their support in data collection and analysis. The paper benefited from the comments and observations of participants at the Annual Conference of the British Association of South Asian Studies 2010, at University of Warwick, where an earlier version of the paper was presented. We are deeply indebted to Barbara Harris-White for her insightful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.

Notes

1. In Dibrugarh district, Assam a tea garden manager was hacked to death by agitating workers on 30 May 2003 (Misra 2003). On 24 November 2007, when 6000 adivasis from tea gardens of Assam gathered at a protest rally in Guwahati to demand ST status, their rally was attacked by local shopkeepers and youth in retaliation against violent attacks by some of the agitators (see Misra 2007).

2. The tea garden labourers settled outside the garden are variously called adivasis, tea-tribes or the ex-tea garden labour community. These terms are politically loaded statements of self-identification, particularly in Assam. Without taking a stand on this, we will use them interchangeably.

3. Today, Assam produces around 52% of the total tea produced in India and employs around 56% of the labour force working in this sector (Tea Board 2004).

4. This has its roots in the migration of labour from eastern and central India to the gardens, where movements of families were specifically encouraged to reduce the cost of labour supply.

5. The ‘industrial plantation’ system that emerged in the nineteenth century represented ‘new forms of capital’, but its link with unfreedom of labour continues to remain one of the problematic issues in understanding the nature of labour processes in plantations (Brass and Bernstein 1992, 4–5).

6. Educational attainment among the tea garden workers (mean years = 2) is abysmally low. On the other hand there is a significant gap between the mean years of schooling between the labourers (2–4) and those who have joined white-collar professions (9–13). The average years of schooling among those who work within the gardens and those who work outside, however, is not significantly different as most of the non-tea garden occupations are also at the low-income end of the job spectrum.

7. Social security score has been calculated on the basis of the following parameters: paid leave, provident fund, pension, medical support, housing support, maternity leave, insurance, injury allowance and other benefits. Availability of each of these supports was assigned a value 1, otherwise 0. Composite social security score (S) = ∑ S_{i, i = 1 … 9}.

8. According to existing legal provisions, labourers have the right to housing. The recruitment of workers from existing labour families puts no extra burden on management, but employment of new labourers will raise that cost substantially.